Return to Dragon Mountain

Book Description

Critics

• China Passage

  Many years after the traumatic events that cut his long life in two — and which left, as he put it, his “country destroyed, family routed, no home left to go to” — the 17th-century Chinese historian and essayist Zhang Dai had a dream. As Jonathan D. ... (read full critics)

  nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

• ‘Ravished by Oranges’

  How can we be informed? Chesterton famously observed that when we read in today’s newspapers that one window-cleaner fell to his death, our general understanding of window-cleaning is distorted; the information that 35,000 window-cleaners actually di ... (read full critics)

  nybooks published on Wed, 25 Aug 2010

1 Review

• 

  Jonathon Spence is one of the few scholars of Chinese history that writes popular histories. In this book he takes the writings of the late Ming scholar Zhang Dai and arranges them into a nice social history about literati life at the end of the Ming.

  The first half of the book I found to be the m ... (continue)

  Jonathon Spence is one of the few scholars of Chinese history that writes popular histories. In this book he takes the writings of the late Ming scholar Zhang Dai and arranges them into a nice social history about literati life at the end of the Ming.

  The first half of the book I found to be the most interesting. Each chapter has a different focus of life, entertainment, religion, examinations. Women are included in their role of courtesans and entertainers, but one thing that is really missing from this book is the lives of the elite women. While Zhang Dai has a wife and concubines they are never discussed in any detail, likewise the wives and mothers of his extended family are also ignored. With a book that is attempting to re-create the setting of literati life at the end of the Ming this seems like an oversight.

  The book covers the fall of the Ming and the start of the Qing, but it doesn't really mention much of the huge social upheaval and the mass destruction and wars that accompanied this (see Voices of the Ming-Qing Cataclysm) rather it mentions one scholar who committed suicide and that Zhang Dai had to go into hiding at a monastery for several years where he discovered hunger for the first time in his life. (The way this isolation was presented seemed very selfish, no mention of his children or other members of his family was discussed. It just seemed odd). He did mention the destruction of the family library, how 30,000 volumes were destroyed, the troops using the paper to light fires and wad their armour with (219).

  One of my favourite chapters was about the pilgrimage Zhang Dai took, and his criticism of the "commercialisation of religion". It was interesting to see that the sacred mountains had already become tourist traps in the 17th century filled with pilgrims, hawkers, beggars and swindlers. Those with "lesser talent" writing (adding graffiti) over the Buddhist messages carved on the rock (118-119).

  There was an interesting Taoist viewpoint on drinking, given by Zhang Dai's grandfather about his alcoholic uncle. "Those who find they are made complete by drinking cannot be startled by the gods, are not nervous of tigers, do not get hurt if they fall from the cart, regard death and life as of no more consequence than a mustard seed." (73) The portrayal of the alcoholic uncle and the uncle who was a hideous tyrant and beat his servants and his wife added an interesting dimension of realism to the portrait. It showed that the life was not just about study, the exams, and government position.

  This book is one I'd recommend to people who are interested in learning more about the Ming. It is a history that is very accessible and easy to read that, while omitting a few important things, creates a reasonable portrait of the time.

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  Robot-mel said on Feb 21, 2010 | Add your feedback

Book Details

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• English Books
• Hardcover 352 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0670063576
• ISBN-13: 9780670063574
• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Pub date: Sep 20, 2007
• Dimensions: 1355 mm x 903 mm x 194 mm Just how big is that?

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