Three months in Mao's China
Subtitle: between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution
By: Erik Zürcher ; edited by Erik-Jan Zürcher and Kim van der Zouw
Contributors: Zouw, Kim van der, editor; Zürcher, Erik Jan, editor
Series: Asian History; Asian history
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 144
ISBN-13: 9789462981812
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Travel; Biography; Description and travel; Diaries; Sinologists
Other titles: 3 months in Mao's China
Work titles: Het verre Oosten. Oog in oog met het China van Mao
Description: In the fall of 1964, sinologist Erik Zürcher travelled to China for the first time, a country he had been studying since 1947. A collection of Zürcher's personal writings from his trip, including letters and diary entries, this book offers not only new insights about the great scholar, but also a rich picture of communist China, which was in those days still almost completely inaccessible to Westerners. During a tumultuous time in world politics, as Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, Lyndon Johnson won the US presidential election against Barry Goldwater, and China became a nuclear power, Zürcher experienced the reality of China under Mao Zedong. Only recently discovered, these documents portray, viewed through an expert's eye, a land in the midst of its own massive political, social, and economic change. Both a fascinating account by an informed outsider and a reminder of just how much China and the rest of the world have changed over the last fifty years, this is essential reading for anyone interested in East Asia and Asian history as a whole.