Ye Sang

Wonderful Oral Histories

Ye Sang's book "China Candid" is right up my alley. It is a collection of interviews done by Ye Sang in the 1990's and early 2000's. Ye Sang's questions and remarks have been removed so that each interview is a small vignette. Readers can pick one anywhere in the book and have at it without reading the previous vignettes. However, they have been collected into several sections, such as a section about Communist Party members, children, the decentralized economy, and sexuality.

Academics could no doubt put all these stories together in order to make a big statement about recent Chinese history. Both the rise of communism and the decentralization of the economy have left many people in China struggling to adapt. Entry into the Communist Party is a near guarantee for a successful life in China, while staying outside it can cause both depredation and wealth, depending on individual access to markets. Any grand thesis is unnecessary though because each vignette paints a solid story in itself.

We meet the founders of a private orphanage, the People's Liberation Army commander whose unit runs a hotel and offers foreign tourists the chance to play soldier, the prostitute who works in a movie theater, a doped teenage athlete, an executioner, a soldier from the farmland who goosesteps around Tienanmen Square, a starving artist whose friend claims to be homeless but puts his address on a business card, and even China's leading UFO expert.

Fortunately, Chinese authors are writing wonderful oral histories. There is a great variety to chose from, including this book, Liao Yiwu's "The Corpse Walker," Xianhui Yang's "Women from Shanghai," and so forth. These books follow the tradition of Studs Terkel, painting pictures of recent history and modern life in a way that only regular people can.… (más)