Author Description

Long before the Pacific War broke out, the Chinese were at war with Japan. China traded land for time against an enemy militarily her superior. She traded, too, destruction, starvation, and countless lives. Robert Payne's Chinese Diaries are a vivid and perceptive account of what it was like to live in China during the agonizing days following Pearl Harbor, when that vast and stricken land had been severed from the Western world and the only means of entry was by air. His memoirs resemble an enormous fresco in which he is both observer and participant. But this is a Chinese fresco: the brush strokes are delicate; the colors are subtle; the landscape is deceptive and seemingly peaceful. Payne spent most of the war years in Chungkinig and Kunming, cities that were never captured by the Japanese, but the war was by all odds the dominant fact of Chinese life, and hatred of the Japanese ran deep. China was herself divided, and the author shows how bitterness between the Communists and the Kuomintang reached into every community. Payne has the eye of a painter. He can describe the loveliness of a plum tree against a wall. He can see the strangely balanced proportions of a bombed city. He conveys the poignancy connected with viewing a dead soldier's few belongings, or the peace that comes from watching ageless peasants planting rice. There are many vignettes and interviews with Chinese leaders, but, above all, Payne was concerned with the students and the ordinary people of China, those who survived that catastrophic time. He has created a memorable picture with the love of one who has lived in China and knows her in all her moods.