Remembrance of Ming’s Past

By Jonathan D. Spence on June 23, 1994

To many readers in the past, The Plum in the Golden Vase has seemed an inchoate mass of a story. Even if it was clearly “about” a wealthy urban merchant Hsi-men Ch’ing, his six consorts, and numerous other sexual companions, it was also full of sudden jumps of mood and direction, unexplained and lengthy borrowings from earlier works of fiction, especially the famous Outlaws of the Marsh (Shui-hu Chuan), and obscure digressions that didn’t seem to advance the story at all.

The Prodigal Sons

By Jonathan Mirsky on June 9, 1994

What do Xi Yang, Wei Jingsheng, and Wang Juntao have in common? Yes, they are all “counter-revolutionary elements, subversives, splittists, black hands”—whatever Peking cares to call them—and all three are familiar with the Party’s prison accommodations.

The Old Man’s New China

By Perry Link on June 9, 1994

The Communist Party of China has regularly warned Western observers like Merle Goldman not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. China, it says, has its own culturally distinctive ideas on topics like freedom, democracy, and human rights. So how could Goldman write a book about China called Sowing the Seeds of Democracy and dedicate it to her four children “who may someday see democracy flower in China”? Isn’t this cultural imperialism? Who invited her to tell China what to do?