Page 8 RAIN May 1976 Red Star Over China It's been clear almost from the beginning that something exciting has been going on in the People's Republic of China. The increased level of travel there in recent years has resulted in a flurry of reports about what has been accomplished since 1949. Almost all of the material written shows that there is much we can learn from their experience: their localized health care program (barefoot doctors, virtual elimination of VD and other diseases), their incredible use of simplified technology, the ethic of serve the people, and their consciousness and selfreliance. Yet, I was greatly impressed by a talk by Orville Schell at Farallones last summer where he expressed his ambivalence about his three months' work experience in China last spring, first in a remote farm area and then in a Shanghai factory. He had gone speaking Chinese and feeling great enthusiasm for all he had read. He was surprised to find that the total selflessness of the people nearly drove him up a wall after a timethey looked at him askance when he asked for a little time alone. It also depressed him to realize that the Chinese are plunging full speed ahead into an industrial society-albeit on their own terms. He felt there was very little of the so-called "ecological consciousness" he had hoped to find. Pollution in manufacturing centers is as bad as many places in the West and growing daily worse. People recycle and reuse things because they cannot afford to waste them. When it is important to have more fertile agricultural land, the river is made to change its course even if it changes the face of a beautiful mountain. His lesson was clear-we can borrow ideas from the Chinese experience, but we must adapt them to our own needs and culture. It'll be some time, I think, before we know enough to understand what all this really means for our own struggles for alternatives to our present way of doing things. In the meantime, here are some of the books I found most interesting and helpful in my search for some understanding of what was going on there. (LdeM) The China Reader, 3 Volumes, Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell, Vintage, 1967, from: $2.95 Random House 201 East 50th New York, NY 10022 "Imperial China," "Republican China," "Communist China'." These books will give you a good overview of China's recent history with a good smattering of political writings and firsthand accounts. The Crippled Tree, A Mortal Flower, and Birdless Summer, Han Suyin, 1972, from: Panther House Ltd. P.O. Box 3553 New York, NY 10017 The three-volume autobiography-history from 1885-1948. A half-Chinese, half-Belgian woman growing up in Szechuan Province. Somehow these books gave me as good a feeling as anything I read about how it was "before." Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow, 1937, $2.95 from: Grove Press 53 East 11th St. New York, NY 10003 This is the classic story of Snow's trips behind Red Army lines in 1936 when they were still a band of "upstarts." He was skeptical when he went and then became very close to them. His succeeding books, journey to the Beginning, The Other Side of the River, Red China Today and The Long Revolution, chronicle his continuing friendship with the Chinese. His warm and loving accounts make all the big names into real people. China Shakes the World, Jack Belden, 1949, $3.95 from Monthly Review Press 62 W. 14th St. New York, NY 10011 An American reporter traveling among the peasants and the Red Army during the war with the Japanese and the continuing struggle against Chiang K'ai-shek's Kuomintang. Good reports on peasant·efforts.
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