Ha sido una lectura difícil porque su protagonista no es nada agradable: un político corrupto. Ma Daode miente, engaña, destruye. Revive una y otra vez sus desgarradores recuerdos de la Revolución Cultural China, aquella que le arrebató a las personas que amó... Es triste porque no puedes empatizar con él, a pesar de todo lo que sufrió, porque esta corrompido.
Tristemente la cintilla que trae el libro tiene muchos mensajes que me crearon una alta expectativa sobre la historia que no necesariamente cumple este libro, no dudo que los otros libros de Ma Jian sean mejores ya que El sueño chino es una novela corta.

A bit heavy handed on the message that totalitarianism is bad, but the heavy handedness of the book's message helped to compensate for my limited knowledge of China.

A few months prior to reading this book, I found harboring a growing hatred against the Chinese as a whole. By whole, I mean the country, the politics, and the people. I couldn't understand people living such servile lives. While I blamed the whole world for the lack any real revolutions in recency, I particularly had gripes about the Chinese. Rage is a new emotion for me, especially rage towards people. The rational part of my mind was fighting the emotional part. 'I can't hate, I can't hate, I can't hate,' I told myself repeatedly. Once the rage settled down, I quickly called all of my rational faculties to attack the rage and I concluded that the people in such conditions cannot be conflated with the oppressive regimes. I cannot blame the oppressed for being oppressed.

I began reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. In that explosive book, Arendt accuses the Judenrat (Jewish leaders) of streamlining the Genocide by complying with Nazi Powers. She argues: had it not been for the Judenrate, their would have been turmoil in Nazi Germany which might have helped some Jews to escape. One couldn't find it hard to understand that what the Judenrate did they did in mitigating circumstances, most of the time. When faced with the prospect of death, most of us will comply. Most of us aren't as morally robust as to be a martyr.

I understood all of that perfectly. Yet I couldn't offer the same sympathy to the Chinese. Because, they too are faced with the same prospect of death or imprisonment or organ harvesting or disappearance if and when they chose to revolt against the regime. The history of Chinese rebellion is buried alive and although today marks the 70th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, that same history bangs against the coffin to be let out. It isn't dead, It will never be dead. What was wrong in my approach towards the Chinese was that I didn't consider their human nature. I didn't know what they were like as a people since I clubbed them with the regime.

I read this book, the first of many, to look into the Chinese Psyche. To understand their nature. I have been humbled and I no longer harbor that same hatred towards the people. I saw the Chinese people under the grip of fear, serving an evil king they couldn't if they weren't compelled. Like I wrote earlier, the history of Chinese rebellion was buried alive and it shrieks can be heard to those attuned to its voice. The book offers a similar story. A man is haunted by the tumultuous past in his dreams. Here the dreams can be seen as the other world, the one just below the real world. It scrapes the fabric of reality to be let out. Slowly, the tumultuous past of the man spills out into reality. The regime's solution of course is to distance itself from such insanity. The man goes on a quest to erase his memories so that he can resume his duties at the China Dream Institute. The China Dream is a real thing, but the author tells the story through dream-like episodes so he lends some leeway to fiction. So, he comes up with the China Dream device which will be installed in the heads of all of the Chinese citizenry so that their dreams will only be dreams to serve the regime. Again, we can stop here and consider the need of such device. The need of force is a testament to resilient human nature. We cannot be servile in our inherent nature, even if we seem so in our outward nature. There will always be resistance, voiced or unvoiced. The only that can squashed it through changing the very chemistry of our minds.

China Dream offers an juxtaposition of Chinese past and present and by doing so, it offers a way of passive resistance against an equally oppressive future.

Thought-provoking yet accessible critique of the mass amnesia propagated by the current Chinese government. The book also reminds me that Americans must also remain vigilant against such brainwashing: "[I]f life becomes disconnected from the past, it loses all meaning. History is the chicken soup of the soul after all."