14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2008 • TAIPEI TIMES [ HARDCOVER: U k ] SUNDAY PROFILE Fat lady sings for the Third Reich We all know how the story ends, but the final part of Richard J. Evans’ trilogy brings it masterfully home

By Peter Preston The Observer, London In one narrow sense, the final book in Professor Evans’ magnificent trilogy is an anti- climax. We know who lost the Second World War. We know about Dunkirk, D-Day and Dresden. His first two volumes, on the coming of the Third Reich and its seizure not only of power but of the German psyche, seem more immediately relevant seven decades on than another account of the subsequent battles and bestialities. Yet, in an almost The Third Reich at War Wagnerian way, you need to see the madness complete; you need ByRichard J. Evans to watch Berlin burning, a pyre 926 pages of malevolent dreams. This is the fire Hitler built. This, crucially, is Allen Lane the history of his Reich set in its own obsessive context. This is Above: Hu Jia, right, a high-profile civil rights activist the end of the party. weeks of 1939. And, of course, who was jailed in March for three-and-a-half years by But that was probably always there were Jews; the Polish Jews Chinese authorities, smiles at his wife Zeng Jinyan. going to be the case. Evans tells of the Warsaw ghetto, then of Left: Hu Jia is pictured at his home in Beijing, while the 1944 joke of a naive young Germany itself. “The Jews have under house arrest. German looking at a globe of the deserved the catastrophe they are Right: Hu Jia displays photos of Chinese AIDS sufferers world: huge green swaths for the experiencing today,” Hitler told from Henan Province. photos: afp and reuters Soviet Union, pink for the British Goebbels in 1942. “As our enemies empire, mauve for the US. “And are annihilated, they will this blue spot?” he asks, fingering experience their own annihilation Germany. “Oh! Does the Leader ... We must accelerate this process know how small it is?” with cold ruthlessness, and in We’re used to other pens so doing we are rendering an portraying 1939 to 1945 as a incalculable service to a human Activist defies China’s panoptic glare titanic battle for survival between race tormented by Jewry for evenly matched forces, an equal millennia.” That service charge struggle we almost lost. It’s in cold statistics: three million far rarer to have the practical murdered in the camps, 1.3 million He has been detained at a secret site, subjected to house arrest and seen his wife and friends harassed by the situation clinically analyzed, killed by the SS, 700,000 disposed authorities, but Chinese dissident Hu Jia, winner of the EU’s top human-rights prize, refuses to be silenced to see how the Reich — in of in mobile gas chambers, weaponry, manpower, strength a million starved to death. and resilience — was always Incalculable, unforgettable infamy. By Bill Smith overmatched. Once surprise had Evans is history’s master of the DPA, Beijing banished inertia and Britain had Holocaust. He knows its macabre is name was familiar to US (曾金燕), from speaking to foreign him international attention and state security police from the avoided defeat in 1940, the Allies facts and figures; his Reich books President George W. Bush media and governments. several awards. party’s Central Political and were virtually inevitable victors; demonstrate in chilling detail how Hand Chinese President But Hu and Zeng did manage But after two “golden years” Judiciary Committee and taken and Hitler as military leader was German hatred and resentment Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) months before to testify by telephone to a of relatively open activism, the to a secret site, where he was a fantasist in thrall to his own for failure turned in on itself and he won the EU’s Sakharov prize European Parliamentary hearing climate began to change with the detained for 41 days in February illusions. World domination? millions of its own inhabitants; for human rights, yet just a few on China’s human rights record in arrest and harassment of AIDS and March 2006. “Germany’s economic resources he does not spare civil servants years ago China’s most prominent November last year. activists in 2005, he said. “They tied my hands behind were never adequate to turn these or doctors or scientists, or simple dissident was a largely unknown Hu’s activism began in the His own surveillance became my back, pushed me to the floor fantasies into reality, not even pillars of German society — they activist for the rights of people late 1990s when the economics a little more relaxed after the [of their car] and put a black when the resources of a large part knew what was happening, they living with HIV/AIDS. graduate volunteered to work on birth of the couple’s first child in bag over my head,” he said. “It of Europe were added to them.” shared the guilt. Worse, they saw Hu Jia’s (胡佳) international environmental projects. November last year. was just like a kidnapping by the The dream could never have it as part of their own war effort, reputation grew while he was In 2001, he began helping The Dalai Lama sent a Tibetan mafia.” come true. defending Germany against the forced to spend most of his time villagers infected with HIV/AIDS name for their daughter at their He believed the arrest was Never underestimate dark forces that had brought it confined inside his suburban through blood-selling schemes in request, he said, in a move that linked to his support for rights Germany’s sheer paranoia, though; down. Extermination was not apartment on the outskirts of the central province of Henan. can only have further angered the lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), for attack was also the Third some irrational spasm consuming Beijing in 2006 and last year. The following year, Hu and four Chinese government. who was convicted of subversion Reich’s deluded, defensive way a few lunatics in temporary power. Before his formal arrest in late friends had their first run-in with Hu is a practicing Tibetan in December 2006 but given a of vanquishing its enemies close It was deliberate and condoned, in December, Hu had spent most state security police who inter- Buddhist and Zeng met the Dalai suspended prison sentence. by and within. There were the its own surreal context. of the previous two years under cepted them and seized film after Photo: REUTERS Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, in Hu and Gao, who is believed Poles — “more animals than men, Only when Allied bombing virtual house arrest or other they traveled to Henan villages. his Indian exile in 2006. to be held under house arrest at totally dull and formless,” Hitler raids began to shatter its cities did forms of detention. The group took Christmas Hu and Zeng also released a secret location in Beijing, were declared, but still commanding Germany awake to the horrors it With no paid employment and toys and clothes to children [China’s] state a short documentary last year both nominated for this year’s German-speakers in former had unleashed upon itself. Only few visitors allowed, he used in poor villages that were about their surveillance, and Nobel Peace Prize. German territories. “If Poland when it looked closer did it begin his enforced isolation to act as decimated through AIDS spread security“ police threatened excerpts are now widely available Hu said that during his own had gone on ruling ... [here] for a to see the emotional cripples it had a bridge between foreign media by the illegal collection and sale on the Internet. house arrest he was constantly few more decades,” Hitler said, brought to power. and the growing number of rights of blood. us and said that AIDS “A week after our wedding expecting the fateful knock on “everything would have become Could it happen again, Evans activists across the country. “It seemed like the worst party, Hu Jia was put under the door that would mean the lice-ridden and decayed.” So “the asks. Could our cozy Euroworld Each weekday, Hu collected scenes of AIDS in Africa, with was a state secret. house arrest by the State Security authorities had decided to press sub-human people from the East” slither back into the cesspits and disseminated information old and young people infected,” police and after a month he charges against him. had to be routed, obliterated or of human behavior? Maybe not on rights cases and other issues Hu said. — Hu Jia, human rights” activist disappeared ... and there was no That knock came just 18 (if possessing blood good enough in any literal Nazi revival way in China via the Internet and “State security police news for 41 days,” Zeng said at days after Hu’s interview to make them a “leader class”) (though Austria provides scant telephone. threatened us and said that AIDS the start of the 30-minute film, was interviewed by Deutsche turned into Germans. comfort these days). But the He also learned the names was a state secret,” he said. dared to say that AIDS was a Prisoners of Freedom City. Presse-Agenturr. There were Gypsies, Ukrain- Third Reich also stands as a wider of many of the State Security Hu believes that China was state secret any more,” Hu said. The title of the documentary Despite appeals from the EU, ians, Czechs, the halt, the lame: all warning of what havoc “racism, officers who loitered outside his “lucky” to be shaken out of its “It gave us an opportunity to be reflected the irony of the couple’s the US and rights groups for his to be shipped away or shot. The militarism and authoritarianism” apartment every day. complacency on AIDS by the more open.” restricted life in a modern, release, a Beijing court sentenced SS cleared Polish asylums, made can wreak. In that sense Hitler’s Some of them remain scandal over a cover-up of cases His continued advocacy for low-rise estate known as BOBO Hu to three-and-a-half years in patients stand in line, then buried war against humanity never loses stationed there to prevent his of SARS in Beijing. the rights of people living with Freedom City. prison in March for “inciting them — 2,000 in a few brutal its awful force. wife, fellow activist Zeng Jinyan “After SARS in 2003, nobody HIV/AIDS in China brought Hu said he was seized by subversion of state power.”

[ HARDCOVER: U K ] Beijing: the city of lost history Longtime Beijing correspondent Jasper Becker uncovers the troubled recent past of China’s Olympic megalopolis and the destruction that was wrought to build it

By Bradley Winterton the BBC and the South China failed the government, and so it extravagantly evoked, and many persecuted by Red Guards. She mind of a reader living here. You’re Contributing Reporter Morning Post. He’s lived in Beijing was necessary for the government more recent topics are aired as shows him where the guard reminded, for instance, of the You might think that City of since 1985 — not continuously, to relocate them and replace them well, such as the death in 1966 of factions fought and where Jiang proliferation of Taiwanese fortune- Heavenly Tranquility, with its but for a large amount of the time, with more amenable subjects. writer Lao She (老舍), giving the Qing (江青) addressed the crowds. tellers and geomancers when subtitle “Beijing in the History of some 20 years in all. He knows Although it has been an feeling that the author is keen In his greatest coup, he tracks Becker writes about the Chinese China,” was a serene survey of one the city, both as it was and as important center since at least not to miss any opportunity to down the man who was almost Communist Party’s prohibition of the world’s great cities, looking — tragically in his eyes — it now is. the 10th century, Beijing hasn’t incorporate the fruits of his long certainly the last surviving imperial of such things in his chapter on at its history from its foundation to You even feel that it’s perhaps always been China’s capital. residence in the city into this eunuch, aged 96 when Becker calendars ancient and modern. its contemporary, post-Olympics Becker’s seniority that allows him The previous one (of several) book. Several of the chapters talked to him 12 years ago. He’d The obliteration of old festivals face. And you’d be right. These to give vent to some of the opinions was Nanjing, but in 1421 the read like interviews, or clusters arrived in the Forbidden City in and the destruction of former things are there, with the story in this book. He’s relentlessly charismatic Yongle (永樂) Emperor of interviews, or else trips the last days of the Qing Dynasty, sacred sites tolls like a death- excellently told into the bargain. critical of China’s authorities, moved the administrative center to see the vestiges of former but had nevertheless been knell throughout the book, but But there’s also another theme, for seeing the destruction of old Beijing north for what were essentially greatness in the company of retained right up until the final here it’s especially intense. He which even the full title doesn’t as a continuous process that began strategic reasons. So from life some interesting, though often expulsion of the eunuchs in 1924. cites Robespierre’s abolition of prepare you. At its heart, this book before the Cultural Revolution and in the lush world of the Yangtze cautious, local authority. Lean and unshaven, he bore little both Christian festivals and the is an appalled lament for one of the is still going on today. Could this delta the scholarly civil servants This is an exceedingly engaging resemblance, Becker writes, to the old calendar during the French greatest acts of historical vandalism book even be some sort of Parthian had to shift to a windy and dusty CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY book, with far more detail than “grossly fat, vain peacocks with Revolution, and both of course of modern times — the destruction, shot, a last dart flung over his northern plain, cold in winter and it’s possible to indicate here. rouged and powdered faces who have now returned to France. within the last 10 years, of a shoulders at those in power before hot in summer, and a city that had By Jasper Becker The past and the present leap cackle their way so prominently But this particular chapter ends gorgeous, resplendent, ancient city he finally quits the country? neither a seaport nor a major river out with equal vividness because through Chinese literature.” But with the eruption of Falun Gong 344 pages and its replacement by a hurriedly “In some ways,” Becker to serve as its transport terminus. Becker combines library research the old man’s memory was too in 1999. There is no question at erected modern megalopolis that writes, “the destruction of old Nevertheless, successive Allen Lane with a good deal of oral history poor for him to be able to tell the present of such believers being could, architecturally speaking, be Beijing and the eviction of its emperors made it into one of — seeking out individuals who author much. Becker gives lurid given any tolerance whatsoever. just about anywhere on Earth. residents can be considered a the most glorious cities on remember things and writing details of the castration process, But they represent a force As a China-based foreign collective punishment visited on Earth. Becker is very strong on the more terrible the destruction down what they tell him. He but whether they come from the of irrationalism that, Becker correspondent, Jasper Becker a population that had dared to this — essentially, I’m certain, that has been unleashed on it in finds, for instance, the wife of the man himself or from independent considers, could erupt and call into should know what he’s talking rebel.” He cites Bertold Brecht because he believes it, but also recent years is made to appear. famous architectural historian research is unclear. question everything that modern about. He’s been the Beijing writing after the 1953 uprising perhaps because the finer he The daily court routine Liang Sicheng (梁思成) who, at There are times when Taiwan Beijing appears to represent, and representative for the Guardian, in East Berlin — the people had makes the city look in the past, under the Yongle Emperor is Qinghua University, was severely is tacitly evoked, at least in the at virtually any moment.

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