Peking Story - Softcover

Kidd, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0517567121 ISBN 13: 9780517567128

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 1988

Synopsis

The author recounts his experiences living in China between 1946 and 1950, and shares his observations on the Communist Revolution

About this title

Review:

For foreigners who travel to Beijing...this book will give a new meaning to their understanding and enjoyment -- Nien Cheng, The New York Times Review of Books

Kidd's memoir has the dramatic sweep of Wild Swans and the besieged humanity of Anne Frank -- Tobias Jones, The Observer

Kidd's memoirs are a gripping slice of history, beautifully written -- Georgia Metcalfe, The Daily Mail

Peking Story is both a travel book and a unique historical record -- Michael Asher, The Guardian

The prose leaps off the page and cries to be read -- Judy Collins

About the Author:

David Kidd (1926-1996) was born in Corbin, Kentucky to a coal-mining community. He later grew up in Detroit, where his father became an executive in the automotive industry. In 1946, at age nineteen, Kidd made his first trip to Peking as a University of Michigan exchange student with one idea in mind: to get as far away from home as possible. He spent the next four years teaching English in the Peking suburbs. During this time, he married the daughter of a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, moving into her family's 101-room palace, where he had a uniquely intimate view of the Communist takeover. His account of his experiences was serialized in The New Yorker and published in book-form as All the Emperor's Horses in 1960, later retitled Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China. He returned to the US in 1950 and taught at the Asia Institute until 1956, when he moved to Japan. There he continued to work as a lecturer, became a devoted collector of Chinese and Japanese art and antiquities, and, in 1976, founded the Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts in Kyoto. He lived in Kyoto until his death of cancer at age sixty-nine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0517567121
• ISBN 13: 9780517567128
• Binding: Paperback