About the Book
In the fall of 1964, sinologist Erik Zürcher travelled to China for the first time, a country he had been studying since 1947. A collection of Zürcher's personal writings from his trip, including letters and diary entries, Three Months in Mao's China offers not only new insights about the great scholar, but also a rich picture of communist China, which was in those days still almost completely inaccessible to Westerners. During a tumultuous time in world politics, as Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, Lyndon Johnson won the US presidential election against Barry Goldwater, and China became a nuclear power, Zürcher experienced the reality of China under Mao Zedong. Only recently discovered, these documents portray, viewed through an expert's eye, a land in the midst of its own massive political, social, and economic change. Both a fascinating account by an informed outsider and a reminder of just how much China and the rest of the world have changed over the last fifty years, this is essential reading for anyone interested in East Asia and Asian history as a whole.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, From Moscow to Beijing, Letter 1: Beijing, 24 September, Six weeks in Beijing, Letter 2: Beijing, 3 October, Letter 3: Beijing, 10 October, Letter 4: Beijing, 18 October, Letter 5: Beijing, 23 October, Letter 6: Beijing, 25 October, Letter 7: Beijing, 29 October, Letter 8: Beijing, 1 November 78 To Xi’an and Luoyang, Letter 9: Luoyang, 9 November, From Beijing to Guangzhou, Letter 10: Beijing, 14 November, Letter 11: Nanjing, 22 November, Letter 12: Suzhou, 29 November, Letter 13: Shanghai, 6 December, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, Letter 14: Guangzhou, 13 December, Letter 15: Guangzhou, 19 December, Letter 16: Hong Kong, Saturday 26 December
About the Author :
Erik-Jan Zürcher is director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, as well as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Turkish Studies at Leiden University.|Kim van der Zouw is an editor and translator.|Rob de Wijk is the Director of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and Professor of International Relations and Security at the Campus the Hague of Leiden University. He was previously a Professor in the field of International Relations at the Royal Netherlands Military Academy and Head of the Defense Concepts Department at the Dutch Ministry of Defense.
Review :
"This book provides a fresh perspective from a contemporary sinologist on Mao’s China and vividly recounts the effect of three months’ close observation on the enthusiasm and fantasies of a Western leftist regarding the communist system." - Woyu Liu, Nanjing University, Europe-Asia Studies, 70:9 (2018) "Zürcher's Three Months in Mao's China is an important source for scholars interested in the society and culture of the Cold War, and in everyday life and the politics of traveling in Mao's China. It also sheds much light on the Cold War generation of leftist Chinese observers. Thanks to the editors, Zürcher's rich and valuable comments on modern China are retained in this edited work. As a primary source, I recommend it to scholars and teachers of both modern China and Cold War history." - Zixian Liu (University of Toronto), H-Socialisms (May, 2018).
