|
|
 |
 |
Wen-hsin Yeh
Provincial Passages
Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism
$65.00, £46.50 hardcover
978-0-520-20068-5
Available Now
"Scholars have frequently tried to explain the origins of communism in China by examining the lives of such notable Chinese communists as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and even Lin Biao. Yeh opts for a fresh approach. She notes that five of the seven original members of the 1920 Shanghai Marxism Study Group, which in 1921 participated in founding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), came from Zhejiang province. To determine what might have motivated these individuals to become Marxists, Yeh examines the culture, geography, educational structure, and history of Zhejiang. . . . The study is based on exhaustive research, much of it in previously unavailable Chinese sources. A very readable and highly recommended work."—Choice
"Yeh's work provides many new insights into the earliest years of the Chinese Communist Part, especially its formative impulses in Shanghai and Beijing in 1920 and 1921. It is far richer than conventional Party histories that trace back a sanitized line of orthodoxy culminating in the final takeover of the Party by Mao Zedong and his allies: it illuminates trends, debates, and rival personalities who are usually ignored or misrepresented."—Asian Affairs
"Yeh's work provides many new insights into the earliest years of the Chinese Communist Part, especially its formative impulses in Shanghai and Beijing in 1920 and 1921. It is far richer than conventional Party histories that trace back a sanitized line of orthodoxy culminating in the final takeover of the Party by Mao Zedong and his allies: it illuminates trends, debates, and rival personalities who are usually ignored or misrepresented."—Asian Affairs
"This work initiates a broad reevaluation of the origins of the Chinese Communist Party . . . and demonstrates the importance of earlier history to the understanding of twentieth-century events."—Don C. Price, University of California, Davis
Revealing information that has been suppressed in the Chinese Communist Party's official history, Wen-hsin Yeh presents an insightful new view of the Party's origins. She moves away from an emphasis on Mao and traces Chinese Communism's roots to the country's culturally conservative agrarian heartland. And for the first time, her book shows the transformation of May Fourth radical youth into pioneering Communist intellectuals from a social and cultural history perspective.
Yeh's study provides a unique description of the spatial dimensions of China's transition into modernity and vividly evokes the changing landscapes, historical circumstances, and personalities involved. The human dimension of this transformation is captured through the biography of Shi Cuntong (1899-1970), a student from the Neo-Confucian county of Jinhua who became a founding member of the Party. Yeh's in-depth analysis of the dynamics of change is combined with a compelling narrative of the moral dilemmas in the lives of Shi Cuntong and other early leaders. Using sources previously closed to scholars, including recently discovered documents in the archives of the First United Front, Yeh shows the urban Communist movement as an intellectual revolution in social consciousness.
The Maoist legacy has often been associated with the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Yeh's historical reconstruction of a pre-Mao, non-organizational dimension of Chinese socialism is thus of vital interest to those seeking to redefine the place of the Communist Party in a post-Mao political order.
Yeh's study provides a unique description of the spatial dimensions of China's transition into modernity and vividly evokes the changing landscapes, historical circumstances, and personalities involved. The human dimension of this transformation is captured through the biography of Shi Cuntong (1899-1970), a student from the Neo-Confucian county of Jinhua who became a founding member of the Party. Yeh's in-depth analysis of the dynamics of change is combined with a compelling narrative of the moral dilemmas in the lives of Shi Cuntong and other early leaders. Using sources previously closed to scholars, including recently discovered documents in the archives of the First United Front, Yeh shows the urban Communist movement as an intellectual revolution in social consciousness.
The Maoist legacy has often been associated with the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Yeh's historical reconstruction of a pre-Mao, non-organizational dimension of Chinese socialism is thus of vital interest to those seeking to redefine the place of the Communist Party in a post-Mao political order.