The Great Wall: A Cultural History by Carlos Rojas Harvard University Press HK$220
Great myths deserve great books, and few more so than the Great Wall of China. The wall is a common trope in modern propaganda, often snaking behind photoshopped PLA soldiers allegorically guarding the frontier.
Often, the wall joins launching rockets, Tiananmen Gate fronted by those marble cloud pillars, and happy, colourful ethnic minorities in the cluster of symbols signalling a modern, prosperous, harmonious society on large billboards around China.
The notion of definitional boundaries underlies words such as guanwai - outside the pass, a dreaded fate for exiled officials - or guannei - inside the pass, where invading barbarians are decidedly unwelcome. The Great Wall name adorns bottles of local wine while its visual motifs grace the facade of the Sheraton Great Wall Hotel in central Beijing. Historians of 20th-century China have ably chronicled the wall's links to notions of nationalism.
Outside China, the structure has begat a few good one-liners - Nixon's 'It sure is a great wall'. Singers Billy Joel and Tori Amos, cartoon shows The Simpsons and Futurama, and Chinese restaurants from Montreal to Melbourne have all made mention.
Needless to say, the wall is a resonant icon in Chinese-foreign relations. After a series of raves frequented by foreigners left the wall's Jinshanling section trashed, the parties were banned amid a distinct whiff of xenophobia. Barbarian dignitaries received in the Great Hall of the People are often photographed with a Great Wall mosaic backdrop. All these constitute rich historical and symbolic material to mine for a cultural history of the Great Wall.
Unfortunate, then, that none are mentioned in The Great Wall: a Cultural History. This is a shame. Carlos Rojas is, by all accounts, well-liked by his students and colleagues at Duke University. Harvard University Press is a reputable academic publishing house. But there is simply no excuse for such painfully unreadable, weakly reasoned work. And whatever decent scholarship may lie beneath the obtuse prose is tainted by association with many specious claims and comparisons, and at least one egregious mistranslation.