Ying ruocheng autobiography books

By Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceisen

Reviewed by Ross Terrill
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright March 2010)

The Chinese actor and director Ying Ruocheng (1929-2003) was a genuine article, funny, honest, self-aware, not a complainer. He stands as one of the beacons of PRC cultural life. A Manchu, a Catholic, with eminent grandparents and a host of Western friends, Ying nevertheless lived on a knife edge of danger from capricious political winds. Voices Carry is a sobering book in that even well-connected Ying, long after Mao was gone, and while vice-minister of culture from 1986 to 1990, had to navigate political currents. As an unabashed pro-Westerner, he was recurrently suspect. But, undaunted, he tells us at the end of his story: “In my mind, the new ideas all came from the West” (p. 186).

Few memoirs by public figures published in China are candid. Voices Carry is an exception.[1] The book is a gem, not to be missed by any student of Chinese