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Book review time! This one doesn't count for my China Challenge because I actually read it in August. But if you wanted to, you could read it for your China Challenge!

Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party Ying Chang Compestine

This is an autobiographical novel of Chang's childhood during the Cultural Revolution. Starting in 1972, it tells of 8-year-old Ling, who watches in horror over four years as neighbors disappear, food becomes scarce, and suspicion rules the land. Throughout it all, she clings to a hidden picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and her surgeon father's stories of American Freedom.

While the story is a gripping account of a turbulent time aimed at middle grade readers (not really YA, despite the marketing) I have a small, but major, historical bone to pick. One which utterly ruins an otherwise wonderful novel.

If Ling was untouched by the Cultural Revolution until 1972, which is what happens in the book, she was truly blessed. In 1967, Wuhan (where the story takes place) erupted into full scale civil war with Red Guard fighting Red Guard. (While I'm sure such fighting continued in Wuhan sporadically throughout the Cultural Revolution, it seems strange to miss the 1967 fighting all together and instead place such events in 1976). The fact that her family's lifestyle--pearl necklaces, Voice of America broadcasts, English lessons, foreign novels, even celebrating Christmas Eve, survived the turmoil of the late 1960s (when Cultural Revolution furor was at its highest) until the early 1970s is, frankly, unbelievable. So is the fact that neighbors don't disappear and no one gets sent to the country side until 1974, which is when things were starting to wind down. Most of the action that is described in the book would have made much more sense in 1966-1968 ish. The fact that Ling somehow missed the first 8 years of the Cultural Revolution and was only aware of the last 4 is a bit like having a Holocaust novel set in Warsaw and nothing bad starts happening until 1941. The only thing that rings true for the the mid-1970s period is the scarcity of food and near starvation.

I was reading this and then flipped back to check the year again and I knew it was wrong. So, I put it down and looked some stuff up in Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China. I even ran to the bookstore to finally purchase a copy of Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals. As I was reading an ARC (provided by the publisher at ALA a few years ago in my role as librarian, not as blogger) I double checked the dates against the published copy and still... yeah.

Also, they were celebrating Christmas? The only reason you would celebrate Christmas in the middle of the Cultural Revolution is if you were deeply Christian, and then you'd think that would come up in a first-person narrative about it, but it didn't, so it was just... odd.

I would have really, really enjoyed this book if it started in 1967 or 1968. It would have been a wonderful book if it didn't have these timeline issues. I would be throwing this book at people, demanding that the read it, if the years at the beginning of each section were different. Sadly, they aren't, and so I have serious reservations about it and will instead point you to Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang.

Grrrrr.

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Last night we all jumped in the car after school and raced to Leeds to go and watch the beautifully crafted staging of Little Leap Forward. Adapted from the book, by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann and published by Barefoot Books, it tells the story of events from Yue’s own childhood set against Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.

A powerful combination of masked actors, puppets and shadow-box/animation, not to mention an atmospheric score and cleverly versatile set, the story is told “only” through mime. We followed Little Leap Forward’s dawning awareness of the importance of freedom, both through the political events unfolding around him and through his love for a songbird captured for him by his best friend. No matter how much Little Leap Forward coaxes and bribes with seeds, the bird cannot sing from within the confines of a cage. A “scary” dream sequence that had Little Brother on the edge of his seat alerts Little Leap Forward to what he has to do and he sets the bird free.

I have to say that this particular performance will be looked back on by us - and probably by the cast - with very mixed feelings. There was a group of children in the audience from a local School for the Deaf, who were entranced - picking up enough of the vibrations of the music to get a feel for it, and able to particpate fully in the action on stage. Wonderful. However, the first three rows were taken up by a youth-group outing and it very soon became evident that the children did not know how to behave in a public, live performance. All the more credit to the production, then, that in the scene when Red Guards arrest Little Leap Forward’s mother (an event related in Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s book for adults, Music, Food and Love), there was not a sound from the auditorium.

Afterwards, the four actors/puppeteers gave a short talk to these children (which we gate-crashed!) and again, they captivated their audience. I couldn’t help thinking what a pity it was that the children had obviously not had any sort of introduction to what they were going to see… I wonder how many would have liked to turn the clock back and engage with it more fully, once they’d had a chance to find out a bit more about it?

Little Leap Forward is on tour in England until 17 July - for further details, look here. In the meantime, watch this short video

and read the production blog. If you haven’t come across the book yet, watch this very moving introduction, narrated by Yue and featuring his magical flute-playing; and read our review, here on PaperTigers.

Little Leap Forward was definitely a production not to be missed: a big thank you to Nicky Fearn, Frances Merriman, Jonny Quick and Mark Whitaker, the faces behind the masks; and to Gemma Bonham of The Carriageworks, for an empathetic discussion afterwards.

* Photograph credit: Ian Tilton

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School is eating my brain. BUT! I did run into Susan today before class, which was great! I haven't seen her since... this fall? (Have we seen each other since Kids are Customers?) Also, because I blog everything I read, you might want to check this out.

I added a few new tracks to the MP3 widget on my sidebar.



Anyway, it's nonfiction Monday! So, today we're talking about...

Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution Moying Li

Li’s autobiography of her Beijing childhood starts with China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and quickly moves through the Great Famine to the Cultural Revolution. In middle school at the time the Cultural Revolution began, she sees many of the confusing actions of high school and college students. After her headmaster commits suicide, she returns home, only to find no safe place as her family and their associates are targeted and imprisoned, several dying. As Li ages and the events hit closer and closer to home, her understanding of what is happening grows.

The narrative focuses more on Li’s personal story and, with the exception of the death of Zhou Enlai, the history and politics are only brought into play when explanation is needed. However, some things could use more explanation, such as why Li’s parents, both Communist veterans of the Revolution, are targets for the Red Guard.

Li’s English is straight-forward and she tells her story simply and matter-of-factly. In text explanations, as well as a chronology and a glossary of the Chinese terms add to the accessibility of this title. The pages are scattered with Li’s family photographs, which show a young girl growing up while the text outlines the drama, fear, and chaos that surrounded her.

Overall, I'm going to say it's a good introduction to the Cultural Revolution, even though some other books go into greater detail.

Back when we did the Weekly Geeks #12, Dewey asked:


What did you learn about China's culture that surprised you in Snow Falling in Spring?

Um, nothing. This isn't because there wasn't a lot in there, but I was a Chinese minor and college and spent a semester in Nanjing and have read a lot on the Cultural Revolution, so aside from Li's personal story, there wasn't a lot new for me in the book. For people who don't have a huge background in Chinese history, I think there is a lot to learn. I especially enjoyed her memories of the Great Leap Forward--it's not something you see a lot.


Round up is at Picture Book of the Day!

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I know Terry Teachout reveres the stage version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at least as much as I do, but I can't entirely agree with him that Tim Burton's film version "is -- without exception, and by a considerable margin -- the best film ever to have been made from a Broadway musical." However, this is only because I think Bob Fosse's Cabaret is a more profound and innovative film. Fosse turned an awkward and mediocre musical into something newly rich and strange, and the camera work and editing in Cabaret remain breathtaking even after thirty-five years and oodles of CGI movies. Tim Burton simply had the task of not obscuring the brilliance of his source material. That he did more than that is something to be celebrated.

Burton has created what is certainly his best film in many years, and perhaps his best film yet, although opinions on that will depend on how much you prefer Burton's darker side to his goofier side. This Sweeney Todd is dark indeed -- dark in color palette, dark in tone. By cutting out the "Ballad of Sweeney Todd" segments from the play, Burton has removed the device that allowed the audience to keep a bit of distance from the gore and mayhem, and his ending is more that of a Jacobean tragedy than a Victorian melodrama, for the untainted purity and goodness of Anthony and Johanna is left more unresolved in the movie than in the play. (Did I miss the "Ballad" sections? Sure, because they contain some of my favorite lyrics, and I love the moment when Sweeney rises in the final one. But they're theatrical and would either have made the movie campy or Brechtian, and Burton wisely chose to go in other directions.)

This is very much a Tim Burton movie, and that's just fine, because Burton has tremendous respect for the original play, and his style is not one that is at odds with the source, although it certainly offers a different experience. He is a filmmaker with as distinctive a visual vocabulary as any director I can think of -- there is a continuity of imagery between many of his films, and at times Sweeney reminded me of Beetle Juice and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Batman Returns and Corpse Bride and, at the very least because of the razor blades, Edward Scissorhands. Indeed, Sweeney is the nasty Struwwelpeter underside of the sentimental sweetness at the core of Edward Scissorhands (which, I rush to say, is a movie dear to my heart). Sweeney's line upon getting his razors back -- "At last, my arm is complete again!" -- could be the cry of Edward after having grown up and lost his way for a while. We don't need to refer to Isaiah Berlin to know that some artists have many different styles and visions and others are masters of digging away at particular stylistic obsessions -- Burton, it seems to me, is the latter, with each new film a work unto itself, certainly, but also a work that offers variations on its predecessors' images.

There are a few moments of Sweeney that feel a bit long, a bit theatrical, a bit off (mostly with Anthony's song "Johanna", which generally comes off as silly in the movie because Anthony's passion is a shallow and ridiculous passion of love-at-first-sight, the sort of thing theatrical melodrama can absorb, but which is unintentionally funny on screen). For the most part, though, Burton's version works quite well as a film, making for a fine meld of gory gothic horror and movie musical.

I had heard enough clips of the singing online that I knew what to expect, but I wasn't sure how it would all fit together -- would it seem as thin as it does alone, or would the intimacy of the camera and the lushness of the production design compensate? Overall, I was perfectly comfortable with the singing, and I say that as someone who knows nearly every note of the score by heart. It's simplified in the movie, certainly, and has more the quality of a pop album than an operetta, but the only singer who really disappoints is Helena Bonham Carter, because the quality of her voice is so thin that, for instance, in her first song ("The Worst Pies in London") many of her words are lost beneath the orchestra. But she's a fine actor, and that matters -- I've seen productions of Sweeney Todd with excellent singers who are not particularly good actors, and it is a far more painful experience than productions with adequate singers who are excellent actors. (And her voice is just right, I think, for her later song "By the Sea", which is one of my favorite sequences in the movie.) Burton gets his actors to create vivid, over-the-top characterizations that are often mesmerizing. Johnny Depp is just about the best in the business at such characterizations, and many of the people who can give him competition for that title are in the movie, too: Sacha Baron Cohen, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall. Each sings, and each is at least competent -- the key is that they do what the best actors do, and throw themselves so deeply into their roles that how they sing becomes a vital part of the character. Timothy Spall's version of "Ladies in Their Sensitivities" is much less pretty than it usually is, but his characterization of Beadle Bamford is also far less pretty than the usual -- he is no self-important fop, but rather a rat-like creature, a lurking pustule of corruption. Johnny Depp's Sweeney lacks the bombast and rugged masculinity of most stage Sweeneys, and so his gentler, less forceful singing makes good sense for his character -- there is a creepiness to him that I've never encountered in Sweeney before, because usually he is presented as rugged, strong, forceful -- whereas Depp finds something else within him: not a vulnerability so much as the ghost of vulnerability, the shell of a man who was once too sensitive, who was nearly destroyed because of it, and who now maintains an obsession because nothing else will keep him from shattering into a thousand tiny bits of self. It lacks the complexity some of the best stage actors have found in the role, but it provides a unity the film needed.

In 1994, my father and I saw the glorious London production of Sweeney Todd at the National Theatre (with Julia McKenzie as a strong and multifaceted Mrs. Lovett and Adrian Lester adding more depth and the role of Anthony than anyone probably ever imagined could be there). My father didn't know the show at all, but likes horror movies, so I thought he'd enjoy it, and he did, saying, afterward, "That had more blood in it than any play I've ever seen!" I don't remember it being particularly bloody, myself, but it's one of those plays that, regardless of how much blood actually gets poured onto the stage, feels like a bath of gore. The movie, though, is full of blood right from the opening credits, but the notable thing about the blood is how stylized it all is -- Burton doesn't try to make the blood look realistic, but rather makes it very, very red, and the effect is both unsettling and beautiful. Perhaps unsettling because it is beautiful. The only truly painful moment of gore is one of the slightest and involves Pirelli's technique with a razor, strop, and Tobias's fingertips.

An interesting change Burton makes from the play involves Tobias, who is generally played as a dim-witted young man. Tobias in the movie is played by Ed Sanders, a young boy. It's a notable performance because it is so understated and sincere, the one character who lacks almost any trace of caricature in the movie. (It's interesting that this year two of the best American movies are musicals -- I'm Not There and Sweeney Todd, and both include startling performances by kids: Sanders here, and Marcus Carl Franklin in I'm Not There.)

I had hoped the film of Sweeney Todd would at least not cause me to cringe while hearing some of my favorite theatre songs sung on screen. I crossed my fingers that it might do more than that, and might even provide occasional moments of joy. It exceeded even those hopes. It was entertaining, entrancing, surprising, delightful, and emotionally affecting in ways different from, but not inferior to, the stage version. It is very much a work of art of its own, separate and different from the other iterations of the story and music -- which was my highest hope, the one I didn't dare dream of, because the chances of disappointment were so high. There was, though, no disappointment at all.

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The website for Sweeney Todd has just been updated, and it contains a number of audio selections. I'm hardly alone in being simultaneously excited by Tim Burton directing my favorite musical and skeptical of a cast made up largely of people who are not known for their singing.

The clips on the site, though, are heartening. Most are of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Neither will ever be mistaken for powerful singers, but they're not atrocious. (Alas, no Sacha Baron Cohen yet.) These versions of the songs are a bit thin on their own, and sometimes the actors get overwhelmed by the lush orchestrations, but I can imagine the songs working pretty well on film, which, thanks to the way the camera modulates the audience's proximity to the actors, can be much more effective as an intimate aural environment than live theatre (or maybe it's just me -- I hate plays where the actors are heavily miked, and I have more than once walked out of shows because of the sound design). Here's a fun YouTube comparison (audio) of four versions of Sweeney (Len Cariou, George Hearn, Michael Cerveris, and Johnny Depp).

The songs promise to be streamlined in the film, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, since most of the worst movie musicals are the ones that stick too faithfully to the stage version. I love "A Little Priest" in live performance, but if the whole thing were in the movie, the pacing would be quite a challenge, given how static and word-based the song is.

In any case, some of my fears about the movie being embarrassing or unintentionally cringe-inducing are allayed, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing Burton's visual interpretation of it all.

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