laughterbynight's review against another edition
3.0
Okay so there is a lot of good information here (that’s not my issue) but I think perhaps a different layout of the information would have been helpful? There were times I struggled keeping track of what was going on, when, and where. That could be because the original documents were paired down? I’m not sure. At the very least I would suggest reading this maybe after getting a thorough idea of the layout and timeline of events.
Maybe this would work well as a 3rd or 4th book after getting really familiar with the famine and the Great Leap Forward.
Maybe this would work well as a 3rd or 4th book after getting really familiar with the famine and the Great Leap Forward.
paulataua's review against another edition
4.0
Once you get over the ‘ I am exposing this truth to the world’ feeling at the beginning, you realize that you are reading a very thorough and detailed history of the great famine that adds much to the already growing scholarship. The famine came out of ‘The Great Leap Forward’ policies of Mao’s communist party in the late fifties and early sixties– a five year plan (1958-1962) aimed at multiplying grain yields and bringing industry to the countryside as quickly as possible.
It’s a fascinating and, at the same time, horrifying story of the famine and starvation that came out of that policy in practice. Yang goes further by showing that terror starvation played a major part, with manslaughter, and perhaps even murder, accounting for the high number of deaths. Official indifference to death and local party’s brutally dealing with hoarders who went against communist principles also had a part to play. It is a book well worth reading. My own interest, and one that is never fully answered in the book or elsewhere that I know, is how much people knew about what was going on as it was happening, and why so many people, inside and outside China, seemed not to know. Yang’s account presents some thoughts, and even at one point suggests that ‘in all fairness, the people’s genuine aspirations lay behind much of the folly of the Great leap Forward’. As with Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture in the thirties, many questions still need to be answered.
Is it just that when, against all odds, you turn a dream into a reality, and then begin to realize that the reality doesn’t match up to the dream, and you desperately try to make it work at all costs? A fascinating read!
It’s a fascinating and, at the same time, horrifying story of the famine and starvation that came out of that policy in practice. Yang goes further by showing that terror starvation played a major part, with manslaughter, and perhaps even murder, accounting for the high number of deaths. Official indifference to death and local party’s brutally dealing with hoarders who went against communist principles also had a part to play. It is a book well worth reading. My own interest, and one that is never fully answered in the book or elsewhere that I know, is how much people knew about what was going on as it was happening, and why so many people, inside and outside China, seemed not to know. Yang’s account presents some thoughts, and even at one point suggests that ‘in all fairness, the people’s genuine aspirations lay behind much of the folly of the Great leap Forward’. As with Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture in the thirties, many questions still need to be answered.
Is it just that when, against all odds, you turn a dream into a reality, and then begin to realize that the reality doesn’t match up to the dream, and you desperately try to make it work at all costs? A fascinating read!
vbang247's review against another edition
4.0
Banned in mainland China, Tombstone informs the readers about the horrific man-made famine of 1958-1962 which to this day is estimated to have caused deaths of 36-45 million people. Exaggerated grain production, lack of accountability, high procurement quotas, communal kitchens and collectivization of farm lands without proper compensation led to the greatest man made disaster of 20th century. The book throws light on the disastrous policies of the Mao Zedong govt that led to the cannibalism permanently memorialized in the country's history.
firerosearien's review against another edition
4.0
Probably the most comprehensive account of Mao's famine available to Westerners; it is, however, often very dry and at times feels a little repetitive. That said, the full scale of Mao's famine is incomprehensible (or at the very least *should* be); take every other famine you know of, combine them, and they still don't hold a candle to Mao's famine.
lizmart88's review against another edition
3.0
This is a comprehensive look at four years of China's history in which an estimated 35-40 million Chinese people died during a man made famine.
I will say up front that this book is incredibly detailed even though it has been greatly reduced for the English version. It is more than 500 pages on just four years of history. I will also admit that I did skim some sections.
The scale of the atrocities committed are astounding. And I think as a global citizen, awareness of other country's histories is important.
The Chinese Great Famine occurred due to Chairman Mao Ze Dong's fanatacism, inability to hear criticism, and pursuit of becoming an equal to the US and Soviet Russia in terms of steel production and exports. The famine was not due to any natural factors of the environment (ie no floods, droughts, etc occurred that were outside the scope of normal) nor was it due to farmer error.
The shift to full communism resulted in inefficiencies at every level. Combined with insanely high quotas imposed on the countryside, there quickly became the conditions for starvation. With Mao not listening to any voices of criticism who tried to share the starvation of peasants, the starvation continued far longer than it should have.
One of the hardest things to read was about the thousands of cases of cannibalism reported, and the cases of families choosing one child to save in hopes of carrying on the family name. All this while upper level officials were feasting, literally, at the expense of peasants starving. All this while the state apparatus had billions of kilos of grain in reserve, enough to significantly slow starvation yet it never considered distribution because that would have acknowledged the problem.
It is hard not to read this and feel a great deal of anger at the policies of communism and the cult of Mao that created these conditions. It's also a good reminder of how dictators and totalitarian regimes can commit atrocities on a large scale and receive no punishment ever.
If you're interested in theost comprehensive book about this, pick it up. It's well written and incredibly well researched. However, if you're not up for this in depth of a book I do encourage you to do some light googling and learn more about the great famine. It would do us well as global citizens to be aware of the shortcomings in history to avoid such radical mistakes.
I will say up front that this book is incredibly detailed even though it has been greatly reduced for the English version. It is more than 500 pages on just four years of history. I will also admit that I did skim some sections.
The scale of the atrocities committed are astounding. And I think as a global citizen, awareness of other country's histories is important.
The Chinese Great Famine occurred due to Chairman Mao Ze Dong's fanatacism, inability to hear criticism, and pursuit of becoming an equal to the US and Soviet Russia in terms of steel production and exports. The famine was not due to any natural factors of the environment (ie no floods, droughts, etc occurred that were outside the scope of normal) nor was it due to farmer error.
The shift to full communism resulted in inefficiencies at every level. Combined with insanely high quotas imposed on the countryside, there quickly became the conditions for starvation. With Mao not listening to any voices of criticism who tried to share the starvation of peasants, the starvation continued far longer than it should have.
One of the hardest things to read was about the thousands of cases of cannibalism reported, and the cases of families choosing one child to save in hopes of carrying on the family name. All this while upper level officials were feasting, literally, at the expense of peasants starving. All this while the state apparatus had billions of kilos of grain in reserve, enough to significantly slow starvation yet it never considered distribution because that would have acknowledged the problem.
It is hard not to read this and feel a great deal of anger at the policies of communism and the cult of Mao that created these conditions. It's also a good reminder of how dictators and totalitarian regimes can commit atrocities on a large scale and receive no punishment ever.
If you're interested in theost comprehensive book about this, pick it up. It's well written and incredibly well researched. However, if you're not up for this in depth of a book I do encourage you to do some light googling and learn more about the great famine. It would do us well as global citizens to be aware of the shortcomings in history to avoid such radical mistakes.
lpm100's review against another edition
4.0
The book is radical just by its being/ the nature of its being.
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2019
This book feels like 5 pages worth of information repeated about 100 times and book-ended with an introduction and conclusion in order to create 522 pages of prose.
Yang is very clear in the introduction that this title of tombstone was chosen because:
1. It is meant to be a tombstone for this father, who never got one.
2. It is meant to be his own tombstone, because this is his end-of-life work.
3. It is meant to be a tombstone for the tens of millions of Chinese who perished, and never got one.
4. It is meant to be a tombstone for the fall of strict Communism that wreaked so much havoc in China.
Of the philosophy of the book:
1. It's amazing that:
a. Something like this was even published.
b. That the author lived to tell about it.
c. That he is alive and *outside* of a Chinese black Jail.
d. It went through 8 printings in the Chinese inside of 2 years.
2. The author is EXTREMELY radical (by Chinese standards) in that:
a. He wants to actually learn from history so that the same mistakes are not repeated. (The first 15 years of Chinese history have been about the same as the last 2300 or so. People have ostensibly been some *EXTREMELY POOR* learners from history.)
b. He is willing to admit that this event happened so that the rest of Chinese can learn from it. (There is a great deal of collective Chinese amnesia.)
c. He is willing to allow the book to be translated into English. (The Chinese nation does not usually talk about internal problems for the same reason that a battered wife will not talk about what her husband does to her in public-- It's a "family affair"/ private matter.)
d. He wrote something that foreigners actually want to read. (It happens 10 times more often that contemporary English books are translated into Chinese than the way of this book [i.e., a contemporary Chinese book is translated into English because it has something to say]).
It's really hard to imagine something like this having a narrative stream (it doesn't have a great one), and in that way, Yang did an even better job than expected.
He also did us a favor by distilling much of the text that existed in the Chinese edition.
The original was about 800,000 characters and 1200 Chinese pages. (I have done Chinese translation work before and happen to know that it takes about 8 character for every 5 English words. But the number of pages of a given Chinese book is usually about 10% shorter than the same English book.)
The author and assistants cut it down to 500,000 characters--which was still too long. And here, it is cut down more again to 522 pages of English prose. A nearly 2/3 contraction from the original.
And he also does a yeoman's work just to compile and format all the voluminous Chinese language sources on this topic.
If I had to buy this book all over again, it would be worth about $8 to me plus shipping.
Verdict: Recommended.
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2019
This book feels like 5 pages worth of information repeated about 100 times and book-ended with an introduction and conclusion in order to create 522 pages of prose.
Yang is very clear in the introduction that this title of tombstone was chosen because:
1. It is meant to be a tombstone for this father, who never got one.
2. It is meant to be his own tombstone, because this is his end-of-life work.
3. It is meant to be a tombstone for the tens of millions of Chinese who perished, and never got one.
4. It is meant to be a tombstone for the fall of strict Communism that wreaked so much havoc in China.
Of the philosophy of the book:
1. It's amazing that:
a. Something like this was even published.
b. That the author lived to tell about it.
c. That he is alive and *outside* of a Chinese black Jail.
d. It went through 8 printings in the Chinese inside of 2 years.
2. The author is EXTREMELY radical (by Chinese standards) in that:
a. He wants to actually learn from history so that the same mistakes are not repeated. (The first 15 years of Chinese history have been about the same as the last 2300 or so. People have ostensibly been some *EXTREMELY POOR* learners from history.)
b. He is willing to admit that this event happened so that the rest of Chinese can learn from it. (There is a great deal of collective Chinese amnesia.)
c. He is willing to allow the book to be translated into English. (The Chinese nation does not usually talk about internal problems for the same reason that a battered wife will not talk about what her husband does to her in public-- It's a "family affair"/ private matter.)
d. He wrote something that foreigners actually want to read. (It happens 10 times more often that contemporary English books are translated into Chinese than the way of this book [i.e., a contemporary Chinese book is translated into English because it has something to say]).
It's really hard to imagine something like this having a narrative stream (it doesn't have a great one), and in that way, Yang did an even better job than expected.
He also did us a favor by distilling much of the text that existed in the Chinese edition.
The original was about 800,000 characters and 1200 Chinese pages. (I have done Chinese translation work before and happen to know that it takes about 8 character for every 5 English words. But the number of pages of a given Chinese book is usually about 10% shorter than the same English book.)
The author and assistants cut it down to 500,000 characters--which was still too long. And here, it is cut down more again to 522 pages of English prose. A nearly 2/3 contraction from the original.
And he also does a yeoman's work just to compile and format all the voluminous Chinese language sources on this topic.
If I had to buy this book all over again, it would be worth about $8 to me plus shipping.
Verdict: Recommended.