Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China

"It may seem that I’ve chosen this book just to have something by a leading figure in China scholarship, and Joseph Esherick has written decades’ worth of extraordinary, extraordinary books. He’s about 80 now and he’s published not just one but two books in the last twelve months. His other book, which I can’t wait to teach, is a collection of essays he’s written over the decades . They’re brought together into a collection for the first time and what he does—that’s rarely done when people do these ‘greatest hits’ volumes—is he introduces each essay by placing it into context of what was going on at the time, in terms of debates, and then reflecting on how he might have done things differently, if he’d been writing it later. So, there’s a self-reflective side to it. Like a lot of people coming out of the 1960s, Esherick was drawn to China studies because of criticism of imperialism related to anti-Vietnam War sentiment. There was a rooting for the Revolution, in many ways. One thing you see over the course of his career is his rethinking of some of his political positions—without giving up his rooting for underdogs and interest in ordinary as well as powerful people—and shifts in the way he does history. Accidental Holy Land is a culmination of this. Even the title of it: he’s moved very far from the notion of grand historical forces shaping the direction of history, to being fascinated by contingency and happenstance. Another shift is that he began his career not being able to do research in China as an American. Over the course of his career, he was able to use archives in China, but also to do fieldwork. He did ethnographic work in rural settings, which not many historians do. His most important book before this one was a study of the Boxer uprising . In that, he tried to explain how very specific local dynamics, including the environment, mattered in an event often approached via a discussion of esoteric beliefs, and a concern with on-the-ground issues reappears in this new book. Being able to get from point A to point B, the terrain, all these things matter. That’s a common view now, but he was saying it before. He’s spent time taking trips to the areas where, in the case of this book, the Communist Party holed up when it was gearing up to make its final push toward power. There’s a grand narrative of the Chinese Revolution. It’s about how the Communist Party made this triumphant, Long March to escape from the Nationalist Party after it was almost extinguished. They ended up in North China living in isolated redoubts, one of the most famous of which is Yan’an. That’s where the idea of Mao as a sacred figure, the idea of the Communist Party having this miracle-filled, epic quest to save the country comes from. For the Communist Party, it’s a celebratory myth, a powerful story of victory over impossible odds. And we know the power of these stories in all mythic traditions, all the way up to The Lord of the Rings . You have these great heroic figures and terrible villains. This is a story that scholars—but not just scholars—want to complicate by bringing in such things as internecine fighting that went on, the struggles between different groups. It wasn’t predetermined that one version of communist ideology would take hold. By posing ‘accidental’ with ‘holy land’ in the title, the book is suggesting that this was driven so much by contingency, by personalities, by the structures of the time. So it’s a case of retelling a grand narrative from a different perspective. That won’t shock scholars, but he does it with a granular detail and feel for the setting and the personalities that is special. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s a very relevant book to read right now because it’s about taking apart a mythic story, which is similar, in a way, to the mythic story that Xi Jinping’s cult is based on. If we think about it, the cult of Mao and all the early leaders of the Chinese Revolution, including Xi Jinping’s father, was all about spending time in the wilderness, in these very tough rural settings, where they really connected with the people. Then they had a mission to save the people and once they were in power, they would do things that were for the good of the people, and they would never forget their connection to the countryside and to villagers. We know that Mao got disconnected from the masses in many ways and did all sorts of things that caused enormous suffering, including actions that caused many villagers to starve, even though, at other times, he tried to do things for the people. In Xi Jinping, you have a revision of that tale. He was sent down as a youth to the wilderness and he connected with the people. He’s presented as a man of the people, even though he spent his childhood in an elite setting and even though he’s now in power. This year, after he was given the go ahead to start a third term as General Secretary of the CCP and it became crystal clear that he could potentially stay in power much longer, even for life, the first place he took the Standing Committee was on a pilgrimage to Yan’an, to this holy land. Xi Jinping’s father figures in Esherick’s book and we now see his son trying to reenact things from that sacred generation’s life and reboot their epic story. It’s a different version, but one that resonates with that story of the man of the people from the wilderness who now exercises great power. One of the biggest takeaways of the last few weeks, just watching the news, is a reminder of how surprising struggles are. We can always take apart the road that led to them. But that doesn’t mean that the result was foreordained or to be expected. The same was true with the Hong Kong protests that are central to Indelible City . Lim and I were on panels together in the spring of 2019, looking back at the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen as well as the current state of Hong Kong, a city I too care passionately about. We were worried about the direction that things in Hong Kong were going with the tightening of controls. The Extradition Law had already been floated and there had been some small protests, but neither of us was saying, ‘Just wait till this summer, there’s going to be a grand, last-ditch effort to push back against mainland-isation.’ The way a variety of factors come together that just led people to feel, ‘Now, no matter what the potential cost, no matter how long the odds seem, this is a moment for action,’ that’s not something people saw coming. There’s something unpredictable about protests like this. It could be valuable for them to pick up any of the works I mentioned in the 2014 Five Books interview on Tiananmen I mentioned earlier. This is not because these protests are just like Tiananmen, as they really are not despite how often allusions to 1989 have come up lately. There was, for example, a division within the elite that kept Tiananmen going, which there doesn’t seem to be here. But I do think those books all have insights to offer that have relevance right now, and I’d flag one in particular: New Ghosts, Old Dreams . It’s co-written by Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin. Barmé runs a wonderful website, China Heritage , that is filled with interesting translations and commentaries, including on acts of dissent. As for Jaivin, her latest book, The Shortest History of China , made my China books of the year list last year . The book they collaborated on decades ago, New Ghosts, Old Dreams , was about the 1989 protests, but also about the whole intellectual and cultural ferment of the 1980s. It really reminds you powerfully of the varieties of thought within China, even at times when the Communist Party would like everybody to be on the same page, and the way that individualist expression comes through. It includes some examples of humor, of the interplay of art and politics, and it just generally has a lot to offer anyone looking to get a sense of China beyond the headlines at many points in time, including right now."