Deborah Fallows
Leibovitz and Miller…are specialists in narrative history rather than Sinology, so their book will be most satisfying to readers who have had the least exposure to China and its history…Still, the story of these 19th-century scholars is a useful reminder of how long exchanges between our two countries have been under way, and of the risks and rewards that these connections have brought to both sides.
—The New York Times
San Francisco Chronicle - William Wong
"Highly readable."
New York Times - Deborah Fallows
"A useful reminder of how long exchanges between our two countries have been under way, and of the risks and rewards that these connections have brought to both sides."
Gavin Menzies
"The struggle that the boys faced between traditionalism and modernity, exacerbated by an intriguing and sometimes turbulent clash of cultures, is something that resonates clearly to this day."
Peter Hessler
"A fascinating and well-told history of this early educational exchange between China and the United States."
Booklist
"Thoroughly enjoyable…an outstanding tale of cross-cultural fertilization."
Michael Meyer
"The story of the West's engagement with China is often told through the voices of colonists, correspondents and fortune-seekers who sailed East a century ago. Fortunate Sons is a captivating look at the reverse journey: a page-turning narrative about Chinese patriots schooled in the United States who returned home to modernize a moribund, imperial society. This book is a reminder that historically, US-China relations are more than political; Liebovitz and Miller have unearthed an important, and all but forgotten, story that resonates today."
Da Chen
"I read this book in one sitting, utterly engrossed in the rugged journeys undertaken by the first generation of west-going Chinese scholars. To read this book is to understand the fundamental obstacles and frustrations all Chinese intellectuals faced then and now. A bunch of pigtailed Manchurian Yalies. What a paradox!"
Kirkus Reviews
Desperate to modernize in the final days of empire, China launches a bold educational experiment.
By the second half of the 19th century, the Qing dynasty ruled half-a-billion Chinese, with 40,000 civilian and military officials administering the government. The imperial system's calcified bureaucracy, resistant to change, wedded to Confucianism and wary of foreign intercourse, struggled with a tottering economy, domestic rebellions and repeated humiliations at the hands of Western powers. One powerful statesman, Li Hongzhang, sought to reform the educational system by sending students to America to learn the new ways of thinking and returning them to China as a core group of future leaders. Under the direction of the Yale-educated Yung Wing, over a period of nearly a decade, 120 boys attended high schools and colleges, mostly in New England, as a part of the Chinese Educational Mission. Under assault from court critics who feared Western corruption of the young men, Li recalled the mission in 1880. Although a remarkably large number of the boys eventually rose to power and influence in China, Leibovitz and Miller (Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War II, 2008) wisely focus on only a dozen or so, tracking their journey to Hartford, Conn., the Mission's base of operations, their acculturation to Gilded Age American society and their troubled reentry to a China tumultuously passing from corrupt empire to shaky republic. The authors' effective, quick-stroke treatment of momentous historical events, their sensitive portraits of schoolboys who became technological, military, industrial and commercial reformers and their deft juxtaposition of two cultures, one on the rise, the other coming apart, make for a rich, multilayered tale. Today, China and America warily circle each other, and China is once again furiously attempting to modernize, busy recapitulating many of the same struggles and absorbing many of the same lessons that the Mission boys learned so many years ago.
A curious, little-known episode of Sino-American history vividly told.
