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One of the best (if non-comprehensive) accounts of the forces changing life in modern China I've ever read.
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Wild Grass : China's Revolt from Below
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In "Wild Grass" Pulitzer Prize-winning Ian Johnson describes a China caught between the desire for change percolating up from below and the ossified political structure above. He recounts the stories of three ordinary people who find themselves finding oppression and government corruption, risking imprisonment and even death. A young architecture student, a bereaved daughter, and a peasant legal clerk are the unlikely heroes of these stories, private citizens cast by unexpected circumstances into surprising roles.
null pages, Paperback
First published January 1,2004
This edition
- Format
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null pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 2005 by Penguin Books
- ISBN
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9780141021553
- ASIN
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0141021551
- Language
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English
About the author
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Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer focusing on society, religion, and history. He works out of Beijing, where he also teaches and advises academic journals.
Johnson has spent over half of the past thirty years in the Greater China region, first as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985, and then in Taipei from 1986 to 1988. He later worked as a newspaper correspondent in China, from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore's The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro economics, China's WTO accession and social issues.
In 2009, Johnson returned to China, where he writes features and essays for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and other publications. He teaches undergraduates at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, where he also runs a fellowship program. In addition, he formally advises a variety of academic journals and think tanks on China, such as the Journal of Asian Studies, the Berlin-based think tank Merics, and New York University's Center for Religion and Media.
Johnson has spent over half of the past thirty years in the Greater China region, first as a student in Beijing from 1984 to 1985, and then in Taipei from 1986 to 1988. He later worked as a newspaper correspondent in China, from 1994 to 1996 with Baltimore's The Sun, and from 1997 to 2001 with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered macro economics, China's WTO accession and social issues.
In 2009, Johnson returned to China, where he writes features and essays for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and other publications. He teaches undergraduates at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, where he also runs a fellowship program. In addition, he formally advises a variety of academic journals and think tanks on China, such as the Journal of Asian Studies, the Berlin-based think tank Merics, and New York University's Center for Religion and Media.
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Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 31 votes)
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31 reviews All reviews
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learn about regular people battling to have their rights according to the chinese constitution honored
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Beautiful! Sad! Inspiring!
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I was most interested in the passages about Falun Gong. I learned many things I didn't know before.
"Wild Grass" is Book No. 24 for 2013!
"Wild Grass" is Book No. 24 for 2013!
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After 16 years, people who had an extraordinary resilience to rebel to injustice were just wild grass smashed by a totalitarian regime. The same happened for the historical cores from old cities like Beijing. What mattered was to set up order, to focus the country to development and to give the world postcards of modernity through a savage and unequal capitalistic way. Good business was the reward from the peer countries. They closed the eyes, but not the writer who left a precise and sensitive testimony through three interesting stories written in a parallel structure which reach moments real of terror and describe the mechanisms of four pillars of Totalitarian State control: Unfair taxing to the weakest citizens, real state plundering, unfair Law at the side of Power, religion/reunion banning. The writer tries to end positively, giving a ray of hope in the last sentences of each story, but After 16 years from these facts this reader who spend long time in China is hopeless.
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There are lots of pains China need to overcome facing a changing era. However, I hope the pains won't drive the country to death but alert more people to fight for it. Quoting a sentence I just read from a book about Chinese investigative journalists: "the world doesn't need just one Don Quixote; it needs a whole band of Don Quitoxte." I'm so glad and grateful to see foreign friends like Ian is also worried about the future of Chinese society and reveal the scar that we must see to all of us.
Wild grass also refers to the Chinese people who never give up on the way leading to a better China and better world, I think.
Wild grass also refers to the Chinese people who never give up on the way leading to a better China and better world, I think.
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Johnson's writing is pretty mediocre and the editing is not great, but the last section of the book, about the suppression of Falun Gong, the religion that was banned in the early aughts and viciously cracked down upon, is reported super well and is fascinating.
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In a clam quiet style Johnson depicts the lives of ordinary Chinese and the changes facing this nation. Johnson's style captures the essence of the problems faced by ordinary folk, who for the most part go about thier daily lives and are not fire-brand activists, but gradually realise that change is neccesary to thier very existence. Johnson has great understanding of the Chinese psyche but his writing does not patronise his subjects.
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