LEGACIES: A Chinese Mosaic by Bette...

LEGACIES: A Chinese Mosaic by Bette Bao Lord (Fawcett: $10). Lord interweaves family history, her experiences as the wife of the U.S. ambassador to Beijing and a series of personal accounts from survivors of the Cultural Revolution in this exceptional book. Her elegantly understated prose contrasts the traditional Chinese reverence for parents, ancestors and scholars with the mindless excesses of the Red Guards’ 1966 campaign against the “Four Olds” (old ideology, old culture, old customs, old habits). The oral histories of the victims reveal the wanton destruction of human and natural resources wrought by the fanatic devotees of an illusory ideological purity. A doctor who devoted his life to serving Mao by serving his patients found his career twisted into a portrait of self-glorifing egotism: A Red Guard ringleader broke his thumb--ending the career of one of China’s most skilled surgeons--”with the same supreme indifference a righteous elder exhibits when snapping the bit of chalk filched by a naughty boy to doodle on walls.” The continued suffering of the Chinese people from these evils lead the author to recall the fable of an old man who lived in a remote forest where tigers devoured his children. When asked why he didn’t leave, he replied, “More ferocious than man-eating tigers is corrupt government.”