Dynasty By Robert S. Elegant McGraw-Hill, 625 pp., $10.95 Reflecting on the Oriental’s fascination with jade, the Japanese author Tanizaki Junichiro wrote, “We cannot ourselves describe what it is we see in this stone. It has neither the brightness of a ruby or emerald, nor the glitter of a diamond. Yet this much we can say: gazing at that shadowy surface, we think how Chinese it is. In its cloudiness we seem to see the accumulated sediment of the long Chinese past; we realize how fitting it is that the Chinese should admire its surface and shadow.”
Never quite translucent, never quite opaque, jade is as much a puzzle as a fascination. Studying Chinese history is indeed like gazing into jade; there are forms, there are patterns, and the whole fabric is made from a basic native substance. But the substance varies in purity and character from era to era, and the forms are more often phantasmagoric than concrete. In order to bring them into focus, the writer— especially the writer of instant China analysis or popular fiction—usually exaggerates, oversimplifies, or simply reshapes China to fit current Western prejudices.
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