Whither China? It is perhaps the most important question on the minds of statesmen, diplomats, and scholars. French political scientist Jean-Pierre Cabestan, who teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University, attempts to supply the answer in his new book China Tomorrow: Democracy or Dictatorship?
Reviews of Asian fiction, poetry and non-fiction in translation from 2019, from Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Farsi, Russian, French and German.
Very few people (other than Anthony Janson in his monumental History of Art, published in 1968) would attempt to write a history of an entire country’s art, and even fewer could do it in one volume and cover a period from 15,000 BCE right up to the present day. Professor Tsuji does this for Japanese art with ease, elegance, humor and consummate erudition in an attractive volume printed on first-class paper and packed with quality color and black-and-white illustrations. What’s more, it isn’t a large format coffee-table book like Janson’s, which means a reader can actually curl up on a chair and read it quite comfortably. As Tsuji says, though, “to survey the vast sweep of Japanese art history was a great challenge and a daunting task;” but we are lucky that he also tells us “not only did no such book exist, but I needed one myself!”
“On a sultry August day I set out to walk a straight line across Beijing.” So begins Jonathan Chatwin’s Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China. The street, called Chang’an Jie in Chinese, “runs arrow-straight and ten lanes wide in some places,” bisecting the heart of Beijing.
Between Opera Hong Kong, Musica Viva, the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Italia Mia Festival, Hong Kong’s opera year began to fill out.
Toward the end of his life, Algernon Blackwood famously reminisced that “I used to tell strange, wild, improbable tales…” The tale of the friendship between Lu Xun and Uchiyama Kanzō would have met Blackwood’s standard—a look at Shanghai during those times, now nearly 100 years ago, suggests why.
Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm, written in 1933 when he was just 23 while studying western theatre and arts at Qinghua University, was the first of his eight plays. Set in the feudal society of China in the 1920s, the tragedy follows the complicated love entanglements in (and within) the Zhou family. Thunderstorm made Cao’s name by spotlighting incest and premarital pregnancy, challenged the conservative male-dominated society of the time, while reflecting the desire for societal change that had grown up during the revolutionary movements of post-WW1 China. The play has been adapted into six films, including Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). It was probably inevitable that it would one day be adapted for dance.
How did Asia fare in the “Best Books” sweepstakes of 2019? This is partly keeping score, but there are also undoubtedly many excellent recommendations and hidden gems in these many lists.
As China and the West look at decoupling, it’s worth remembering that the world has been through this several times since they first coupled three-quarters of the way through the 16th century. That’s when the Manila Galleon connected Asia and the Americas, a trade that was, to mix metaphors, oiled by silver.
“All the world’s a stage”, said Shakespeare, “ and all the men and women merely players.” His near-contemporary, Chinese dramatist Li Yu goes one step further and says that even in love, or perhaps especially in love, we can only play out our roles.
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