China

Gloria Davies quotes William Blake in the acknowledgments to her book: ‘true friendship is argument.’ When choosing that quote, I wonder if she had the Chinese concept of zhengyou in mind. That is the word Kevin Rudd chose for friendship when he spoke to the students at Peking University in April this year. Zhengyou is not just about friendship, for which there is another Chinese word (youyi); it defines a true friend as one who dares to disagree.

The juxtaposition of the three words ‘fashion,’ ‘history’ and ‘nation’ in the title of Antonia Finnane’s study of Chinese clothing indicates the ambitious nature of her richly illustrated book. Her account is an engaging one, based in detailed analysis of the social and political circumstances that shaped not only what people wore but the body shapes they cultivated as well. Finnane, an associate professor of history at the University of Melbourne, tells us that her narrative of vestimentary change across a century or more in China is aimed at showing how ‘the relationship between national politics and fashion is not simple, predictable or steady’, in tandem with an analysis of how technology, industry, commerce and modern communications each played a significant part in changing Chinese styles of dress.

Jack Gregory has devoted much of his long career in China studies to teaching and studying the ways in which the West and China have interrelated. He is well qualified to write on the subject. Classes that Gregory has given in Melbourne to students attending University of the Third Age classes have inspired this book. In style and structure, it is highly suitable for teaching. The writing is clear, interesting and accessible. Though the book could have done with some pictures, it does have a map and the presentation is attractive.

How seriously do we take an author who, in her mid-forties, writes about ‘street cred’, calls a department store ‘humungous’ and, discussing Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, asks: ‘Bourgeois decadence? Hel-lo.’? Linda Jaivin studied one of the world’s most difficult languages in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China, and, as a scholar and journalist, published perceptive analyses of China. Then she turned to fiction and biography.

One hardly knew where to look. There were breasts everywhere. Not dozens of them mind you. Just two. On Mistress Sabine. The left mammary with a disturbing blue vein running over it, seeming to fill half the room on its lonesome. Other bits and pieces of the Mistress bulged alarmingly around the inadequate constraints of her leather fetish outfit, threatening to break free completely as she tied up Linda Jaivin and administered a paddling at the launch of the author’s Confessions of an S&M Virgin.

In 1992, Fang Xiangshu collaborated with Trevor Hay, a mandarin-speaking Melbourne academic, on a non-fiction book, East Wind, West Wind, an account of Fang’s escape from China to begin a new life in Australia.

Mr Rolls has written an extraordinarily detailed history of the Chinese in Australia, interspersed with much additional related and unrelated matter. It is indeed a labour of love, written over a period of some twenty years, and the author has uncovered a large amount of fascinating and amazing information not readily available elsewhere. Much of this new material relates to the vibrant popular culture the Chinese brought with them: their food, cricket fighting, cock fighting, and other sorts of fairly harmless gambling; their diseases, living conditions and relations with their non-Chinese neighbours. A certain amount of the book concerns immigration acts and other forms of discrimination, of course, but the stronger impression one gets is a more positive one: the Chinese as hard workers and major contributors to Australian life.

It may seem flippant and insensitive to call this account of political threat and persecution a highly enjoyable book, but it is precisely that. Fang Xiangshu and Trevor Hay have fashioned a beguiling tale out of Fang's experiences during the Cultural Revolution and China’s political and social turmoil in later years. The product of their collaboration strikes exactly the right note. They have made no attempt to capture the idioms of Shanghai speech, but have substituted a restrained Australian colloquialism, judiciously peppered with examples of Chinese maxims, proverbs, and quotations from classic poets to give their prose something of an exotic flavour. Their narrative is constructed with great skill, negotiating expertly between the past and present, China and Australia.