Book review: In Manchuria by Michael Meyer
The author uses his personal connection to a tiny village called Wasteland to chart the larger history of the vast rural Chinese region
by Michael Meyer
Bloomsbury Press
China's vast rural areas are often forgotten in the glare of its monstrous and many cities, but much of the nation's history lives in those far-flung third-tier cities and farming villages sprinkled across the land.
Manchuria is such a place. The region has played crucial roles in multiple conflicts, including both world wars, and had a distinct identity before it faded into the mass of China, its history revised and erased.
In Manchuria by Michael Meyer retraces the region's past, showing the importance it played in history while suggesting where it may go in the future. Meyer does this by going on his own journey of discovery in what is now known as northeastern China, riding the rails and walking through dusty abandoned buildings in search of the few artefacts and remnants not destroyed by a nation eager to rewrite history, creating a well-written and engaging account.
Meyer writes a book of two stories, using a three-year stay in a dusty rice-farming village to tell a personal tale that creates an emotional connection with his wife's village of Wasteland, near Jilin, as it goes through a transformation typical of China's push towards urbanisation. The other tale is less narrative and more educational, with the author reaching back into history, both mentally and physically, to remind the reader what Manchuria once was.