Metamorphosis of Rural China: In Manchuria!

IN MANCHURIA: A village called Wasteland and the transformation of rural China. By Michael Meyer , Bloomsbury £20

Michael Meyer’s In Manchuria explains the modernisation of Chinese community and cites a case of a rural farming village metamorphosing into agronomy business company town. He describes places and people including a man who claims to be the first Chinese to be abducted by an alien. He also visits from wasteland to Changchun, a city whose architecture is influenced by Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

 

Mr. Meyer moved to his wife’s home village near Jilin. When he visited the government office to ask about its past, the clerk directed him to a stone outside, on which was carved: “Wasteland: In 1956, it became a village.”

In Manchuria is not a work of history although, it contains gripping narratives from the past, and is fine book to lose yourself in a cold winter’s night. Imagine yourself in a Manchurian farmhouse become fond of burning rice stalks or on a hard-seat train echoing across the landscape.