Level-setting

Listening to Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi in the car now, really an incredible book, the autobiography of a guy from Beijing exiled to the Gobi desert during the Cultural Revolution, where he dug ditches, cut reeds on a frozen lake, made bricks, was trained as a "barefoot doctor," and did a host of other things under rather subhuman conditions of starvation, cold, and general privation. Then how he came out, went to the US for college, and eventually becomes an investment banker and private equity deal guy.

And in parallel the story of China and its history. I started in on this book while taking a time out from Ezra Vogel's life of Deng Xiaopeng, which is a plodding court history, for the most part, about the shifting sands of decision-making at the heights of the Chinese Communist Party during much of the time period Shan describes. Shan's is a much more readable book for the general reader, which is pretty much me.

Shan's story is also just a story of an incredibly hard-working, decent guy. He has pretty much herculean stamina and forbearance, which is a nice reminder of what is possible when I am feeling put upon or grumpy.

But of course it is an autobiography, so one needs to take things with a grain of salt. It would be interesting if there were critiques out there of Shan, blogs from people who knew him that said things like: "Actually that guy is a total dick!" But I doubt it, and it is certainly nice and inspiring to read these stories. We want to believe them.