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Bezig met laden... Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's Chinadoor Patrick Wright
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. And a very British history of the mission it is too - and to be honest its not immediately clear why Patrick Wright would go into such detail about the 3 British missions to China in the mid 50s encouraged by the "come and see" invitation of Chou-En Lai . To be honest I thought it would be funnier and whilst its extremely well researched, some of the characters are interesting (Stanley Spencer and his insistence on wearing pyjamas below his suit) and some of the behaviour eccentric (predictable over indulgence in alcohol at Chinese banquets in particular) what the teams mainly do is spend a very long time getting to China via Russia and most of central Asia, and then go on lots of tours of tractor factories and the ilk before getting drunk at official banquet. All a bit dull, predictable, very British but not eccentric enough, ( ) geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
President Nixon's famous 1972 trip has gone down in history as the first great opening between the West and Communist China. However, eighteen years previously, former prime minister Clement Attlee had also been to China to shake Chairman Mao by the hand.In the second half of 1954, 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 celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Communist victory. In this delightfully eclectic book, part comedy, part travelogue, andpart cultural history, Patrick Wright uncovers the story of the four British delegations that made this journey. These delegations included an amazing range of people from the political, academic, artistic, and cultural worlds of the day: Clement Attlee and his former Health Minister, Nye Bevan;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 famously lectured Chou En-lai on the merits of his hometownof Cookham, but who emerges as the unlikely hero of the story.Using a host of previously unpublished letters and diaries, Patrick Wright reconstructs their journey via the USSR to the New China, capturing the impressions - both mistaken and genuinely insightful - of the delegates as they ventured behind both the iron and the bamboo curtains. Full of comicdetail of the delegates and their interactions, it is also a study of China as it has loomed in the British mind: the primitive orient of early western philosophy, a land of backwardness that was used to contrast with the progressive dynamism of Victorian Britain, as well as the more recent allureof revolutionary transformation as it appeared in the minds of twentieth century Britons. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)327.41051Social sciences Political Science International Relations Europe British IslesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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