Hermit of Peking
by Hugh Trevor-Roper
It’s a wonderful story of how the East and the West merge but never meet, about a gay man who set himself up as a kind of Caucasian emperor in China
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“It’s such a wonderful story of how the East and the West merge but never meet. China is so indirect, which allows for so much deception and shadow-play. It gets to the point where you just don’t know what’s real and what’s not real – whereas Westerners pride themselves on being honest and getting to the bottom of what’s really happening. The Chinese are constantly trying to maintain face. If you need to save face, you do whatever you have to do. The famous Chinese expression is “pointing to a deer and calling it a horse”.” Read more...
The best books on China and the West
Orville Schell, Foreign Correspondent
