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大英博物馆很好！我今天想再去大英博物馆我想看“Mesopotamia, Early man, the Englightenment and Asia"。我也想买中文"guidebook"所以我知道写中文。昨天我只看"Greece and Rome" 和中国山水画。我喜欢山水画！我去一家书店．我买了四本书因为书不太贵了．昨天很好我很高兴!
I decided it was time for an easy and fun book so I read one of the nice little books I picked up before leaving Seattle published by China's Foreign Language Press. The book, well it was just a 120 pages so it almost wasn't a book, is called The Yi Ho Tuan Movement of 1900 usually translated as the Boxer rebellion. It was written by a committee shortly after the end of the cultural revolution and thus almost said more about Communism than it did about the Boxers.
It's always interesting to read another perspective. Books written for an English audience on the Boxers almost always focus entirely on the siege of the legations in Peking. This only got the briefest of mentions in this book, rather they focused on the terrible sackings and looting done by the foreigners and the terrible indemnities and consequences of the rebellion. It was interesting to read as at the time the Boxers were strongly favored as anti-imperialist revolutionaries and so the focus stayed on that side and ignored the spiritual side altogether, as that would seem superstitious, they also downplayed any links with the Ching government, and any killing of civilians, the targets were shifted to "deserving imperial missionaries" as opposed to Chinese Christians.
Still very interesting, I have a book on the Opium War from the same series which I am looking forward to reading. It's good to take a look at other interpretations, to see another side and emphasis.
It's always interesting to read another perspective. Books written for an English audience on the Boxers almost always focus entirely on the siege of the legations in Peking. This only got the briefest of mentions in this book, rather they focused on the terrible sackings and looting done by the foreigners and the terrible indemnities and consequences of the rebellion. It was interesting to read as at the time the Boxers were strongly favored as anti-imperialist revolutionaries and so the focus stayed on that side and ignored the spiritual side altogether, as that would seem superstitious, they also downplayed any links with the Ching government, and any killing of civilians, the targets were shifted to "deserving imperial missionaries" as opposed to Chinese Christians.
Still very interesting, I have a book on the Opium War from the same series which I am looking forward to reading. It's good to take a look at other interpretations, to see another side and emphasis.
At the bookstore across from the British Museum yesterday I found several lovely cheap books, they were having a 50 percent off sale. I picked up a 1917 pamphlet "Ch'iu Chin: A Chinese Heroine" by Lionel Giles MA D.Litt. It was falling apart and stained but lovely. It was written in very nice old fashioned writing from a paper read before the China Society and in it's way was as biased as the Communist pamphlet.
But it was a very favorable look about her life, and interesting as it was only written ten years after her death. It held her as an ideal woman revolutionary, it ignored the seedier side, lightly passing over her bomb building home, her associations with gangsters and criminals were described as "Secret societies". Instead it focused on her education, literacy and strong belief in women's equality. It had several translations of her poems and writings which were very interesting to read. And also a note from her "most intimate friend" on her death, that even though it had been translated with thees was still moving.
One of the most interesting things about the book though was the comments at the end. Instead of all the actual revolutionary work Ch'iu did they seemed to focus mostly on her belief against foot binding, perhaps this seemed to them to be the only meaningfull way a Chinese woman would struggle for equality. Because it made it a Chinese problem and made their own gender inequality look better. The worst comment made was actually by a woman who said,
Still it was a great find, a lovely telling of a very interesting woman, even if told in a very proper way. Still hints of her true nature seemed to come through as in the description from her tomb which referred to her "delight in wine and her fondness for sword play". My Chinese children's history book also has a page about her life and I can't wait to read that and see what the differences are. Which means I should probably spend at least part of the day today studying Chinese.
But it was a very favorable look about her life, and interesting as it was only written ten years after her death. It held her as an ideal woman revolutionary, it ignored the seedier side, lightly passing over her bomb building home, her associations with gangsters and criminals were described as "Secret societies". Instead it focused on her education, literacy and strong belief in women's equality. It had several translations of her poems and writings which were very interesting to read. And also a note from her "most intimate friend" on her death, that even though it had been translated with thees was still moving.
One of the most interesting things about the book though was the comments at the end. Instead of all the actual revolutionary work Ch'iu did they seemed to focus mostly on her belief against foot binding, perhaps this seemed to them to be the only meaningfull way a Chinese woman would struggle for equality. Because it made it a Chinese problem and made their own gender inequality look better. The worst comment made was actually by a woman who said,
As the binding of women's feet prevented their getting about, it necessarily affected their intellectual capacity; therefore the narrowing of women's intelligence in China was not a recent growth, but at least a thousand years old.Which almost seems so offensive as to be laughable, they were after all binding feet, not brains! And totally disregards the abilities and achievements of the woman they had just been praising who had been a victim of the past 1000 years. It was also interesting to note that several people making comments had no idea how long foot binding had been popular in China, or any of the reasons behind it.
Still it was a great find, a lovely telling of a very interesting woman, even if told in a very proper way. Still hints of her true nature seemed to come through as in the description from her tomb which referred to her "delight in wine and her fondness for sword play". My Chinese children's history book also has a page about her life and I can't wait to read that and see what the differences are. Which means I should probably spend at least part of the day today studying Chinese.
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