David Kidd (1) (1927–1996)

Update: Dear David Bowie fans, yes indeed, this book was retitled Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China. So if you're having trouble finding it, try looking for the other title.

I loved this book! It's the true story of a very young American man living in China who marries into an aristocratic Chinese family shortly after the Maoist revolution. For generations the Yu family has been living a life of elegance and splendor in their mansion which is crammed with antiques and gardens. But the writing is on the wall that their customs, their money, and their ancestral home are all coming to the end. As an outsider/insider, David Kidd poignantly shows the end of a very long era. There were many funny and sad incidents, each so strange they could never have been imagined.

I'll give you one highlight from the book that takes place in the very beginning and is not very spoiler-y: David and his bride Aimee were eager to marry immediately, because her father was dying and after his death mourning custom would make them wait for a year. But the American consulate recognized neither Chinese civil marriages nor marriage ceremonies of any religion other than Christianity. However no Christian church in China was willing to sanction an interracial wedding. Not to mention that the bride's family only wanted a Chinese wedding. Luckily, the janitor at the consulate had a brother who was a Chinese Christian minister. Not only that, the minister could even say one sentence in English ("I am Reverend Joseph Feng.") Saved! One of David's friends who was present at their wedding was William Empson, the English poet and critic.

One thing that I really liked about this book was that it was NOT racist, which is what I would have expected from a 1960 white man's memoir about 1940's China. I got a faint sense that David Kidd thought he was better than everyone else, but there are many possible reasons for that. To the extent that the story was about him and not what he observed going on around him, it was actually the story of an arrogant person who is humbled and changed. The edition I read had a preface by John Lanchester, which I thought was very appropriate because David Kidd reminded me of the protagonist of Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure--cultured, wry, more interested in beauty than a typical person is--not unhinged or murderous, though.

Since I first heard about this memoir through David Bowie's top 100 books list, I have to mention the most Bowie-esque part. At a party, one guest was "attired as a Mongolian princess, complete with oiled black hair encrusted with coral and turquoise, an arranged over a frame of what looked like horns." An English guest exclaims over the costume, and David Kidd informs him that it's no costume, she really is a Mongolian princess. Intrigued, the English guest asks the princess for a dance. "I hadn't the heart to tell him that the Mongolian princess was really a Mongolian prince."

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Dear David Bowie fans, I think this book is included in or is the same as Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China, which is much easier to find. I'll let you know if I find out for sure.… (altro)

L'autor ens explica en primera persona la desaparició de l'imperi xinès tradicional per l'arribada del comunisme. Casat amb la filla cinquena d'una família aristocràtica, els Yu, ens explica com, amb la revolució comunista han de readaptar-se, com això incideix en el seu fer, els seu patrimoni, treball, relacions personals, consideració social i control policial.
Sense jutjar les bondats de la tradició, lamenta el final del refinament xinès per donar pas a la "practicitat" del règim comunista.
M'ha agradat molt l'obra (com la traducció, preciosa, fluïda, rica en vocabulari i en girs) i entenc que és molt recomanable per qui vulgui saber més dels valors de la Xina imperial i de la seva transformació en la Xina comunista.… (altro)

Bellísima autobiografía que capta el final de la China milenaria por la llegada de la revolución. Sin saberlo, David Kidd se convertiría en testigo de una época excepcional. Dejando atrás Estados Unidos, vivió en Pekín desde 1946 a 1950. La llegada de los comunistas le hizo comprender de inmediato que el mundo donde vivía estaba destinado a desaparecer. Este es su testimonio, el de su vida en la gran mansión de una familia adinerada, rodeado de las tradiciones y ritos de un mundo elegante y refinado. La vieja China desaparecida queda fielmente reflejada en estas memorables páginas.… (altro)

En la capital de China vivió Kidd cuatro años intensísimos, incluyendo los que vieron la llegada al poder de Mao, durante los cuales estudió en profundidad y con una pasión desbordante la cultura china: su literatura, pintura, música, teatro...

Además, en aquel periodo se casó nada más y nada menos que con la hija de una rico aristócrata chino, y en el transcurso de dos años que abarcaron justo antes de la revolución comunista y justo después, vivió con su mujer en la mansión familiar pekinesa. La revolución maoísta suprimió de un plumazo todas las antiguas tradiciones, casi toda la cultura antiquísima del milenario imperio, casi todas las formas antiguas de vida chinas. Sin embargo Kidd dejó por escrito sus recuerdos e impresiones de aquel mundo refinado, antiguo como la propia humanidad, que se derrumbaba ante sus ojos y que desapareció para siempre tragado por las fauces de la historia. Esos recuerdos se publicaron por vez primera en 1960 con el título de All the Emperor’s Horses (Todos los caballos del emperador), y volvieron a aparecer casi treinta años más tarde, en 1988, revisados, con el título con el que lo han hecho en español, Historias de Pekín.… (altro)