@Jeff, I am from Taiwan, and I am Chinese. I most certainly know pretty much everything about the Cultural Revolution, though I lived across the Taiwan Strait when it all happened. The Chinese language is my first language, though in fact I speak more than just Mandarin Chinese and I will just count them three as one -- namely the Chinese Language. In addition, I speak four foreign languages -- all of major country's, at least from the standpoint of the Western regimes. Therefore, any documents and records in the Chinese language and in those four langauges rarely escpae my attention and awareness, be them in paper hardcopies, in the air, or on the Internet. I am convined that, over these many years, the Western regimes along with their pundits appear to have always clung onto only the tiny segment of period of time called Cultural Revolution, with a rather hedious and henous ulterior motive, when speaking of China and China's history and society and all. I have spent a lot time and energy researching into the mindset and mentality of the people from the Western regimes in that regard, and I have reached the conclusion laid out upfront here. You are among the lucky few that get to hear me telling that straight and blunt. I don't mind sharing with you what I experienced during the two plus years of Covid-19, whereupon one stays online for most of the time when awake because people do business and study online most of the time. And there are lots -- tons of lots -- of short periods of time everyday, when one is not engaged in work or study but still online. Thus it becomes almost a daily ritual that I would pick up those short periods of time to study (on my laptop and with hardcopy materials) the history from earlier periods in China's history -- mainly the periods when there was chaos and turmoils. (The timeframe spands back to particularly ca. 1000 BC and down to ca. 1000 AD. As to the timeframe beginning around 1000 AD down to today, every bit of the key events and figures is pretty much etched into my cerebrum, though I am a law major and a science major. Thus not much need to do the digging again.) At the end of these covid-19 holiday/vacation years, pretty much done with the review of earlier history, I became content to find out that as of now China as a whole nation (not the respective governments of the PRC on the mainland and the ROC that has shrunk to only Taiwan and associate islets) is on the right track of becoming unified and heading towards a glorious renaissance in every respect as a society and an independent sovereign state, also as a civilisation state. If I can give you only ONE advice, that advice is: DO NOT cling onto the Cultural Revolution that much should you truly wish to understand China and China's history -- be you a Ph.D. on that very subject or not, for by such clinging the Western regimes as a whole would never be able to figure out why the Western rgimes will get to see their own epitaph a lot sooner than they expected. I can tell you the Cultural Revolution is a mistake and the nation of China as well as the masses have LEARNED A GREAT DEAL.
I accept your advice. It is very wise. I saw some of this way of writing about the Cultural Revolution in Branigan Red Memory (see my review here ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html). I am keen to explore the broader perspective on Chinese history and culture, and would love your recommendations for a few histories of China that you admire and think would be a good starting point. Many thanks for sharing your wisdom here.
@@theburningarchive , Start with videos and wrtitten materials by a British gentleman Martin Jacques. He had a wife of Malaysian citizen and of Indian ethnicity who passed away some years ago. Martin Jacques is the first (that I came to notice) among the very, very, very few Western scholars that came close to understanding China as a nation and a civilisation state, as viewed from here. As a readily available and less toiling start, you might want to try to search his videos, speeches, and writing online first. In between you might come across some materials authored by him that one would like to acquire from publshers and so on. He does not speak or read much Chinese, but he had his son (borne to his Malaysian wife of Indian ethnicity) start learning Chinese in his early childhood (by now could be at his late teens or early twenties). I would assume Martin Jacques must have some research assistants of native speakers of the Chinese language who are NOT biased for or against China, as well as free of ULTERIOR MOTIVES, to help him out on multiple occasions in many respects. Otherwise he would have become one of those western "pundits" that would not invite my repsect or admiration from me. By the way, I have watched/read pretty much everything he has put out on the Internet. For these many years, I haven't found anything by him about China or anything Chinese inappropriate or disingenious, or worse yet straight out to denigrate and demonize China and anything Chinese with lies and fabrications (as so many regimes in the West and their pundits have been doing for the past several decades. I don't even want to mention their politicians.) Thanks a lot for your response. And wish you all the best. I shall keep your channel subscribed as a conduit, so that I could pass on to you some tips here and there should they come up and appear to be useful. BE GOOD. (As a sidebar: There is this channel "Inside China Business," by a US citizen who runs some trading company inside mainland China importing China made heavy equipment to the US. Nothing to do with China's history, but a rare one that looks at modern day mainland China from a rather neutral and realistic point of view. Just thought that his contents might be able to help you in some way as well. Hope you would like it.)
For the casual reader, to get a sense of turn of the century China, I highly recommend Lin Yutang, Chinese writer from China at the turn of the century writing about China at the turn of the century. You're getting an eye witness account as it were. He learnt English and writes both fluently and beautifully in English. His novels Moment in Peking and A Leaf in the Storm cover the fall of the Qing up to the Sino- Japanese war. If you want to know what has seared itself into Chinese cultural consciousness from a Chinese perspective, read those.
I think these would be essential to understanding the interaction between the populace and the leadership. I just finished my master's thesis, "Broken Tao: The Failure in Chinese Strategic Culture: The Destruction of the Chinese Social Contract".This centered on the strategic necessities but the individual families and worker stories would be base level to true understanding.
Yes. This theme is a large part of Red Memory. I did a review of it here ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html. That particular fracture line of course runs through Western and Chinese and many other societies.
Yes, fair reasons to be sceptical. I found Red Memory to be too much in the manner of the feature journalist myself ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html
@@theburningarchive She is a Guardian writer so must inevitably repeat and give expression to the globalist and/or far-left ideology in some way, and of course she does just that within the first 10 pages (Amazon deliver quickly in England) - equating the American civil war with the British empire. Epimanes evidently! But that is one line. Getting over that, the rest of the first ten pages is fundamental and profound. Catastrophic.
@Jeff, I am from Taiwan, and I am Chinese. I most certainly know pretty much everything about the Cultural Revolution, though I lived across the Taiwan Strait when it all happened. The Chinese language is my first language, though in fact I speak more than just Mandarin Chinese and I will just count them three as one -- namely the Chinese Language. In addition, I speak four foreign languages -- all of major country's, at least from the standpoint of the Western regimes. Therefore, any documents and records in the Chinese language and in those four langauges rarely escpae my attention and awareness, be them in paper hardcopies, in the air, or on the Internet.
I am convined that, over these many years, the Western regimes along with their pundits appear to have always clung onto only the tiny segment of period of time called Cultural Revolution, with a rather hedious and henous ulterior motive, when speaking of China and China's history and society and all. I have spent a lot time and energy researching into the mindset and mentality of the people from the Western regimes in that regard, and I have reached the conclusion laid out upfront here. You are among the lucky few that get to hear me telling that straight and blunt.
I don't mind sharing with you what I experienced during the two plus years of Covid-19, whereupon one stays online for most of the time when awake because people do business and study online most of the time. And there are lots -- tons of lots -- of short periods of time everyday, when one is not engaged in work or study but still online. Thus it becomes almost a daily ritual that I would pick up those short periods of time to study (on my laptop and with hardcopy materials) the history from earlier periods in China's history -- mainly the periods when there was chaos and turmoils. (The timeframe spands back to particularly ca. 1000 BC and down to ca. 1000 AD. As to the timeframe beginning around 1000 AD down to today, every bit of the key events and figures is pretty much etched into my cerebrum, though I am a law major and a science major. Thus not much need to do the digging again.)
At the end of these covid-19 holiday/vacation years, pretty much done with the review of earlier history, I became content to find out that as of now China as a whole nation (not the respective governments of the PRC on the mainland and the ROC that has shrunk to only Taiwan and associate islets) is on the right track of becoming unified and heading towards a glorious renaissance in every respect as a society and an independent sovereign state, also as a civilisation state.
If I can give you only ONE advice, that advice is: DO NOT cling onto the Cultural Revolution that much should you truly wish to understand China and China's history -- be you a Ph.D. on that very subject or not, for by such clinging the Western regimes as a whole would never be able to figure out why the Western rgimes will get to see their own epitaph a lot sooner than they expected. I can tell you the Cultural Revolution is a mistake and the nation of China as well as the masses have LEARNED A GREAT DEAL.
I accept your advice. It is very wise. I saw some of this way of writing about the Cultural Revolution in Branigan Red Memory (see my review here ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html). I am keen to explore the broader perspective on Chinese history and culture, and would love your recommendations for a few histories of China that you admire and think would be a good starting point. Many thanks for sharing your wisdom here.
@@theburningarchive , Start with videos and wrtitten materials by a British gentleman Martin Jacques. He had a wife of Malaysian citizen and of Indian ethnicity who passed away some years ago. Martin Jacques is the first (that I came to notice) among the very, very, very few Western scholars that came close to understanding China as a nation and a civilisation state, as viewed from here.
As a readily available and less toiling start, you might want to try to search his videos, speeches, and writing online first. In between you might come across some materials authored by him that one would like to acquire from publshers and so on. He does not speak or read much Chinese, but he had his son (borne to his Malaysian wife of Indian ethnicity) start learning Chinese in his early childhood (by now could be at his late teens or early twenties). I would assume Martin Jacques must have some research assistants of native speakers of the Chinese language who are NOT biased for or against China, as well as free of ULTERIOR MOTIVES, to help him out on multiple occasions in many respects. Otherwise he would have become one of those western "pundits" that would not invite my repsect or admiration from me.
By the way, I have watched/read pretty much everything he has put out on the Internet. For these many years, I haven't found anything by him about China or anything Chinese inappropriate or disingenious, or worse yet straight out to denigrate and demonize China and anything Chinese with lies and fabrications (as so many regimes in the West and their pundits have been doing for the past several decades. I don't even want to mention their politicians.)
Thanks a lot for your response. And wish you all the best. I shall keep your channel subscribed as a conduit, so that I could pass on to you some tips here and there should they come up and appear to be useful. BE GOOD.
(As a sidebar: There is this channel "Inside China Business," by a US citizen who runs some trading company inside mainland China importing China made heavy equipment to the US. Nothing to do with China's history, but a rare one that looks at modern day mainland China from a rather neutral and realistic point of view. Just thought that his contents might be able to help you in some way as well. Hope you would like it.)
For the casual reader, to get a sense of turn of the century China, I highly recommend Lin Yutang, Chinese writer from China at the turn of the century writing about China at the turn of the century. You're getting an eye witness account as it were. He learnt English and writes both fluently and beautifully in English. His novels Moment in Peking and A Leaf in the Storm cover the fall of the Qing up to the Sino- Japanese war. If you want to know what has seared itself into Chinese cultural consciousness from a Chinese perspective, read those.
Brilliant suggestion, thank you
I think these would be essential to understanding the interaction between the populace and the leadership. I just finished my master's thesis, "Broken Tao: The Failure in Chinese Strategic Culture: The Destruction of the Chinese Social Contract".This centered on the strategic necessities but the individual families and worker stories would be base level to true understanding.
Yes. This theme is a large part of Red Memory. I did a review of it here ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html. That particular fracture line of course runs through Western and Chinese and many other societies.
❤❤❤❤
If you want to discuss modern China or Chinese history with someone knowledgeable, I would recommend Carl Zha. He has a YT channel as well.
thanks. Yes I watch his channel and interviews sometimes.
I have the Harvard History of Imperial China and yet to finish one volume.....😂😂😂😂😂
Great tip. The Editor of that is Timothy Brook who wrote Great State China and the world - which is very accessible and engaging and worth reading
Not sure I could buy anything written by a journalist. If anyone has an agenda, they have.
Yes, fair reasons to be sceptical. I found Red Memory to be too much in the manner of the feature journalist myself ua-cam.com/video/gNzRD717oTM/v-deo.html
@@theburningarchive She is a Guardian writer so must inevitably repeat and give expression to the globalist and/or far-left ideology in some way, and of course she does just that within the first 10 pages (Amazon deliver quickly in England) - equating the American civil war with the British empire. Epimanes evidently! But that is one line. Getting over that, the rest of the first ten pages is fundamental and profound. Catastrophic.