Behind the Forbidden Door: Travels in Unknown China

Behind the Forbidden Door: Travels in Unknown China

Among the first Western journalists accredited in the People's Republic of China, the author lived in China in the Chinese manner, taking a Chinese name and sending his children to Chinese schools, and here reports on his extensive travels across the country Terzani lived in China for more than three years as a correspondent for Der Spiegel. He arrived with an attraction for China and a determination to assimilate: he spoke Chinese, read Chinese papers, and sent his children to Chinese schools. The experience turned him sour and left him feeling "if Mao's policies had brought China great misery, what Deng Xiaoping was doing in order to half-reverse those policies left me equally skeptical." The Chinese didn't like his articles or his attitude and expelled him in March 1984. His articles, collected here, make fascinating reading. The best are those that capture the real and often frightening contradictions in the 1980s reform policies for industry, agriculture, and family planning. Terzani's view is similar to that of Simon Leys, whose Chinese Shadows ( LJ 7/77) charged that Beijing had destroyed the traditional Chinese heritage and substituted narrow Leninist dogma to produce an impoverished culture.David D. Buck, History Dept., Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.