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C**H
Another Great Biography from Winchester
Winchester really is a magnificent writer. Although I am a bigger fan of some of his other works, this certainly fits well into the rest of his life's opus. Somehow he manages to cover bits of science, technology, philosophy, history, (his love) geology, archaeology, culture, politics and even uses his flair for travel writing with great ethos and pathos to tell an interesting story.Aside from the breadth of topics he covers while telling the story of one man's life's work, he writes about and discusses topics which should be part of everyone's personal cultural knowledge. As a small example, he makes mention of one of the real life archaeologists who served as a model for Indiana Jones - though sadly he only makes the direct connection in a footnote which many may not likely read.Though I had originally picked up the book out of general curiosity (not to diminish the fact that I'm on a quest to read every word Winchester has written), I find that it also neatly fits into providing some spectacular background on the concept of "Big History" (see Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library)) as it relates to China's place in the world. In particular "Needham's question" (briefly: Why, given China's illustrious past, did modern science not develop there after the 1500's?) turned around becomes a interesting illustration on the course of human history and the rises and falls of cultures and societies since the holocene.For those who may miss the significance, I was particularly impressed with the overall literary power imbued to the book by the use of the bookended contrasts of Needham's Chongqing at the opening of the work and modern day Chongqing at the close. This is one of the few times that the mechanics behind how Winchester, the master of telling often non-linear stories, has been patently obvious to me. I hope one day to unravel all of his other secrets. I can only imagine that in his heavy research of his topics, he somehow internally sees the ultimately magical ways in which he will present the information.I will note that, in contrast to some of his past works, this one had some better physical maps and photos to go along with the text, although I was highly disappointed in their unusuable presentation in the e-book version of the book. (Higher dpi versions would have gone a long way, particularly with the ability to zoom in on them in most e-readers.) For those unfortunate enough to have the e-book copy, I commend picking up a physical copy of the book for better interpretations of the photos and maps included.
L**T
Take the bird’s eye view
This is a light read book for the general public, not a scholarly in depth biography of a giant of a man. It is intended to be a page turner, not a reference book. In that, it succeeds.The reader, therefore, should not demand that it be what it is not. Yet, for all the hard work that went into doing this light biography, it could have done with a bit more information. For example, Needham claimed, and Winchester pointed out, that a seminal moment came when Needham observed a Chinese gardener grafting a tree. Needham saw that the way the gardener did the grafting was different from the way his own father had grafted trees and so wondered if the Chinese gardener’s technique was maybe centuries old. Personally, I would have liked a bit more information: what was the difference between the two methods of grafting? And why should the way the Chinese gardener did the grafting lead to a “seminal moment”, an eureka moment? This is just one example of where a little more information would have given the book a bit more heft, a bit more substance and, dare I say?, a bit more interest.On a couple of other topics: in 2023 we can see with more of a bird’s eye view. In the epilogue, Winchester described Chungking as it existed in 2008. Today, the grinding poverty and the overwhelming pollution of 2008 is something in the past, yet Winchester’s description is valuable to see how far China has come since 2008.Lastly, on the “Needham question “ of why Chinese inventiveness “stopped” since 1500/1600, here’s my birds’s eye view. The Ming Dyasty (1368-1644) started out with strong emperors but devolved into a somewhat bewildering series of mostly unremarkable emperors. The Ming Dynasty is also famous for the rise in power of the eunuchs over the “scholar” bureaucracy. To have “scientific research and development”, using “scientific “ in a very broad sense, there must be an educated class, which class was increasingly suppressed by the eunuchs who were interested in power not scientific development. So, much of the later history of the Ming Dynasty was one of internal strife caused by greedy eunuchs, external invaders, dissatisfied relatives,etc causing the Dynasty to slide further and further. Another cause (Ithink) was the huge expensive projects of the early Ming Emperors. Just think how much it would have cost to build hundreds of ships manned by tens of thousands of sailors and do this seven times. In addition, if one visits the Forbidden City in Beijing, that enormous complex of imperial buildings was an early Ming emperor’s project who moved the capital city from Nanking to Beijing. With such gigantic expenditures, these caused huge economic fluctuations over the centuries as the later Ming emperors tried to stabilize the economy.OTOH, the Ming dynasty is known for artistic development. Its ceramics grace many a Western museum. The “genius “ of development was in the arts - great ceramics, cloisonné, paintings, poetry - a new literary form, the novel, came into being. If you are captivated by Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee crime stories, they are based on a Ming dynasty work, even though there was a real Judge Dee during the Tang Dynasty.The Ming Dynasty was succeeded by the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). During the time of the first Qing Emperor, the great Kang Xi Emperor, the Manchus were engaged in an existential struggle against the Western Mongol Dzungars. Had the Dzungars won, the last dynasty in China would have been a Dzungar dynasty not a Manchu one. In the final campaign, Kang Xi personally led his troops against the Dzungars and defeated them definitively. So, the task before the first Manchu emperors of China was to consolidate their power- which they did with great success over a vast empire. As with the eunuchs during the Ming, any consolidation of power meant repression. One outcome, for example, was to require Chinese men to have pigtails. Repression to gain unity did not mean encouragement of development. The “genius “ therefore of the Manchus was not so much in scientific or artistic development but in governance. The early Manchu Qing emperors attempted to be the idealized “emperor to all his peoples” this meant being a Manchu emperor to the Manchus, a Mongol emperor to the Mongols, a Chinese emperor to the Chinese, etc. The enormous Buddhist canon existed and was translated into Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan and Uighur. Thus, the two largest “Chinese” empires were the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the latter lasted twice as long as the first.So, IMHO, the genius of invention and development doesn’t have to be solely in the scientific arena, but also in other arenas such as the arts and in governance.
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