Writers again added to the West's understanding or ignorance of China. In 1910, for instance, Englishman Sax Rohmer created the evil Fu Manchu, a racist, bony monster, served by a sexy, enslaved, reptile-like woman. After WWI, a resuscitated interest in traditional Chinese themes and romantic characters ensued. Fortunately, Pearl Buck countered Rohmer's racism with her hit novel The Good Earth in the 1930s. It chronicled the bitter-sweet life of the Chinese peasant, and indicated that the West's narrow mind can also open.
A dense chapter explores Western intellectual conclusions about power and social justice in China.
In his 1957 opus Oriental Despotism, American Karl Wittfogel identified China's towering Qin emperor, Qinshihuangdi, as the architect of a totalitarian state. In its Communist form, it rendered man lonely, afraid and doomed. Maybe capitalism will leave him selfish, corrupt and doomed, begging the question of whether there is a middle way for the Middle Kingdom?
Literary lions, like the Italian wordsmith Italo Calvino, end the book. In 1972, he penned a subtle, sophisticated dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo.
The king asks his servant if he will repeat his many tales once home. The young Italian tells the old Mongol, "It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear."
Spence impresses with the range of his mind, which grasps each era's dominant theme, and its nuances, in a charging narrative. Polished prose embellishes this pithy, yet learned work.
However, the author wrongly claims that his work is widely accessible.
The challenging Wittfogel chapter melds history, politics and anthropology. Also, in several chapters, a question begs to be answered.
Finally, Spence should tell us how China has viewed the West through the ages, which would surely add informative counterbalance and a few entertaining moments to this historical tour of a much misunderstood society.
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