Battle Hymn of China by Agnes Smedley

Battle Hymn of China by Agnes Smedley is a truly astonishing book. It starts with her early life in the US and then living in Germany. As a young woman Agnes leaves the US on a steamer to Europe to try and help India's struggle for independence. She lives in Germany as the partner of an Indian radical and revolutionary and eventually leaves him and heads to China as a starting point of a trip to India, she never arrives in India but spends the next thirteen years living in China, from 1929 to 1941. She starts in Shanghai, moves to Sian (xian) where she lives with the communists for a time, and then spends a great deal of time on the battlefronts, following guerrilla armies and reporting and working as a nurse in the army camps. Even at over 500 pages it still feels like there's a lot she's not saying which reinforces my desire to read everything she's written.

What is amazing about this book is that it tells a very human tale of the civil war and the war in China. It's just astonishing how long the war lasts and how many cities and lives are ruined. In many ways Smedley's trip is a descent, she lives dangerously visiting the front, living with the army which seriously impacts her health. The other book I read which looked at her writings about women almost changed her perspective. She definitely challenged the sexist beliefs of those around her, and as a woman being able to travel with different armies alone in a foreign country was rather amazing. But she came across as more of an androgynous figure, one who had no time for love or romance when there was so much death and destruction around her.

In the end she had to leave China because she was dying and had to go to Hong Kong to recover, there she was forbidden to speak about her experiences, and was unable to return to China so went back to the US. There she found herself engulfed in a world of consumerism and unable to reconcile the life with the one she had lived with the communists and travelling with the armies.

The book was written as snippets and travels throughout her time in China. It included many detailed descriptions about the people she came across so that even though most of them died, you had an idea about their lives. I've read many books about this time period of China, but this was the one that took you closest to seeing the day to day of life during this time. I feel like any review of this book can't really do it justice. It was dark, gritty and harsh, it brought home the horrors of war but also the horrors of poverty and disease. It was also filled with humanity, the good and the bad. It told a side of the story not usually told, it reminded me a little of Channel 4s dispatches, though those reporters seem to only visit for a few weeks and Agnes Smedley stayed for years and years.

Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui

This might have been the wrong book to read simultaneously with Smedley's. After pages and pages of life and death struggle the rather spoilt life of a modern girl living in Shanghai seemed terribly superficial. There were just so many references to American culture in it, at one point when someone was described as having "eyes that lit up just like when Rose saw Jack in Titanic I actually began to wonder if the translator was taking liberties! But the odd reference to Gong Li and Faye Wong convinced me that it was just that way.

The book was supposed to be shocking because of its open/frequent descriptions of sex. I suppose it was novel in that it was written by a woman, but having read centuries old Chinese porn it really didn't surprise me and just seemed a bit irrelevant. The young woman writer was having an affair, but as her boyfriend was impotent this seemed hardly surprising.

The lifestyle of the young people seemed like it could have been in any city in the world, and I found it rather unattractive. I guess when I've read novels where young women go clubbing and have a lot of sex they are all on the punk or queer end of things, everything that Cocoa did in this book reminded me of how I imagine the women in Sex and the City behaving, (I've never seen it just seemed so terribly mainstream and dull). There was one club they went to where they celebrated 30s Shanghai and played Zhou Xuan and that sounded like a perfect night out but that was the only part I liked. I think the shallowness of the author detracts from the type of story that she's trying to tell. An honest glimpse into her world and thoughts. I know Ding (Ting) Ling did this exceptionally well in the 20s and these type of stories usually do grab me but this time it just all seemed to glitzy to be real. There didn't seem to be enough depth to the honesty.

As the novel goes on her boyfriend's depression deepens and he ends up becoming a drug addict and eventually ODs. Unfortunately he is rather a shadowy character, he rarely speaks or acts, he usually just appears in the narrators thoughts to create guilt or feelings of love. But there is nothing to make him stand out besides being the abandoned tortured artist stereotype. The fact that her boyfriend dies should have been more significant or tragic. I did enjoy the later part of the book more as the world started to crumble, but the narrator just seemed totally incapable about doing anything with the situation she was presented with. She just passively let everything happen.

I did find the self referential bits about the novel a bit annoying, towards the end it was "my novel is almost complete" and so on. Perhaps it was less annoying in the Chinese, its hard to say with translations. Its good to read more modern Chinese literature, I've not read much since the 60s or 70s and that I didn't enjoy very much. But I think I much prefer the older stuff. Still I may one day attempt to read a Chinese copy of the book, it would be good for all the sexual vocabulary if nothing else!

DISPLEASED!

Apparently the V&A didn't pay me this month!!! So glad I have another job! (and savings!)