In 1954; eighteen years before Nixon's momentous visit to China; scores of European delegations set off for Beijing; in response to Prime Minister Chou En-Lai's invitation to "come and see" the New China and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Communist victory. In this delightfully eclectic book--part comedy; part travelogue; and part cultural history--Patrick Wright tells the story of the remarkable Britons who made this journey; including former Prime Minister Clement Attlee; dapper and self-important philosopher A. J. Ayer; the brilliant young artist-reporter Paul Hogarth; poet and novelist Rex Warner (a former Marxist who had just married a Rothschild); and the infuriatingly self-obsessed Stanley Spencer; who emerges as the unlikely hero of the story. Using a host of previously unpublished letters and diaries; Wright captures the impressions--both mistaken and genuinely insightful--of the delegates as they wandered behind the bamboo curtain. Full of comic detail; this book is also a study of China as it has loomed in the British mind: as both the primitive orient of early western philosophy and the alluring site of revolutionary transformation.
#1340099 in Books 2014-03-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 6.10 x .80 x 9.20l; 1.13 #File Name: 0199383707364 pages
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