Time for Telling Truth is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu - Hardcover

Schwarcz, Vera

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300050097 ISBN 13: 9780300050097

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1992

Synopsis

"Over the five years that we talked [octogenarian Zhang Shenfu] became the underbelly of China's history for me. . . . Zhang was like a broken mirror through which I glimpsed the fragmented reality of China in revolution."―Vera Schwarcz Zhang Shenfu, a founder of the Chinese Communist party, participated in all the major political events in China for four decades following the Revolution of 1919. Yet Zhang had become a forgotten figure in China and the West―a victim of Mao's determined efforts to place himself at the center of China's revolution―until Vera Schwarcz began to meet with him in his home on Wang Fu Cang Lane in Beijing. Now Schwarcz brings Zhang to life through her poignant account of five years of conversations with him, a narrative that is interwoven with translations of his writings and testimony of his friends.  Moving circuitously, Schwarcz reveals fragments of the often contradictory layers of Zhang's character: at once a champion of feminism and an ardent womanizer, a follower of the Bertrand Russell who also admired Confucius, and a philosophically inclined political pragmatist. Schwarcz also meditates on the tension between historical events and personal memory, on the public amnesia enforced by governments and the "forgetfulness" of those who find remembrance too painful. Her book is not only a portrait of a remarkable personality but a corrective to received accounts and to the silences that abound in the official annals of the Chinese revolution.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Zhang Shenfu, a founder of the Chinese Communist party, participated in all the major political events in China for four decades following the Revolution of 1919. Yet Zhang had become a forgotten figure in China and the West--a victim of Mao's determined efforts to place himself at the center of China's revolution--until Vera Schwarcz began to meet with him in his home on Wang Fu Cang Lane in Beijing. Now Schwarcz brings Zhang to life through her poignant account of five years of conversations with him, a narrative that is interwoven with translations of his writings and testimony of his friends. Moving circuitously, Schwarcz reveals fragments of the often contradictory layers of Zhang's character: at once a champion of feminism and an ardent womanizer, a follower of Bertrand Russell who also admired Confucius, and a philosophically inclined political pragmatist. Schwarcz also meditates on the tension between historical events and personal memory, on the public amnesia enforced by governments and the "forgetfulness" of those who find rememberance too painful. Her book is not only a portrait of a remarkable personality but a corrective to received accounts and to the silences that abound in the official annals of the Chinese revolution.

Reviews

An unconventional biography of one of the last surviving founders of the Chinese communist party and the man who introduced Zhou Enlai into the movement, this is essentially a record of conversations from 1979 to 1984 between an American history professor at Wesleyan and Zhang Shenfu (1893-1989), self-styled revolutionary philosopher, conducted at his home in Beijing. Zhang's rambling, impish discourse (augmented in the book by quotations from his writings and comments by family and friends) covers much material: his friendship with his guru Bertrand Russell; his temperamental inability to toe the party line (Zhang was expelled for violating party discipline); his relationships with Liu Qingyang, the first woman invited into the Chinese communist party (and thrice-married Zhang's great love), and with Zhou Enlai, who was unable to protect him during the Cultural Revolution. Zhang also has interesting things to say about sex, freedom and socialism. The book is particularly valuable as a record of the periodic anti-intellectual reigns of terror in China and how one politically active academician reacted to them. Photos.

Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0300050097
• ISBN 13: 9780300050097
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256