Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China

by David Kidd, John Lanchester (Preface)

David Kidd lived in the city of Peking from 1946 to 1950, and in 1949, when the communists had just come to power, he married the daughter of an aristocratic and wealthy Chinese family and spent the rest of his days in the city living in his wife’s family mansion. There he witnessed the disappearance of Ancient China: the revolution quickly suppressed ancient traditions and old forms of life. This book contains his memories from those years: the intimate portrait of an elegant and refined world, of ancient customs, a memorable and moving portrait because the world it describes would be ruthlessly destroyed.

 

David Kidd vivió desde 1946 a 1950 en la ciudad de Pekín, y en 1949, cuando los comunistas acababan de llegar al poder, se casó con la hija de una aristocrática y acaudalada familia china y pasó el tiempo que le restaba en la ciudad instalado en la mansión familiar de su esposa. Allí se convertiría en testigo de la desaparición de la China milenaria: la revolución iba a suprimir rápidamente las antiguas tradiciones y las viejas formas de vida. Este libro contiene sus memorias de aquellos años: el retrato íntimo de un mundo elegante y refinado, de viejas costumbres milenarias, un retrato memorable y conmovedor porque el mundo que se describe iba a ser implacablemente destruido.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Asia, Biography, Travel

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: Dear David Bowie fans, yes indeed, this book was retitled Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China. So if you're having trouble finding it, try looking for the other title.

I loved this book! It's the true story of a very young American man living in China who marries into an aristocratic Chinese family shortly after the Maoist revolution. For generations the Yu family has been living a life of elegance and splendor in their mansion which is crammed with antiques and gardens. But the writing is on the wall that their customs, their money, and their ancestral home are all coming to the end. As an outsider/insider, David Kidd poignantly shows the end of a very long era. There were many funny and sad incidents, each so strange they could never have been imagined.

I'll give you one highlight from the book that takes place in the very beginning and is not very spoiler-y: David and his bride Aimee were eager to marry immediately, because her father was dying and after his death mourning custom would make them wait for a year. But the American consulate recognized neither Chinese civil marriages nor marriage ceremonies of any religion other than Christianity. However no Christian church in China was willing to sanction an interracial wedding. Not to mention that the bride's family only wanted a Chinese wedding. Luckily, the janitor at the consulate had a brother who was a Chinese Christian minister. Not only that, the minister could even say one sentence in English ("I am Reverend Joseph Feng.") Saved! One of David's friends who was present at their wedding was William Empson, the English poet and critic.

One thing that I really liked about this book was that it was NOT racist, which is what I would have expected from a 1960 white man's memoir about 1940's China. I got a faint sense that David Kidd thought he was better than everyone else, but there are many possible reasons for that. To the extent that the story was about him and not what he observed going on around him, it was actually the story of an arrogant person who is humbled and changed. The edition I read had a preface by John Lanchester, which I thought was very appropriate because David Kidd reminded me of the protagonist of Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure--cultured, wry, more interested in beauty than a typical person is--not unhinged or murderous, though.

Since I first heard about this memoir through David Bowie's top 100 books list, I have to mention the most Bowie-esque part. At a party, one guest was "attired as a Mongolian princess, complete with oiled black hair encrusted with coral and turquoise, an arranged over a frame of what looked like horns." An English guest exclaims over the costume, and David Kidd informs him that it's no costume, she really is a Mongolian princess. Intrigued, the English guest asks the princess for a dance. "I hadn't the heart to tell him that the Mongolian princess was really a Mongolian prince."

*

Dear David Bowie fans, I think this book is included in or is the same as Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China, which is much easier to find. I'll let you know if I find out for sure.

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. A series of Peking stories, tributaries forming into a grand narrative of the last days of imperial Peking. David Kidd wanted to get the fuck out of the U.S.A. so he went to China in 1946, teaching at Tsinghua University, among other places, staying until 1950. His circle included brilliant expats William* and Hetta Empson, as well as Bob Winter.

There he is, a good little aesthete in his box at the Chinese opera, minding his business, cracking watermelon seeds, waiting for the appearance of Hsiao Ts'ui-hua, the great "impersonator of coquettish girls." Suddenly, the adjacent seats are spread with silk and the lithesome and lovely Aimee Yu appears, wearing "a tight, high-collared, white silk dress, slit to the thighs" accentuated by a ivory fan and jade ring. She proceeds to subject him to one of the greatest pick-up lines in any book, anywhere:

The tea here is too poor. I have asked him to prepare for you the tea I brought from home.

Kidd goes on to marry Aimee, the daughter of a former Chinese Supreme Court Chief Justice, and his fixation on her clothing is emblematic of his point of view. Despite anecdotally revealing much about the workings of the nascent PRC, his weltanschauung is primarily one of aesthetics. Indeed, his marriage was fortuitous--he could not have done better than to marry into this grand old family of dissipating aristos. The material objects--incense burners, scrolls, funerial accoutrements--are as lovingly rendered as the family members themselves, their tics and eccentricities, their words dripping with superstition and poetry...

There are so many great stories in this book, my review could never do it justice. Suffice to say, Kidd & wife leave the young PRC and return to America, where McCarthyite sentiment proves nearly as hostile to his livelihood as the Chinese commissars. What a life.

*the volume of Haffenden's Empson bio, William Empson Volume I Among the Mandarins covering Empson's China sojorn doesn't mention Kidd, and I'm curious how close they actually were.

[Nicole~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving family story handled with Kidd gloves

Arriving in China in 1946 as a student, David Kidd witnessed Peking in its grandest splendor: "a great walled and moated medieval city" through which pulsated a life in what was considered "the world's largest empire." Within its walls lay the Forbidden City, the center from which "imperial power reached out to all of China, and from there, the world."

He hobnobbed with other expatriate elite, and married Aimée Yu, the daughter of a high ranking supreme court justice, and member of one of the richest and oldest aristocratic families; it was just about the time of the Communist take-over of Peking.

Through several vignettes in Peking Story, Kidd reminisced of his Chinese family -by-marriage: a proud, privileged family living a lavish lifestyle; of centuries-old traditions and a culture steeped in ancient spirituality and beliefs- which all collapsed, destroyed under the Communist regime.

Kidd recalled his friends, acquaintances and Chinese family with strong particularity and a bit of humor. From the disheveled Reverend Feng, who performed his wedding ceremony in unintelligible chants; his once trusted cook turned street beggar, Lao Pei, who sued him in court; his costumed -party guest who was a Mongolian prince dressed as a Mongolian Princess; to Aunt Chin who could trace her Manchu roots to an empress of China: "an authority on the history and lore of Peking , and an inexhaustible well of information- true, false and absurd- about the city."

Aunt Chin often spoke cryptically, alluding to some old Chinese saying or myth, but she was truly a wise person. As they saw their friends and neighbors degraded by the reform of the 'New China' , as the only life they had known crumbled and blew away like dust, as the Yu family had to relocate from the home that had been theirs for four centuries, as Aunt Chin faced being homeless but would eventually find shelter in a temple, she would postulate:

Houses and people and tables and chairs move and change of themselves, following destinies that cannot be altered. When things change into other things or lose themselves or destroy themselves, there is nothing we can do but let them go.

The final portion of this memoir, when Kidd returned to Peking in 1981, was so poignant. Not only was Peking unrecognizable, but the living conditions of the 'New China' where the remnants remaining Yu family lived, was depressing: it just showed how disastrous Mao's Cultural Revolution turned out to be.

Kidd kept the tone of Peking Story light, not expounding on the horrifying scope of Communism in China, but illuminated the inevitable changes, not only in the culture, but the life of the Yu's. His account of his years in Peking, living with his wife in the Yu mansion, was slightly satirical and generously vivid. His attention to detail evoked melancholy at such deeply felt and personal losses brought on by the winds of change of Communism ; losses not just of the beauty and opulence of an ancient city, but of the treasured life by which one particular family thrived for centuries, who knew of nothing else, and never would come close to such a thing again.

This was a wonderful memoir of an enchanted life. It may seem superficial to some but it proved that, whether privileged or poor, change and destiny can't be escaped.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would make a fantastic movie. And Kidd has done much of the work for a potential screenwriter with his very scenic, cinematic, suggestive prose. His narration makes me think of all the critical phrases that cluster around Howard Hawks--spareness, economy of shots, artistry of severe formalism, all that. I was hooked from the first scene, in which Kidd meets his future wife at the opera, because it is such a calm, serenely paced arrangement of striking images. But even if Kidd wasn't such an accomplished stylist this book would have been worth the reprinting: it's one of those ringside views of revolution (Kidd was an American student who married, in 1948, the daughter of a old aristocratic family of "unimaginable grandeur") that register, with a comic anecdotal attention, changes in social texture and bureaucratic practice. Particularly memorable is the chapter in which the Communists outlaw prostituion, and one of Kidd's sisters-in-law, a middle-aged spinster/virginal recluse who, because she has a sinecure at the Ministry of Justice, is selected to become the housemother of a recently shuttered brothel, with responsibility for the political reeducation of the prostitutes. It's just one of Kidd's many comic and melancholy stories.

[Andrew]

A rather interesting account of life in tough times, but at the same time a difficult nut to swallow. I guarantee that if I was in Kidd's shoes, I would have been horrified to see the gorgeous, ancient city around me destroyed and vulgarized. And yet at the same time, it's also the disingenuous voice of a privileged individual-- when you start to complain about lazy servants and are that blind to the position you occupied in a feudal society, I frankly start to not like you very much, even as much as I liked you when you were mourning the loss of ancient pine trees. There are some wonderful passages, but at the end of the book, I felt like I was mostly hearing David Kidd wandering about in his fairyland view of what Old China was, laced with his complete contempt for the poor. Whether you want stories of life in the ancien régime, or whether you want to read about the brutalities of life under Maoism, there are far better texts out there.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief but exceptionally moving portrait of Beijing in the early 1950s and beyond. The final chapter unexpectedly tore my heart out.

[8Eight8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐
Lo he disfrutado mucho, y dado que los libros serán ya por siempre el único modo de aproximarme a China y su cultura tras mi primer y último viaje a China en 2017, me produce placer confirmar que los libros son el modo más económico, seguro y accesible de viajar.

[Homer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating memoire of life in Beijing in 1948-50 told from the viewpoint of an American who marries into a wealthy and important old family. The emphasis is more on the customs and lifestyle of this particular stratum of Chinese society but there are also accounts of the inevitable clashes with the emerging new People's Government and its cadres. My feelings were somewhat divided. On the one hand, what was lost and destroyed of centuries-old traditions and objects is heart-rending. On the other, the very opulence and privilege of the pre-revolutionary rich doesn't leave one wondering for long why the revolution happened. Well worth reading, whichever your viewpoint.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really torn between 2 stars and 3 stars for this book, and finally settled on 3 because Kidd has a really interesting - albeit it maybe questionable - point of view. He is sort of a snob, and the entire book is kind of look at what happens when snobbery and entitlement run up against revolutionary fervor. No one comes out of this looking washed clean, except perhaps the delightful old bridge playing aunt and her mute companion; I wish the entire book had been about them. Kidd's return to China in the eighties, before the book was republished and updated, was simply depressing. That depressing ending is perhaps part and parcel of the larger issue of questionable point of view. All Communists are bad, all the old ways are good; the Communists destroyed everything good about China. That simply can't be true, unless perhaps you are writing this under the balefully watchful eye of the McCarthyists and have been almost blacklisted after living in Communist China of your own freewill for four years. Then maybe this book makes more sense. One other note of interest - Mr. Kidd was gay, and from hints in other things I read about him, was gay even during his time in China (and marriage to Aimee Yu). That also would have made a far more interesting story.

[tiddle · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a very personal account, on a very personal level, the journal of a foreigner in the early days of China. Here is a guy who married into a rich Chinese family. While I don't feel for communism, the overt reference of class and the complete lack of a larger context of the Chinese political environment at the time almost beg readers to wonder if this expat really understand why the communists had succeeded in appealing to the mass (particularly the rural poor) in the early days of the New China. For all the despise he has of the ignorant red guards and soldiers who trampled on the Yu Mansion, has this expat ever wondered how his father-in-law (being a government official as the chief justice) was ever able to amass such immense wealth? No matter; all he cares about was that, someone was coming in to disrupt the old way of living and money spending habits. In that regard, this book comes across as incredibly shallow.

[Ronaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historias de Pekin es una mezcla entre lo real y lo lírico. Este es un libro maravilloso. David Kidd narra su estadía en Pekín y nos da una perspectiva de lo que fue la China pre y post comunista. Al final también detalla los rezagos de la que fue la Revolución Cultural y critica que se haya hablado muy poco de ello en el mundo académico. Por otro lado, hace una reflexión sobre lo importante de las costumbres y el arte; en general, la cultura. Una obra impecable. Vamos a calificarlo:

Argumento: (1 de 1).
Guion: (1 de 1).
Personajes: (1 de 1).
Narrativa: (1 de 1).
Desenlace : ( 1 de 1).

No hay suficientes palabras para describirlo y está de más decir que lo recomiendo. Espero que lo disfrutes.

[Edwin Pietersma · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a very interesting book with a good story line and discussion of what happened. However, I was hoping the book could tell more about the time itself. There were never any dates given, making the story harder to follow then necessary, never gave the author a detailed or length-depth discussion of the emotions or events happened, which could help to understand the dynamics much better. It was fascinating to read though that he was able to return to China and reminisce about times past.

[Señora Colombo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer es de las cosas que más me gustan y que más me hacen vivir. Sin embargo, acabar un libro es siempre una suerte de duelo; siempre en estas ocasiones me pone triste que esa voz deje de hablar. Este libro, en concreto, ha sido una bendición haberlo leído, por lo bien escrito que está, por la belleza y verdad que recoge y por la ausencia, tan rara últimamente, de melodrama, incluso aunque pudiera estar justificado, porque como dice sabiamente un personaje del libro, Tía Qin: “ las casas, las personas, las mesas y las sillas…todo se mueve, todo cambia siguiendo destinos que no se pueden alterar. Cuando las cosas se transforman en otras, o cuando se pierden o se destruyen, lo único que podemos hacer es dejarlas marchar.” Leer este libro de apenas 200 páginas ha sido una lección de serenidad, de apreciación de la belleza y de comprender que las cosas duran tanto como las cuidemos, aunque muchas veces no depende solo de nosotros.

[Thais Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of mixed feelings about the way this was narrated but on the whole interesting, reflective and moving even if at times a bit vulgar and fetishistic

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to be sure now, but I believe my copy of this fine memoir was given to me by my old pal Li'l Red. It was probably the best book I read that year, and remains one of the best accounts of a certain period in China's history I know of.

It starts off quite factually: "Peking was my home from 1946 to 1950, two years before the Communist revolution and two years after. As the American half of an exchange between the University of Michigan, where I was a student of Chinese culture, and Peking's Yenching University, I left for China immediately after graduation..."

Kidd describes the Peking of that day as "a great walled and moated medieval city" and relates in sparse but fetching terms his initial meeting with Aimee, the aristocratic Chinese girl who would become his wife.

Inevitably, the focus turns to the ever-tightening grip of the new Communist government, which eventually destroys the entire way of life of Aimee's family. Naturally, Kidd is affected as well. First he loses his teaching job and then he's hauled into court by an extortionist hoping to profit from the new anti-Western sentiment.

During this time of foreboding, he provides descriptions of a wedding (his own), an elaborate old-style funeral (no doubt one of the last of its kind), and even gives us an eye-witness account of Mao's inauguration day.

This is all great in terms of providing an inside look at China during that critical turning point in its history. What is lacking, to my way of thinking, is very much of the wonder and excitement that an American boy surely would have felt in those circumstances--particularly in an era far less cosmopolitan than our own. I at least would have been thrilled, but Kidd seems to remain cool and objective throughout. That is no doubt his intention. I just feel that he omits too much in the process.

[Mary Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming and triste collection of vignettes centered around a wealthy household in Beijing and the American who marries into it in the last days of Old China. In a matter of weeks, the family sees their fortunes fall and lives change forever, in a metaphor for the death and vast reorganization of Chinese culture as the Communists take control of Peijing. Through Kidd’s humorous and modest tone, these stories give the reader a glimpse into a conflicted and fascinating time on a deeply personal level, as the hapless American serves as a substitute for a western audience member with little background in Asian culture. Though prone to nostalgia and overglamorizing the Asian “mystique”, this is an excellent and enjoyable short read for those interested in Chinese culture and history.

[Casper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, dry and humourous at times. Not sure what to make of it following some very intricate and slight phony inserts that don't seem to quite fall in with reality.

There is constant dodgery of emotions and a veil of mysteriousness is in upkeep during areas prone to lesser historical accuracy which seem to bolster David Kidd's legacy as a sage and mysterious figure with a past cult following.

However one must agree these inspired elements even if surreal do improve the craft of the book and make all the better.

Book review below is supportive of my skepticism, worth reading after finishing the book.

https://j-nelson.net/2017/02/twenty-w...

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goddamn was this good. An achingly felt memoir of an American who married into an old Beijing family right as the Communists took over China and its millenia-old high culture vanished in the blink of an eye.

Reminded me, in a way, of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is to say I loved this.

[Ajdesasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am still unsure what I think about this book.

The writing has an easy elegance to it. Kidd clearly loved Chinese art and culture, and the best parts of the novel are his descriptions of the beautiful gardens, architecture, and art he lived amongst.

On the other hand, I found Kidd and the Yu family obnoxious. The novel reeks with their disdain for the lower classes, and their own self-assurances that they deserved their privileged places in society.

Kidd is a run of the mill Midwest American, who clearly thought he hit the jackpot in marrying the daughter of an aristocratic Chinese family. He seems to view the revolution as a personal affront, and has no interest in understanding their success in attracting the average Chinese person to their side. He seems to view simply as the unwashed masses rising up to take away the privileged life he thought was about to be his.

The very possessive way he speaks in the novel about the Summer Palace was illuminating in ways I don't think he even realized. He is an American English teacher, who through connections, was invited to stay at the Palace. The book also strongly suggests this was meant to be a secret, and that he was not actually meant to be there. Yet he repeatedly talks about it like it was truly his home, and that it's rooms and content were his.

The Yu family fairs little better. The book contains so many small details that -- again, I don't think Kidd was even intending -- make them look frivolous and spoiled. His father-in-law was so rich prior to the revolution that he traded an entire house for some cups. They also use their connections to hook up free electricity for their garden, to throw lavish parties. Kidd even mentions the fact the family has done this many times previously, despite being extremely wealthy.

There is certainly plenty to criticize about the Chinese communist party, Mao, the Cultural Revolution, etc. But a privileged, dishonest aristocratic Chinese family and a Chinaboo American, who is upset he lost the privileged position he briefly enjoyed, are probably not the best people to present said criticisms.

Finding out, reading other reviews, that Kidd was likely gay (at least, he later was in a much longer relationship with a man), and divorced Aimee shortly after, also seems very revealing. It certainly explains the near totally platonic relationship they seemed to have had. It also, for me, again makes it seem like Kidd's goal was marrying into the Chinese aristocracy, more than anything else.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Kidd, an American studying and teaching at a Chinese University, married into an aristocratic Peking family. His wife, Aimee, and her 8 siblings lived in an antique filled mansion of more than 100 rooms with 7 courtyards and an exquisite garden. After their wedding Kidd moved into this mansion and from this perch, he experienced the communist takeover of “Old China”.

As the descriptions begin, it is 1949 and there are soldiers billeted in the entry ways of the mansion. These armed young men are there to watch the family. The family tried to minimize what they could see. For instance, they reoriented the furnishings to hide their wealth. The soldiers interfered with guests and residents entering and exiting the mansion.

Kidd and Aimee were married in the mansion. The wedding was laden with symbols and customs, but what stands out is the US requirement (for a valid marriage in the US as well as China) that clergy be part of the ceremony. How this requirement is filled is a good story.

The Aimee’s father dies shortly after the wedding and funeral activities go on for days. There is a family temple in the outer part of the city and it, too, has rituals. Kidd describes one, “The Feast of the Dead”, that took place sometime after the entombment:.

You see how the “old” is being supplanted by the “new”:

---- When the family was “sued” by a former staffer for “back wages” it still had friends in places high enough to get a favorable resolution. Later, when Kidd and/or Aimee faced questioning on a garden party and then Kidd’s having registered his residence at one police station and not another, there is no one to help them.

---- Mahjong is now forbidden and neighbors (presumably also living in a mansion) are sentenced to 20 days of street cleaning.

--- The taxes rise and the property must be sold. Only government agencies come to look at it.

There are a lot of personal stories such as: a sister assigned to help prostitutes leave their profession: background on an aging auntie and her assistant who predict the future with cards; the family's observations of the “Night People”; Kidd’s brief residence at the Summer Palace.

Once the house is sold, you learn how the family disperses with Kidd and Aimee planning to leave for the US.

The final chapter takes place in 1981. Kidd returns to Peking (now Beijing) and writes of his impressions of the city. He revisits the mansion where a few family members remain. He describes the changes in the city and the former prestigious residence.

While this is a description of everyday life it is a life lived in a pivotal time and place for China. Kidd, with this short and readable narrative, has made an important contribution to the historical record. This is highly recommended for those interested in this time and place.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kidd was a very young sinologist when he found himself stranded in Peking as a result of the communist take-over. Although he tells his story rather elliptically, I understood that, having married Aimee, the fourth daughter of Judge Yu, he couldn't leave China until their paperwork was in order. The book starts with their wedding, which Aimee has decided to speed up for fear that her father's impending death and the long mourning period which must follow it may derail everything. After Old Yu's funeral, things go from bad to worse for the impoverished family. As one might expect on account of its title, the book isn't so much about the young couple as it is about Kidd's relationship with his innumerable in-laws (Aimee has 10 siblings) and their residence, once a palace of unlimited opulence and now a decaying and besieged property they can't afford to maintain. Because they are part of the old elite, all the members of the Yu know that sooner or later the new power is going to come after them. What they don't' know is how soon, and how viciously. Kidd describes the first unpleasant skirmishes with emboldened servants, petty officials and zealous policemen. Eventually, Elder Brother has to sell the mansion and everybody grieves when the magnificent garden is leveled into a car park. This, however, is only the beginning of the end. When Kidd, long separated from Aimee, gets a chance to visit his in-laws again in the 1980s, he finds that after decades of political persecution, the survivors of the Cultural Revolution are the ghosts of their former selves. Peking itself has been as systematically and maddeningly destroyed as the Yu palace and old China only lives in the memories of people who cared for its elaborate rituals and artifacts. One great strength of the book is that although it is an elegy for a lost world, Kidd's prose is devoid of sentimentality.

[Brian Trinh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really torn by this book. It makes you really think about the costs that often come with any attempted revolution. I can sympathize with Mao's vision of building an alternative future: people actually thought they could change society. And yet I can see why Kidd detests the Communist party's inhuman destruction of all the old and cherished values, cultures, and artifacts of ancient China. In the words of Bob Winter: "Those snotty-nosed high school students, they hated everything old" (178).

When I first read about the Yu household and their extravagant mansion, the proletariat in me, to some extent, despised the excessive garishness and wealth that the family exuded. But as I continued reading, I realized that these artifacts, the garden, the Ancient Pines architecture, Aunt Chin's mythical exuberance, and everything about the mansion, symbolized a people who were cultured guardians of a sacred past. To destroy all this in the name of revolution would be a grave mistake. On the other hand, to fortify and expand private property amidst a society rife with socioeconomic inequality would prove no less cruel.

What I propose then is a series of questions:
How can we imagine an alternative future while preserving human dignity? How can we build a new progressive society while honoring the cherished artifacts, cultures, and traditions of the old? Can we? How do we confront the hegemonic institutions and structures of society—like private property and the nation-state—without degenerating into a violent tyranny?

[Pedro Gala zapatero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Publicado en 1973, Historias de Pekín es mucho más que un libro de memorias. Es el retrato íntimo de un Pekín en transformación, narrado por un joven estadounidense que llegó a China en los años cincuenta, se casó con la hija de una familia aristocrática y terminó viviendo de cerca la caída de ese mundo antiguo.

David Kidd logra algo muy difícil: ser testigo y parte al mismo tiempo. Con un estilo elegante y a la vez sencillo, nos abre las puertas de casas solariegas, banquetes rituales y costumbres que parecían inamovibles, pero que poco a poco se desmoronan bajo el peso de la Revolución Cultural. El libro está lleno de escenas que parecen pequeñas estampas: conversaciones bajo los aleros de un patio, paseos por los hutong, ceremonias familiares donde cada gesto tiene siglos de historia.

Más allá de la nostalgia, Historias de Pekín es un testimonio de pérdida. Lo que Kidd nos transmite es la conciencia de estar viendo morir una forma de vida milenaria, y lo hace con la cercanía de alguien que no solo observa, sino que ama lo que está perdiendo.

Es un libro para leer despacio, como quien abre una caja de recuerdos. Para quienes disfrutan de las memorias personales unidas a la gran Historia, o para quienes quieran asomarse a la China de los patios y los rituales, antes de la modernización y el vértigo del siglo XXI.

Un texto breve, melancólico y bellísimo, que convierte al lector en un viajero del tiempo y lo invita a escuchar, como en susurros, el eco de un Pekín que ya no existe.

[Jane Sun · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have really mixed feelings about this book. The writing is beautiful but at times unnecessarily complicated and made comprehension difficult, and it almost seemed show-off-y. The story is super intriguing and offers a perspective we seldom see: a foreigner's perspective into Beijing before and after the CCP rose to power. The story follows an old aristocratic family, the Yu family, as they live in their splendor pre-1949; then as the guards take on more and more of an oppressive role in policing their items, their guests, their comings and goings; and finally as they are forced to sell off their property and live a humble peasantry life. I enjoyed the descriptions of the Yu house, the summer palace, the foreign and Chinese people the author meets, and the compelling anecdotes of his life. David Kidd is an interesting person who has experienced so much and been willing to experience so much! HOWEVER, I do think the book is RIDDEN with a very, very biased retelling of what the Communists did and were trying to achieve. Although everything described was based on true events, he portrays the entire party and supporters as foolish, insane, mindless, etc. without recognizing the real pain that everyday people went through under the old feudal system of the dynasties + KMT. His writing clearly comes from a place of immense privilege, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Very conflicted about what to review this book.

[Nicole Witen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very real book - I mean real in the sense that one feels the sense of loss of a world, a world that can never come back. David was an observer of the end of an old China and the beginning of a new one. Peking Story hit a lot of mournful notes for me, especially as a reader with a history background. I am always aggrieved by the loss of historic and cultural buildings, specifically by groups who go out of their way to destroy them, and early modern China is by no means alone in this regard. On the other hand, the destruction of buildings and monuments that are already falling apart to make room for the new, contrary to what is said in this book, this happens everywhere in the world. Building on top of the ruins of older buildings, this happens all over the world.

Is it the motivation behind the dismantling of a culture that bothers me? Is it the actual violence of the act of destruction?

My only quibble with the text is that Kidd feels like a true outsider. As an observer, his insights are interesting and useful, but he feels like he is entranced with a culture and people rather than actually part of it. There is a way he writes about this China that feels like the people are as much objects in his world as the house or the vases.

There are a lot of books about China of this period. This does feel like a different take and I enjoyed it.

[Grizol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent first-hand account of the tragedy that was the early years of the PRC, but too of the decay that was always present even before then. The author, who marries an aristocratic Chinese woman, describes equally the decay that served as stage for the revolution. Dilapidated palaces that are too expensive to maintain, vast collections of priceless artifacts that lose all value when the ruling society deems everything old to be useless and imperialist. Anxieties of how to leave the country, gross injustices perpetuated by people who are all too human.

Though certainly critical, it is refreshingly neutral in terms of alternative. The ROC was hardly a sufficient alternative, too commercial and corrupt - it was only suitable insofar as it was a continuation of the status quo inherited from the imperial roots of the country that it replaced. A moving portrait in exquisite language with such control - like a scroll painting of a flower - too delicate not to decay.

Ah, but China goes on, a country, a people, who have existed since the beginning of Civilization in some shape or form. He visits his in-laws some years later, to see them just as much a 'comrade' as everyone else, accepting it with divine grace, as though it were the way of the Tao.

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kidd's "Peking Story" is a personal account of the author's life in Beijing in the early years of Communist rule. Married into an aristocratic Chinese family, the author lived in the sumptuous family palace in Beijing in the dying days of that exquisite and sophisticated old world about to be ruthlessly erased. This is indeed a very interesting window into a world that is no more, and although one cannot but feel sad for many beautiful and delicate things that were then destroyed, and the crimes (against persons and patrimony) that were committed, we must not blind ourselves to the fact that the facts and episodes herein narrated corresponded to the beautiful and sophisticated life of an exceedingly small aristocratic almost-feudal minority in pre-1949 China. The life of ordinary Chinese was clearly not the same, and their distance from that of Kidd's in-laws lives were immeasurably large.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really well-written account of the brief period in which the author, as a young man, lived in Peking (now Beijing) when it was taken over the People's Liberation Army. Kidd was in a doubly difficult position at the time, being an American on an exchange programme, and recently married to a young Chinese woman of aristocratic family. Although the money and influence of Aimee's family is failing, Kidd still seems almost insulated from all but minor difficulty, and he and his wife eventually leave China (and her family) behind before things get really bad. Just how bad is seen in retrospect, when many decades later Kidd returns in epilogue, and how far his warm and loving family has fallen - and survives, still and in part - is made clear. Mostly this is just wrenchingly sad - the accounts of beauty and history that are wilfully destroyed seems wasteful and short-sighted at best.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

David Kidd was a good storyteller, amusingly droll and as a real aesthete he had a great eye for detail. In detailing the downfall of the Yu family, which he married into, he does, in a very condensed and narrow way, tell the story of the fall of an ancient empire. I did get the sense while reading this that there was a strong element of invention for the sake of storytelling. His perspective was that of an admirer and collector of objects, so it felt odd in a way to read a story of China's sweeping, violent political and social changes with so much focus on aesthetics and so little on the population, save for the final chapter. This was a very enjoyable, quick read, a glimpse at an extinct way of life.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this fascinating true story of an American who married into an aristocratic Chinese family at the time of the Communist take over. Society changed so fast it could make your head spin. This reads like a good novel. But it gets increasingly sad while still maintaining a sense of fascination. I started reading this book a day after attending a lecture on China from WWII to current times and I couldn't have chosen a book that better illustrates the first part of the changes. I am next going to read a novel by Pearl S. Buck about families that left China during this era to start new lives in the USA.