In Eldest Son and the Making of Modern China, Han Suyin brings this towering figure to life in a profoundly human and intimate biography of the late premier. Between 1956 and 1974, Suyin conducted a series of 11 personal interviews with Zhou, each lasting for several hours. Drawing upon these discussions, and also based on further meetings with Zhao’s widow, Deng Yingchao, his family and colleagues, as well as Suyin’s unusual access to the Communist Party archives, she presents an intimate portrait of this deeply committed Chinese nationalist and Communist leader.
Zhou's remarkable life - from his early schooling in Japan and Europe; his complex and loyal relationship to Mao; his historic meetings with other world leaders such as Khrushchev, Nehru, and Nixon, which eventually opened China to the global community - are all documented in this book. And Suyin offers the reader both the private man as well as the public figure, touching on Zhao’s loving and formative marriage to Yingchao, the murder of his adopted daughter at the hands of the Red Guards, and ultimately, his painful battle with cancer.
In a nutshell, the readers get to understand that Zhou's life is the history of modern China. Through the lens of his experience, they also get a glimpse of the unfolding of the dramatic, sometimes violent, decades of change in China. Including the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the galvanising of the agonising Long March, the war with Guomindang and the Japanese, social convulsions of the Great Leap Forward, the violent and cruel excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and the diplomatic rapprochement with the West in the 1970s.
Suyin manages to weave these decisive events in her own inimitable writing style with snippets, impressions and memories of hundreds of ordinary citizens from every sector of Chinese society that she had managed to talk to, to create a rich historical tapestry.
Eldest Son offers not only a fascinating insight to Zhao’s life and his success but also of his political failings and weaknesses. This is both the story of Zhao and also that of a nation in turmoil, searching for an identity.
Compellingly written and unique in its perspective, Eldest Son and the Making of Modern China is a useful historical text and a portrait of a legendary leader whose political legacy continues to influence the course of China today.
• Check out Han Suyin's bio @ Biography.