Egg On Mao: The Story of An Ordinary Man Who Defaced An Icon and Unmasked A Dictatorship - Reception

Reception

The cover of this book features a paint-splattered picture of Mao Zedong’s face with the caption: “the story of an ordinary man who defaced an icon and unmasked a dictatorship.” This has led some to believe Egg on Mao is an anti-China book. As Chong states, “What I heard most often was, ‘Is this a China-bashing book?.’” According to Chong, fear of offending Beijing – in the West – has led to some uncomfortable reactions. A pre-organized interview with a Chinese-language television station was cancelled; and a Canadian nonprofit economic development group which had sponsored a fund-raiser featuring Chong downplayed its association to her. A telephone interview with a library employee from the United States Library of Congress reveals this trepidation was shared in America. Allegedly, the unnamed employee acknowledged the Library of Congress’s refusal to hold an event with Chong because of the sensitivity of her book; another factor in the decision was the Library of Congress’s new relationship with the National Library of China. In Donna Bailey Nurse’s review of Egg on Mao, she criticizes the book’s descriptive language of Chinese aphorisms as awkward and flat, especially during dialogue between characters. Nurse calls Chong’s commitment to the various genres: biography, bildungsroman, political history, and roman as flaws in her book. However, she praises Chong’s intent and sincerity of writing Decheng’s story, stating that it does much to minimize the flaws. Nurse is a literary journalist and a lecturer, and often writes for Canadian newspapers as a book reviewer. She has written reviews for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Montreal Gazette. In response to Nurse’s critique, Jim Munson, a Senator of Ottawa and a retired journalist, said:

“I feel Ms. Chong captured the human story of a repressive China then and now. She took great risks in returning to China to capture the real story behind the story, the one about truth and decency. The saga of Mr. Lu, an ordinary bus mechanic transformed into a prisoner of conscience, is a powerful human-rights story. It's important we listen.”

Jim Munson spent five years in China as a reporter and witnessed the defacing of Mao Zedong’s portrait by Decheng and his peers. In The China Beat’s review of Egg on Mao, the various genres of this book are cited as having benefits and drawbacks. The personal approach of Decheng’s determination to express opinions at variance with the state provides an in-depth perspective of life in China at that time, but since Egg on Mao is written through the eyes of one ordinary man, the room for bias and variance of perspectives are plentiful.