I'm reminded of the magnificent last lines of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude:"
[Aureliano] had already understood that he would never leave . . . races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Huang's 1587: A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline argues that the demise of the Ming dynasty was evident even in the apparently unremarkable events of 1587, the Year of the Pig. More, these events are rooted in the very nature of Chinese history and culture. The question he tries to answer has haunted China for years and haunts it still: what went wrong?
The book is divided into chapters, each detailing the life of a historical figure that lived during the Ming dynasty. All of these people, all men, were foiled in their ambitions; all would likely have considered their lives failures. Huang goes further and highlights how absurd their milieu was and efforts were. Indeed, there's an element of farce in the few pages with which Huang opens the book -- officials rushing on a false rumor to the Forbidden Palace to hold court for the Emperor. It is impossible, in hindsight, not to thread this sense of farce through all these life stories -- the absurd rituals Grand-Secretary Shen Shih-Hsing needed to execute to do accomplish even the smallest administrative tasks, the pathetically provincial military "innovations" of Ch'i Chi-Kuang, the pedantries of Li Chih and other Confucians trying desperately to justify an outdated philosophy. Each of the men Huang highlights wanted to change their world, but none could; none even attained anything approaching heroism in their failure. Perhaps appropriately, the book ends with an elderly man in his seventies committing suicide in prison - a desperate and futile final act.
[Aureliano] had already understood that he would never leave . . . races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Huang's 1587: A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline argues that the demise of the Ming dynasty was evident even in the apparently unremarkable events of 1587, the Year of the Pig. More, these events are rooted in the very nature of Chinese history and culture. The question he tries to answer has haunted China for years and haunts it still: what went wrong?
The book is divided into chapters, each detailing the life of a historical figure that lived during the Ming dynasty. All of these people, all men, were foiled in their ambitions; all would likely have considered their lives failures. Huang goes further and highlights how absurd their milieu was and efforts were. Indeed, there's an element of farce in the few pages with which Huang opens the book -- officials rushing on a false rumor to the Forbidden Palace to hold court for the Emperor. It is impossible, in hindsight, not to thread this sense of farce through all these life stories -- the absurd rituals Grand-Secretary Shen Shih-Hsing needed to execute to do accomplish even the smallest administrative tasks, the pathetically provincial military "innovations" of Ch'i Chi-Kuang, the pedantries of Li Chih and other Confucians trying desperately to justify an outdated philosophy. Each of the men Huang highlights wanted to change their world, but none could; none even attained anything approaching heroism in their failure. Perhaps appropriately, the book ends with an elderly man in his seventies committing suicide in prison - a desperate and futile final act.
The farcical elements are one of the strong points of the book, they're part of what makes it so compelling. Didn't finish it yet, but so far it's been like a novel, almost, really readable, and so much I didn't know... Absurd rituals have come up already, too. Gosh, seriously.
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