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China Memoirs: Chiang Kai-shek and the War against Japan . By Owen Lattimore, compiled by Fujiko Isono. [Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991, 252 pp.]

The broad picture carries no surprises. The common view that the family or the lineage determined the norms and children had to conform to them is sustained. What becomes clear, however, is that many interpretations are possible even of this phenomenon. For example, a generally negative one shows that the individual had to be subordinated to the collective and be obedient to authority; a more positive one at the other extreme would argue that the family was diffuse and tolerant and provided protection for its members to develop their talents and seek their own fortunes. This careful study bring out all the nuances in between the two views. Particularly significant is the author's choice of period: the 30 years from 1890 to 1920 have long been recognized by modern historians as a major turning-point in China. How Chinese children grew up during these years could tell us something about how momentous the changes to China really were. At the same time, it could show us if the impact of events on the childhood of that generation contributed to the turbulent political development that followed. The various accounts are helpful and suggestive but, given the wide range of experiences recorded from many provinces and from different family circumstances, it is not surprising that no conclusions can be easily drawn. Nevertheless, the information about changing relationships between children and their parents and other members of the lineage, and between children and their tutors, their teachers at school and their schoolmates, under conditions both of privilege and adversity and in the face of new ideas and institutions, is most illuminating. The idea that "conformity to group expectations had to be learned, and most Chinese children, like children elsewhere, were imperfect learners" (p. 235) certainly helps us understand why simplistic statements about childhood in China are misleading. There had always been room for personal development in the traditional elite and peasant family framework because there were many variables and because most families were geared to deal with sudden and undesirable changes in fortune and attempted to educate their individual members to expect such changes. The author dealt fully with children from literati families and admitted it was difficult to cover the childhood lives of the peasant majority. That is understandable. One major disappointment, however, is that he does not seem to have found specific material about growing up in merchant or trading families. Whether experiences in such families might have produced variations to the general picture or not could be of special interest to our current concern with the nature of Chinese entrepreneurship. But there is enough in some of the accounts quoted to suggest what successful merchant families might have done to keep up with mandarin/literati elites.