A Village with My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World

A Village with My Name: 5 stars is not enough! Scott Tong has an amazing ability to combine a time in China with facts, feelings and word pictures to give readers deep appreciation for honor and hardship, for acceptance for what is, and for hope of what might come. He presents real people in his family, many of whom are outside the mainstream of daily living in the remote Tong village to share journeys necessitated by political and personal challenges. He eloquently describes the profound impact of their impossibly difficult decisions made permanent over time.The roads through China, the shared memories which give windows of understanding and appreciation of a very difficult voyage through life creates a vibrant mural of Chinese daily living that has been a mystery hidden for decades.Mr. Tong moves through the stories of family members and acquaintances with agile ease and connected interest. He moves through time and place with an extraordinary ability to tell a well-blended detailed story of five generations of family history. He tells of his great grandfather Tong Zhenyong who went to Japan and returned to save the Tong villagers during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930’s. The story continues with Grandfather Tong Tong who sided with the Kuomintang and escaped to Taiwan. The family he left behind was ostracized and humiliated during the rise of the Communist government. He tells of a progressive grandmother, Mildred Zhao, who ran a primary school in Shanghai, who along with her husband Carleton Sun was considered to be too Western. She escaped to Hong Kong with her daughter (Mr. Tong’s mother), and her husband, Carleton was arrested as a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to Mao’s gulag—a hidden national secret which Mr. Tong describes in detail. His grandfather died there. Family members of so-called enemies of the state were shamed and punished as well as for the departures of Grandfather Tong Tong who escaped on an overcrowded boat to Taiwan with his son (Mr. Tong’s father). The story ends with a commentary of the adoption of the author’s daughter from an orphanage that he later learned was into baby trafficking.Scott Tong’s stories reveal the hurt and shame felt by those on the edge—those who stayed behind, those who left for America, as well as those with unfulfilled dreams who sought to leave, but were thwarted, particularly his grandmother Mildred. Family members who remained in China were blamed and persecuted for the efforts of their family members. The pain was felt by all, many of whom still do not want to relive the anguish of the past. The story ends with an optimism for the future with the story of the author’s daughter.Mr. Tong relates his story with insights into Chinese language and cultural traditions giving us peeks into daily living while China is transforming itself into a modern culture. It is a culture in which there is opportunity now for woman and young people who while trying to transcend the restrictions and secrets of the past, face an inexplicable future in a China that continues to define and redefine itself as it becomes a major force in the Twenty First Century.

The second part of the title gives more of an idea about the book than the first. As a Chinese American, the first part of the title was intriguing, but I learned a lot, as did the author, about how China's political history affected his ability to learn about his family, and how it may/will affect the real history of people in China as the truth is suppressed and may disappear. I remember hearing hints of the Japanese invasion from my parents and this book confirms those stories. Well worth reading.

“This story has to be told in a real way --- setbacks, infidelity, arrests, labor camps --- to humanize what so many people have overcome. It has to be real.” With this determination, Scott Tong has told his readers a captivating and touching story of his family through the stores of five generations, both his paternal and maternal sides, covering a period of about one and a quarter century from the late 19th century to the beginning of 21st century. More than a family story, what Scott Tong has painted is also a sketch of China and Chinese people in general during this period, with some of his family members as the “actors” of many interconnected episodes. In less than 300 pages one would read a simplified, yet encompassing, history of an ill-fated and weak China’s struggle to restore itself as told or experienced by some members of Scott Tong’s family. It is a family story as well as a national history.The story begins with Scott Tong’s paternal great-grandfather who joins, at the turn of the 20th century, the wave of Chinese young people who are determined to learn from the West or its proxy - Japan the new knowledge to restore China. His grandparents live the period of resistance against the Japanese aggression and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. The individual decisions made by the grandparents during this turbulent times give rise to very different consequences on their lives and their children. Each of them typifies the fate of a rather representative segment of the intellectuals at that time. Scott Tong’s parents transplant themselves in American and have led successful careers and comfortable lives. Scott Tong, the relentless protagonist of family root searching, born and raised in America, spends a few years in China as a foreign correspondent. His adoption of a Chinese girl is a story of China’s one-child policy from the specific angle of adopting Chinese baby girls, mostly by American families.Scott Tong, a noted reporter of Marketplace, has written the book with his journalistic skills and perspectives. His story telling is insightful, objective, yet entertaining, and approachable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand and appreciate what China, now the second largest economy in the world, has gone through in the last and quarter century; it is a story told by the personal experiences of some of Scott Tong’s family members.

I have lived and worked in China for about 7 years. The reason that this story is so remarkable has nothing to do with his family story being remarkable because, I can assure you from reading about 100 college student essays about their family histories, his story is not remarkable at all.What is remarkable is his dogged determination, his tactics, his research and the well earned success of all of these together brought to this book.When my students go home for Winter Holiday, I plead with them: please do NOT let your grandparents die until you have written down their life stories. For many different reasons their stories are not written down (or even discussed) and even many of my students, upon actually pressing their grandparents for their histories have thanked me, they had no idea what their own family went through; and sometimes, their grandparents refuse to answer and say "the past is the past...".If you want to understand the last 70 years in China from the inside out, this is a great book to read. Or, if you just want to see some great research and journalism, that too is a good reason to read this book.