num_pages: 789
description: In 1971, William Hinton returned to Long Bow -the Chinese village he had lived in during the critical postrevolutionary years, a visit he documented in Fanshen. His purpose was to see if the dreams had indeed come true; his method was to ask and to listen to the Long Bow peasants he had worked and lived with twenty years earlier; the result is Shenfan. Based on firsthand observation in areas of China not normally accessible to Westerners and on sustained and trustworthy conversations with people he has known over a long period of time, Mr. Hinton's book shows us China both in depth and on a person-to-person scale. The value of Shenfan however, does not lie with securing information from national and local leadership or even with the unprecedented accounts from the people themselves. It lies chiefly in Hinton's careful, exhaustive and brilliant evaluation of contemporary China.The consequence is a totally new aspect of the Great Leap: convincing descriptions of what motivated villagers to try mutual aid (it was not the exhortation of the Communist Party), a complete look at China from the grass roots, insight into Mao-s methods and errors in unleashing the Cultural Revolution.Important as these things are, the special quality of Shenfan is its ability to put us there: in the reminescences of a veteran of China's war with Japan; in the hopelesness of a young married couple after the Soviet Union pullout; in the befuddlement of a people whose language, putinto service exclusively for the revolution, becomes eroded as concepts are embezzled.And he shows us the landscape in such a way that we are not tourists: we walk with him the twelve miles to Long Bow after a devastating thunderstorm; we sit in the predawn mist drinking tea and chatting; we embrace young men and women we had known as babies; we buy pancakes and noodles at the fair, check pigs and feel the grain.Shenfan means "deep-digging" -i.e., turning the soild twice; going deeper into the earth to extract its richest, most fertile soil. It is a perfect concept for William Hinton's book,
language: English
title: Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village
titlecomplete: Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village
genres: History, China, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 13
publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Limited