Chinese Lessons

The second book in my study of China prior to the trip is CHINESE LESSONS by John Pomfret.

From the jacket cover....

CHINESE LESSONS: Five Classmates, and the Story of the New China is Washington Post reporter John Pomfret’s evocative recounting of the lives of his former classmates in the Nanjing University History Class of 1982. As one of the first American students to live and study with Chinese after the revolution, Pomfret saw the country as few Americans had. Leaving China in 1982, Pomfret returned for the Tiananmen Square protests and the crackdown of June 4, 1989. Expelled by the Chinese government at that point, he again returned to live from 1998-2005 as the Post's bureau chief in Beijing.

Pomfret uses the lives of his classmates as a vehicle for telling China's story, one of the most tumultuous the modern world has ever known. His classmates came from villages and cities; some were Red Guards; others were beaten by Red Guards; some siblings starved to death during the calamitous Great Leap Foward...

This book is almost too much to take at times. The unbelievable cruelty that was put upon some of these people causes me to stop and actually catch my breath. It truly is amazing what people, "everyday" people can endure.

Whereas Oracle Bones was something that dealt with the recent modern history of China (1990s-2000s), this book...although it does jump forward to the present, spends most of the time in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, opening up the Cultural Revolution of Moa and the incredible cruelty and many times stupidity of his reign, from an "insider's" view.

Worth the read!

You can also catch John Pomfret here on