1222 Mao, the unknown story

Have you ever picked up an old notebook or pad of paper and read through the notes? We keep a small notebook here at the Lakehouse for writing messages, only a few notes are written each summer, so we forget what they are about. My husband was flipping through it puzzling at the cryptic messages, some clear, some not:

Chicks, turn on radio, Studs.
We’re at art center. Back by 12.
Video tapes for print machine 421-7591
Buns chips brats burgers chips salad strawberry
Gone to library to return book. Keep cat out of bedrooms so she can’t hide.

And finally

Wild Swans. Est. 30,000,000 died in famine 1958-1962. Peasants pulled off land to work in steel.

What’s that one all about, he asked. I had to stop and think a minute, then remembered that Wild Swans was a book I was reading here at the lake maybe in the mid-1990s about China. My summer reading never seems to be light. It’s definitely one that should be on Senator Durbin’s short list. The author Jung Chang grew up in China and Wild Swans is about her life. In her new book, Mao, the unknown story, she writes:

“I decided to write about Mao because I was fascinated by this man, who dominated my life in China, and who devastated the lives of my fellow countrymen. He was as evil as Hitler or Stalin, and did as much damage to mankind as they did. Yet the world knows astonishingly little about him.” (Publisher’s note)

The issue of Far Eastern Economic Review June 2005 which contains the book review by Jonathan Mirsky of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang, Jon Halliday and Jonathan Cape has been banned in China, where a dead Mao is still ruling from the grave. Wall Street Journal article comments on this ban.