Chi Pang-Yuan's memoir is packed with every bit of eastern and western literature she studied, enjoyed and taught as well as all the politics and war she grew up amongst in China. Chi's family was large and spread across China during a tumultuous time, yet she manages to document the duration for everybody. Indeed, her memory is alarmingly thorough; I'm afraid I found the sheer volume of names, titles, and other minutiae overwhelming and a bit tedious to deal with. I felt like she was trying to combine memorial tributes for far too many different people with this one book (her father, her husband, various mentors, a fighter pilot, etc).
Off the main topic, but I found it interesting that the daughter of a publishing house holding family should make such offhanded comments like, "Naturally, none of us in those days had any notion of copyright." and "Most afternoons, I'd go... look at the latest pirated books, to see if anything could be used as teaching materials."
While I understand these titles don't cover the same exact historical ground, I much preferred Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Chieng, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, and even Wild Swans by Jung Chang.
This is a 5-star book. The missing star is for translation. I read the original in Chinese as a college student. I may have seemed totally American in my look, education and thinking, but my heart will forever be Chinese. This is one of the best books that recorded the turbulent modern history of China and Taiwan, from WWII on till the present. Highly recommended.
When I first picked the book up, I was too excited but that slowly waned off because the book isn't really easy to read. It does not explain cultural references and is written in a very slow and dull manner. Most of the book has a lot of information about English literature but that was something that I did not enjoy. I usually love reading memoirs but this one just did not speak to me.
As most other reviewers have noted, this is a long, slow read as it is weighed down by too many unfamiliar names and unnecessary details that may have a place in a personal diary but not in a published biography. That said, I am glad I persevered because it is one of the few coming-of-age stories that covers the history of those born into China on the brink of China's transformation that continues not in mainland China but her exile to Taiwan. There are dozens of biographies that cover China's pre-Mao and Mao years, but this was the first I have read that tells the story of these self-exiles to Taiwan--stories that are well-known, we learn, in Taiwan, but not so well known abroad. One of the many things we learn about Chi Pang-Yuan is her work helping share these stories outside of Taiwan through her writing and teaching and overseeing the translation of contemporary Taiwanese poems, essays and novels (the basis of PEN International). One recommendation for those new to this literature is the historical novel Wintry Night by Qiao Li, available in a paperback English translation.
This is probably why the book is such a slow slog--there are too many threads to follow. The Great Flowing River is not just an exquisitely detailed autobiography of a Chinese scholar and her family and many extended friends and their work (and their work, families and friends) and travel, but also attempts to explain the historical and political events of a century ... while also trying to share with us her love of literature. Her profession in many ways, and the many pages devoted to its teaching and the Who's Who of the field, get in way of the most important story--which is, in my opinion, as one reviewer wrote, "the deepening political divide in China". In short, the book mirrors its title: a great, [slow] flowing river, but one that has something to teach us if one has the patience to look for it.
I maybe very bias on this 5🌟, since we both are Wuhan University alumni. All the big historical events are way too familiar with a personal touch from the author. The author believes that “Education and literature should not be mixed with politics”, but it is really just a good wish. I would bring this book to my dad if he is still alive, he has experienced some life changing events described here. The author is a lucky one in the unstable time.
The title conveys a sense of a great expanse, like the landscape of Chi's native Manchuria, but this is but a background against which Chi's paints an intimate foreground of a simple life, buried in books and the embrace of the extended family of a war refugee. As the setting shifts to Taiwan, Chi's life and her recollection of it, shifts to the mundane work of establishing the literary ecosystem of the island, as its role shifts from Japanese colony to the capital of the Republic of China. While sometimes difficult to follow, these detailed vignettes of life and work highlighted for me the will of an individual who devoted their entire life to the under appreciated acts that help a people reassert their dignity and identity in the face of upheaval and loss.
Slogged through three quarters of it and no more. A fault of mine for badly misjudging what this book would be. I wanted to learn about the cultural and lived experience of a Mainland academic who fled to Taiwan grounded in the tumultuous political climate of the time, not an elitist recounting that was mainly comprised of name dropping and ramblings about Western academics. She blatantly disregards and displaces the narratives of the countless who suffered under the Nationalist dictatorship and makes Taiwan sound like a cozy academic heaven. Nevermind the trauma of 2/28, nevermind the brutality of the White Terror and the literal fucking martial law that the country was placed under for 35+ years. I do not give a flying fuck that you read TS Eliot and got accepted to Mount Holyoke blah blah blah. And the guarded sanitation of the narrative and the refusal to ever be raw or forthcoming about anything like when she talks about having an “illness” but doesn’t elaborate or talk in depth about it and instead just name drops 5 more Chinese academics… I tried so fucking hard. Hours of my life wasted.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
It's a little bit boring when most of the names mentioned are unknown to me. Yet it's an epic book when she describes her experience during the war and how her experience working with Taiwan government.