the Ugly Chinaman & the crisis of Chinese culture

(pictures of author Bo Yang and the cover of his famous book)

I had been looking for a copy of Bo Yang's "the Ugly Chinaman and the crisis of Chinese Culture" for the past couple of months without much success until recently when i finally managed to get hold of a used copy from my cousin in Kuala Lumpur who graciously couriered it to me. Bo Yang or Guo DingSheng his real name, is a mainland-born Chinese writer based in Taiwan who passed away on 28th April 2008. His works include a whole tonne of essays and not a few novels but he is best known for his book of the abovenamed title which was published in 1985 (translated into English in 1992)some 9 years after he had been released from jail in Taiwan for allegedly penning a "Popeye" cartoon parody of then Taiwanese president Chiang Kai Shek and his son and heir-apparent Chiang Ching Kuok. During prison Bo Yang had much time for reflection and so he wrote about what he thought to be the problems with Chinese culture. I have only read 20 pages of his book so far and i was laughing from page to page because what Bo Yang wrote was so very true and so very very funny. His observations of Chinese compatriots at home and abroad are humorous, witty and very honest. So influential was his book that the Chinese Communist hardliners on mainland China, following the quashing of mass student protests in Tiananmen square in 1986, used it as an excuse to purge Hu Yao Bang the former reformist Chinese leader because Hu had publicly encouraged people to read Bo Yang's book. This book is currently out of print and it retails on amazon.com used copy for US$99. My own enquiries have turned up various offers of pricey-ness ranging from $195 for a used copy from the USA (but cancelled because they wouldn't deal with Malaysia due to credit card fraud issues), RM350 for a used copy with scribblings on the margins and RM485 for a better conditioned used copy, the latter 2 from the UK and shipping to Malaysia another RM45. In the end, it was my own family ties that enabled me to finally read this book. But i do remember that this book was widely sold during the early to late 1990s, it was easily available in almost any English language bookstore you walked into. In his book, Bo Yang compares chinese culture to the soy paste vat. A soy paste vat is something very Chinese and in it the soy paste is left to decompose and ferment for sometime to yield the final product which is soy sauce. The metaphors and symbolism of Bo Yang's work are price-less and this is something that everybody who is interested in Chinese culture and things chinese should make as compulsory reading. But really no compulsion is required here as the book is extremely entertaining and easy to read.