What do you think?
Rate this book
Shenfan
During 1948, the most turbulent year of the Chinese Civil War, William Hinton lived in the small Chinese village of Long Bow, 400 miles southwest of Peking. He documented that dramatic time in Fanshen, which has become a classic. In 1971 and the following years he returned many times to Long Bow to live with the peasants and see if the dreams of the revolution had been realized. Out of those extended visits has come Shenfan.
- GenresChinaHistoryNonfiction
789 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
8 people are currently reading
235 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 28, 2017
I was reminded of this book recently and I know the new printing is not the correct cover, but I certainly don't have my original copy. This was very popular among the set of Westerners I knew in Hong Kong at the time (early 1970s,) when China was largely closed to the west. I'm sure it shaped my attitude toward the social and political fabric of China, although we didn't know much about what was occurring as far as the cultural revolution in progress then. I'd need to have a look at the book again to make a stronger statement, but I think this was all a bit too idealistic. It was revealing, perhaps in even some fundamental ways. China is just too vast and varied for it to be definitive.
March 9, 2023
This book, along with the book Fanshen that preceded it, is a wonderful account of some 40 or so years of life during the revolution in a village in northern China. Being written by a sympathetic outsider, who spent considerable time living in and learning about the village in question ("Long Bow"), it is well suited I think to someone (like me) who knew little about the detail of the history in question. Although Hinton was obviously sympathetic to the revolution, and broadly to the Mao camp within its leadership, he is no propagandist or cheerleader: much thoughtful criticism and many unpleasant events are included in the account.
A few highlights for me.
Fanshen began with a quick sketch of life in pre-revolutionary rural China, a place where few had any education, disease and starvation were rife, and a relatively small elite of parochial rural gentry ran towns so as to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. As much as later parts of the tale outline great problems and sometimes considerable suffering, it pales into comparison with what went before.
After the revolution, women were able to use their own name instead of simply being called so-and-so's wife. They could divorce, probably a much greater liberatory rule. Peasants who had barely any land and struggled to feed themselves before the revolution gained in most cases enough to get by or even to prosper. When the "wealth" of rich peasants and landlords was redistributed to poor peasants, many were very happy to receive such simple items as a quilt or even a good bowl.
The more famous (or infamous) incidents of the post-war history, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are examined in some detail, as are various "rectification" movements within the party, ostensibly aimed at combating local corruption and political errors. Perhaps most usefully, Hinton gives an account of the Great Leap which is complex and nuanced, showing both positive and negative tendencies within it. The Cultural Revolution is shown in far less sympathetic light. Whatever the intentions or rhetoric that launched it, it rapidly deteriorated into a battle of rival factions for power - factions with little basis for their existence, it seems, other than being opposed to the other faction.
Many in "the west" would have heard mostly of the injustices visited on urban intellectuals and students during the Cultural Revolution, exiled to the countryside to live with the peasants - in many cases in brutal circumstances with rape, slave labour, beatings and so on. Bad as this was, it features as only a sentence or two in a long account of goings on in the rural village and its surrounding county during this period. And those goings on were terrifying, including violent street fights, bashings, and escalating to armed conflict with rifles, grenades and artillery in the nearest city, before the military stepped in to enforce peace (and for one faction, defeat).
The role of violence in politics is an interesting thread running through the two books. In the early days of the revolution, several of the most unpopular landlords and rich peasants were hauled up before an angry mob and beaten to death. Not only did some of these murders turn out to be on mistaken grounds, the Communist Party which soon assumed political leadership in the village condemned beatings (let alone murder) as a political tool and seems to have brought in a much more civilised era. Later, we hear (without any particular commentary) of how cadres were hauled before commissions for interrogation for days, overnight, held in custody, and at times beaten during various bureaucratic "rectification" movements. And finally the violent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, where many cadres were beaten to a pulp (sometimes to death) for factional reasons (and shot, of course, in the fighting that ensued).
Even from the early stages of the revolution, central party bureaucracy and inexperienced local leaders both caused all manner of problems, sometimes these were overcome or left behind, but the two books recount the consolidation of an entrenched state bureaucracy, which he compares to the old imperial bureaucracy. The campaigns of "rectification", culminating in the Cultural Revolution, are experienced by local cadres as harassment, intimidation and increasingly terror inflicted by the middle and higher bureaucracy - who are interpreted as using these methods to deflect attempts by Mao to mobilise the population against the bureaucrats via the same campaigns.
And yet throughout, the commitment of the peasants to some idea of socialism and progress inspired by their liberation in 1948 is shown to survive and to drive great feats of development and improvement that ended food insecurity in the most, and brought healthcare, education, culture and more to previously backwards, downtrodden rural dwellers. As the second book progresses, more and more we hear about county, state and national politics and events, as the villagers' intellectual horizons and political organisation grew in kind.
Hinton is scathing of Mao's faults, despite his strong criticism of the Liu Shaoqi/Deng Xiaoping faction that eventually won out. Whatever one thinks of Hinton's judgement in these matters, the two books make for riveting reading, well written and full of oral history that is probably not easily accessed anywhere else for those of us who don't read Mandarin.
A few highlights for me.
Fanshen began with a quick sketch of life in pre-revolutionary rural China, a place where few had any education, disease and starvation were rife, and a relatively small elite of parochial rural gentry ran towns so as to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. As much as later parts of the tale outline great problems and sometimes considerable suffering, it pales into comparison with what went before.
After the revolution, women were able to use their own name instead of simply being called so-and-so's wife. They could divorce, probably a much greater liberatory rule. Peasants who had barely any land and struggled to feed themselves before the revolution gained in most cases enough to get by or even to prosper. When the "wealth" of rich peasants and landlords was redistributed to poor peasants, many were very happy to receive such simple items as a quilt or even a good bowl.
The more famous (or infamous) incidents of the post-war history, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are examined in some detail, as are various "rectification" movements within the party, ostensibly aimed at combating local corruption and political errors. Perhaps most usefully, Hinton gives an account of the Great Leap which is complex and nuanced, showing both positive and negative tendencies within it. The Cultural Revolution is shown in far less sympathetic light. Whatever the intentions or rhetoric that launched it, it rapidly deteriorated into a battle of rival factions for power - factions with little basis for their existence, it seems, other than being opposed to the other faction.
Many in "the west" would have heard mostly of the injustices visited on urban intellectuals and students during the Cultural Revolution, exiled to the countryside to live with the peasants - in many cases in brutal circumstances with rape, slave labour, beatings and so on. Bad as this was, it features as only a sentence or two in a long account of goings on in the rural village and its surrounding county during this period. And those goings on were terrifying, including violent street fights, bashings, and escalating to armed conflict with rifles, grenades and artillery in the nearest city, before the military stepped in to enforce peace (and for one faction, defeat).
The role of violence in politics is an interesting thread running through the two books. In the early days of the revolution, several of the most unpopular landlords and rich peasants were hauled up before an angry mob and beaten to death. Not only did some of these murders turn out to be on mistaken grounds, the Communist Party which soon assumed political leadership in the village condemned beatings (let alone murder) as a political tool and seems to have brought in a much more civilised era. Later, we hear (without any particular commentary) of how cadres were hauled before commissions for interrogation for days, overnight, held in custody, and at times beaten during various bureaucratic "rectification" movements. And finally the violent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, where many cadres were beaten to a pulp (sometimes to death) for factional reasons (and shot, of course, in the fighting that ensued).
Even from the early stages of the revolution, central party bureaucracy and inexperienced local leaders both caused all manner of problems, sometimes these were overcome or left behind, but the two books recount the consolidation of an entrenched state bureaucracy, which he compares to the old imperial bureaucracy. The campaigns of "rectification", culminating in the Cultural Revolution, are experienced by local cadres as harassment, intimidation and increasingly terror inflicted by the middle and higher bureaucracy - who are interpreted as using these methods to deflect attempts by Mao to mobilise the population against the bureaucrats via the same campaigns.
And yet throughout, the commitment of the peasants to some idea of socialism and progress inspired by their liberation in 1948 is shown to survive and to drive great feats of development and improvement that ended food insecurity in the most, and brought healthcare, education, culture and more to previously backwards, downtrodden rural dwellers. As the second book progresses, more and more we hear about county, state and national politics and events, as the villagers' intellectual horizons and political organisation grew in kind.
Hinton is scathing of Mao's faults, despite his strong criticism of the Liu Shaoqi/Deng Xiaoping faction that eventually won out. Whatever one thinks of Hinton's judgement in these matters, the two books make for riveting reading, well written and full of oral history that is probably not easily accessed anywhere else for those of us who don't read Mandarin.
March 22, 2024
I laughed, I cried, but most importantly I couldn’t remember 50% of the characters
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews