China is the most continuously great of the world's civilizations.
Egypt, Greece and Rome each dominated their known worlds but thereafter fell into steep decline. China has never been the greatest civilization but it has never fallen from the top tier because of its vast geography and immense population.
I took one course in Chinese history in my freshman year at college. That is the extent of my formal education on the subject. It was not a course of study that stimulated my interest in China, nor even a stirring lecturer in one class. It was the subject, for to be interested in China is to be interested in the world.
But it is so awfully far away and I had never seriously considered going. One Saturday evening in March 2006 my then girlfriend and I were relaxing over some drinks at her house. We began to talk about where we should go on our first big vacation together. We each nixed certain countries and kept others in play. I mentioned that I had always wanted to go to China.
We had another round of drinks and got on the computer "just to see." With each drink the distance to China seemed to shorten and Sunday morning we woke up the bewildered but excited possessors of reservations for two weeks in Beijing in June.
I was strictly a tourist in 2006 but never got out of Beijing, not even for the de riguer trip to the Great Wall. I became obsessed with the hutongs and my girlfriend and I spent our vacation walking these mazes and photo-documenting* them before they were all destroyed.
When I got back to America I went to a bookstore to get a serious book on China. Serious was the only criterion. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals Mao's Last Revolution had recently been published and was on the bookshelf. It was a big, thick book, from which I deduced it was a serious book and so I bought it.
That was the beginning of all this.
When I went back to Beijing in November 2008 I had a new girlfriend and a little knowledge of the Cultural Revolution. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and the urge to generalize from the specific is powerful. I was mindful of this danger with every sentence that I wrote here. Generalizations and speculation are clearly identified rather than presented ambiguously as if they might be fact. When my observations are consistent with those made by others I note that consistency. When I make a general statement it is only when I am sure in my own mind of its correctness.
*See posts June 25-July 2, 2006 here.
