China memoir? History book? Love story? Why not all three? Michael Meyer argues that “perhaps no other region has exerted more influence on China across the last 400 years” than Dongbei, the northeastern region that was once called Manchuria. He travels and chases parts of recent history that have been almost rubbed out, and has done his research – there’s an impressive bibliography at the end.
But it’s what brings him there that makes In Manchuria different. As “a sort of connubial quid pro quo,” Meyer decides to live for a while in his wife’s hometown, a Jilin Province village called Wasteland (Huangdi).
This is hardcore rural living, with freezing winter winds gusting through window panes while he huddles on the kang – and then there’s the outhouse. His morning trip in the depths of winter is “the worst part of the day.” Most of all he misses his wife, who Skypes him from her job in Hong Kong every day.
But he thrives there. He loves Dongbei people, who have firm handshakes, look him in the eye and don’t spend the whole time telling him how good his Chinese is; and he loves the “beautiful and unique” landscape.
So this is really two books. One is a lovely depiction of a tight community where people ask what family he belongs to rather than whether he has eaten; where he causes offense and is forgiven without ever knowing why; where “one rule of the Chinese countryside is that the more peaceful the surroundings, the more noise people make.”
He’s a witty, close observer of conversation, particularly the local habit of leading chat to what he calls “The Island of Prices, where so many villagers liked to drop the conversational anchor and spend some time.”
The other is a study of the region, which the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty first reserved as their own. In the 18th century Han refugees were resettled there, and later a Russian land grab shrank the territory. The Chinese Eastern Railway between Vladivostok and Harbin made the latter a thriving international port with a significant Russian influence, while the Japanese and the Russians fought each other on and off over the territory.
In one of many appealing little details, author Jack London was sent to cover the war – stuck in Seoul, he moaned, “I’ll never go to a war between Orientals again. The vexation and delay are too great.”
In 1931, the Japanese invaded and annexed the region (Puyi, the last Qing emperor, was their hapless puppet ruler), and the fertile soil and coal reserves were key to their war effort to the very end. Settlers came again, in the form of over 200,000 Japanese farmers and their families – tens of thousands of whom died when the war turned and the Soviet army swept through from the north.
And the suffering wasn’t over. The region saw one of the most horrible events of the Chinese Civil War, with the siege of Changchun leading to mass starvation.
While rural areas like Wasteland were spared the worst of the Cultural Revolution (“this is not that China book,” the author makes clear), it’s never been an easy place to live. And let’s not forget those bitter winters: “The Japanese, the Soviets? They were expelled. The cold returned every year.”
The geopolitical back and forth and the tussling by three great powers for control are compelling. Life in Dongbei is infinitely better now, but nothing ever stands still in China: While Meyer lives there, an agricultural conglomerate starts buying up land and persuading locals to move into modern apartment housing. Meyer covers this well, avoiding pat conclusions and making it clear that the people of Wasteland have their own minds.
But the book has one more aspect – it’s also a thoughtful and sincere love story, a personal element that could have made it cringe-worthy but instead helps us understand what draws Meyer to the region.
Anyone who’s read Peter Hessler’s River Town, justly celebrated as one of the great books about modern China, might remember that he lived in the town of Fuling with another Peace Corps teacher. Michael Meyer was that teacher, and this is his second excellent China book, after his account of hutong living in The Last Days of Old Beijing. It’s extraordinary that two such sensitive and talented writers were thrown together in the same place at the same time.
This is a lovely book, a sweet depiction of love and commitment with a moving ending. The fact that it’s also a fine introduction to a part of China that is more culturally distinct than we realize, and that has been the site of such struggle, makes it one of the most approachable and gripping China books we’ve read for a long time.
// In Manchuria (Bloomsbury Press) is available on Amazon. For more, check out our interview with Meyer.
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