Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking: My Part in the Cultural Revolution

by Frances Wood

This is a quirky account of revolutionary China, written by Frances Wood, who went to Peking as a student for a year in 1975.

Genres: Nonfiction, China, History, Memoir, Politics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2000

About the author

From Wikipedia:

Frances Wood (Chinese: 吴芳思; pinyin: Wú Fāngsī; born 1948) is an English librarian, sinologue and historian known for her writings on Chinese history, including Marco Polo, life in the Chinese treaty ports, and the First Emperor of China.

Biography
Wood was born in London in 1948, and went to art school in Liverpool in 1967, before going to Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she studied Chinese. She went to China to study Chinese at Peking University in 1975–1976.[2]

in March 2001
Wood joined the staff of the British Library in London in 1977 as a junior curator, and later served as curator of Chinese collections until her retirement in 2013.[3][4] She is also a member of the steering committee of the International Dunhuang Project,[5] and the editor of the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society.[3] She was also a governor of Ashmount Primary School for 20 years, relinquishing this post on the completion of her current term of office in July 2014.

She has argued in her 1995 book, Did Marco Polo go to China?, that the book of Marco Polo (Il Milione) is not the account of a single person, but is a collection of travellers' tales. This book's claims about Polo's travels has been heavily criticized by Stephen G. Haw, David O. Morgan and Peter Jackson as lacking basic academic rigor.

Reviews

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about this in Slightly Foxed magazine/periodical about a year ago, and bought the SF limited edition, which is a charming harback with a linen cover and an integral bookmark. It 's a perfect handbag size, which is important to me, as I travel on foot or by bus and am always on the move, so don't want anything heavy or bulky. These limited editions are beautiful and I'll be buying more of them, particularly as they deal in autobiography or memoir for the most part.

The content is a description of the British author's one-year stay in Peking during the Cultural Revolution, in the mid 1970s. She went there, along with other 'foreigners' from Albania, North Korea, New Zealand, Canada, and other countries, to study Chinese, at which she was already beyond beginner stage, but found that the curriculum was mostly given over to revolutionary propaganda, and she was forced to write interminable essays on political matters, to which the 'correct' answer was already pre determined!' Outdoor schooling' was part of the curriculum, consisting of moving piles of rubble from one place to another, and hand grenade practice also took place, on Tuesdays, though the grenades were not live. Students were described as 'worker peasant soldier students', the political idea being that expertise was decadent, Capitalist, and elitist, and that learning from peasants was more profitable and revolutionary. During the Mao years, Academics had lost their posts, and the universities existed as propaganda machines. Chairman Mao had fallen out with the Soviet Union in 1961, so Soviet-style Communism was also frowned upon, though Marxism and Leninism formed part of the 'acceptable' teachings, as indeed did Stalinism.

Living conditions were basic (one hour of hot water in the dormitories a day, if you could get to the communal showers before the North Korean girls toook over en masse), and the novelty of being a foreigner, always pointed at, stared at, assumed to be Albanian even when you'd explained that you were British, became wearying, but Frances Wood never loses sight of her humour for long, and is mindful that the sufferings of the exiled academics and the thousands of peasants who starved to death under Mao's 'reforms' were far greater than those meted out to foreigners.

The writing is what makes this book stand out.I laughed out loud repeatedly, and the images of cycling through the sleepy city at siesta time, around ruined palaces, will stay with me for a long time, as will the revolutionary posters with their long-winded political rhetoric that students were expected to copy out in their break times to demonstrate their revolutionary zeal.

Having been just 12 when Mao died, and only having experienced Soviet Communism, there was much in this book that I did not understand, so it became a crash course in political history for me too. Based on the letters that the 27- year-old Wood wrote home at the time, it is not intended to be an overview of the Cultural Revolution's effect upon Academic life, but a personal snapshot of a year in a very different time and place.

I have given it four stars because the history and ideology were sometimes hard going. Nonetheless, I would not hesitate to recommend this to those who like travel writing or memoir with a difference.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lived in east Asia during the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, and I found Frances Wood’s memoir of her year in China to be a terribly evocative tale of a part of the world that no longer exists. Today we look to Asia as the trend-setter in so many fields, and forget that large parts of east Asia (especially China) were extremely backward places until relatively recently.

In describing her experiences in China at the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wood captures the feeling of living in a totalitarian state, with the absurd contortions of Maoist logic that were made to suit the facts to the Communist narrative of the way the Party thought things should be. Not only does she convey the feeling of being in China during this troubled time, she also manages to do so with a very keen sense of humor that had me laughing out loud at several points.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in what Asia was once like.

[coffeedog · Rating 5 out of 5]

*For me, this was a remarkable find, which is out of print and prohibitively expensive, if you can find a copy. But thanks to Archiv.org, I could borrow a digital copy. The British author describes her year at Beijing Foreign Languages Institute and Peking University (1975-6). I attended the Foreign Language Institute in the summer of 1979, so there were many similarities as well as interesting differences in her memoir.

[Canlit4ever · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appreciating that the book documents an interesting point in time in Chinese history from an unusual visitor's perspective, it is a jumpy read that moves through topics in a less than fluid manner. It is humorous in parts but almost always with a reserve that doesn't embrace the comedic or revel in the absurdity through a release of judgement. It reads a bit like a monologue that a generally disdainful acquaintance might give to accompany a slideshow of their year abroad.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brought me back to my time spent in China and all those years I spent studying its history. What an experience, to live in China during the Cultural Revolution. I don’t think I would’ve been brave enough. I especially appreciated the last chapter as the author describes returning to normal life and the effects of the CR that she’s seen and felt up to the present.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, it took me back to my time in China a few years later. Great memories of a time that has totally vanished. There were so many things I had forgotten. Frances Wood is an engaging writer. This book was a lovely entertaining trip down memory lane.

[GuizmoEnOz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and mischievous account of an "Erasmus" year during the disastrous Cultural Revolution. A sharp touch of humour which reinforces the absurdity of the system. Great read!

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frances Wood is accepted on a foreign student group to go to Peking for a year in 1975. Whilst for us this time is a fascinating period of change in China, being the tail-end of the Cultural Revolution, this is not what the book is about. It is recollections based on her letters home which through her experiences highlight being an outsider in a society and understanding only what she experiences. It is an incredible and personable toe in the water memoir of a young woman living a year completely outside her comfort zone on every level.