NONFICTION - March 3, 1991

CATHAY: A Journey in Search of Old China by Fergus M. Bordewich (Prentice Hall Press: $19.95; 305 pp.) . We’ve seen so much of the square where China’s spirit was eviscerated that it’s a delight to have this opportunity to travel back to a time when the spirit flourished, when China saw itself as “the heart of civilization,” as Jan Morris writes in the introduction, “the fount of wisdom and source of power.” The voyage will be unfamiliar to the many Americans who studied Asia as merely a footnote to European history. But few civilizations have been more significant than the Sui and T’Ang dynasties, when the invention of printing (well before Gutenberg) led to new literary forms such as the novel and meritocratic innovations such as the civil-service exam. Unfortunately, the author opts for a travelogue writing style which allows the “grim, gritty, xenophobic” present to overshadow his sketchy evocations of the old China.