Five books by Jonathan D. Spence

（介紹出生英國、落腳美國、研究中國的史學家史景遷的書。史景遷不太分析，不好道理，但是說了一手的好故事，把過去的人事物，大大小小或重要不重要，說得淋漓盡致，其實是相當了不起的功夫。）

In this interview, 'As luck would have it', the British American historian Jonathan D. Spence said, "History was somehow something that gave me an anchor in, admittedly, other people's lives", but he "wasn't prepared to generalise with no guidance...[he] wanted to have things shapeable...one could really organise these  events of the past in a different way". And he made a wonderful presentation with his one and only case, China.

Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K'ang-hsi (1974) is the one that changed Qing historical writing. Spence came to Taiwan in 1962 to study the unorganized or uncatalogued archives from the imperial court, including the handwritten papers by the emperor himself.

In this remarkable first-person narrative, K'ang-hsi comes alive from his papers and shows readers the way he governs, he lives and he rules among his many children.

What really surprises me about K'ang-hsi has also been raised by the author himself in the aforesaid interview, "I remember how strange it was that a man could be the son of heaven and you could control everything in the country except your own kids. Several of his sons were killed by [their own siblings]. And there we are getting near a story - why encourage some of your children to kill others of your children?" Yes, I am surprised why a man who could run a country but not his own house.

The Death of Woman Wang (1978) is the total opposite of K'ang-shi not in style, but in theme. After a history of the most powerful man in the land, Spence turns to a poor county in Northern China and a poor woman suffering from depravity and poverty.

In this Reading Guide to The Death of Woman Wang, the author explains very clearly about Spence's sources - Magistrate Feng K'o-ts'an's history, Feng's successor Huang Liu-hung's memories and P'u Sung-ling's story - and arrangement of the book. For others, the book is shedding light upon the social history, legal history, and women studies of early-modern  China; for me, it is yet another great example of how a historian may revitalize a negligible town through his diligence and craft.

From a country woman, Spence brings his readers to the life of one historian of the Ming dynasty, Zhang Dai, in Return to Dragon Mountain (2007).

To quote from Amazon.com, "Born in 1597, Zhang Dai was forty-seven when the Ming dynasty, after more than two hundred years of rule, was overthrown by the Manchu invasion of 1644. Having lost his fortune and way of life, Zhang Dai fled to the countryside and spent his final forty years recounting the time of creativity and renaissance during Ming rule before the violent upheaval of its collapse. [Spence's] absorbing tale of Zhang Dai's life illuminates the transformation of a culture and reveals how China's history affects its place in the world today".

While Zhang Dai was wondering and writing about the collapse of his dynasty in China, John Hu, the Chinese secretary / scribe who followed a French Jesuit, Jean-Francois Foucquet, all the way to France, found himself behind the bars, perplexed and fearful, trying to figure out why he was locked up.

In his blogpost, 'The Question of Hu' (July 30 2005), Stephen Frug borrows from Bruce Mazlish and John Updik to talk about two of his 'frustrations' over Spence's beautiful and engaging story.

First, "Spence doesn't speculate more about what he [the author] thinks was really true about Hu....[and] Spence should have done a bit more to enlighten the reader about Chinese culture issues that might have been at work".

Second and in relation, since  Spence actually does not sentence Hu to 'madness' in the book, readers like Updike (and Frug himself) can only "to accept the book simply as putting forward unanswered and probably unanswerable questions". It is in the end a mysterious story.

However, there is absolutely nothing mysterious about The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds (1998).

According to the Kirkus review, Spence is presenting a China of two faces, quoting sources from Marco Polo, Nixon, Kissinger, Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Marx, Weber, Twain, the French novelist Pierre Loti and the American writer Eliza Jane Gilbert. This book gives readers a grand China along side with a fleeting and inaccurate one. It is for"the ear that hears both what it wants and what it is expecting".

As far as I am concerned, I find in Spence a true writer to learn from. He does not play with jargon nor complex syntax. He is learned, but also very accessible. He is styled, but also very friendly.

As he shows, a past, no matter how far away from one's home culture, can be arranged in a way that speaks to all. He provides the visa to a foreign land that we call 'past'. I, too, would love to serve as the immigration officer to this wonder land.