Barbarian Lost Read Online Free PDF

lot, sometimes for hours. This gives us time to throw ideas around and get to know each other more. Vivien doesn’t make it difficult for me to assess her opinions about the government. She loathes and distrusts the Communist Party and tells me so point-blank.
    â€œI’m not the ideological type and certainly not a Communist,” I tell Viv, “but then again, nor is China anymore. I just don’t want to try draw conclusions too quickly about this place.”
    â€œI assure you that if you stay a while and see how things work here, you couldn’t support the party,” she says somewhat fiercely.
    â€œWell, one thing I’m fairly certain of is that China cannot simply copy the political system of some other place.”
    â€œSo how do you feel about Tiananmen?” she asks pointedly.
    â€œI would like to think that if I were Chinese, I would have been on the square, facing down the tanks for my freedom. But at the same time, I’m not blind to the benefits that stability has brought China since Tiananmen.”
    â€œSacha, trust me, I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m familiar with this government and its ways,” she says with conviction. “I don’t see any good coming from corruption and injustice.”
    â€œBut look around,” I argue. “I see tremendous wealth creation. The economy is getting freer, and China is getting more and more rich and powerful.”
    â€œIt’s not all like this,” she says with a small smile. “Anyhow, you know that Confucius had nothing but contempt for the pursuit of wealth?”
    â€œI didn’t know that. I always thought Confucius told us to seek harmony. Prosperity is a kind of harmony, I thought.”
    â€œNo. Confucius taught that harmony comes only from virtue.”
    We head to a seafood restaurant called Ten Thousand Dragon Continent. Passing through the ornate entrance, we enter a big room filled with aquariums. A selection of exotic creatures squirms in the open tanks: fish of all sizes and colours, squid, octopuses, eight types of crab, four kinds of lobster, half a dozen varieties of shrimp, every kind of mollusc imaginable, a healthy selection of insects: bee pupae, silk larvae and dangerous-looking scorpions. The aquariums take the place of a menu; to order, you point at a tank and specify a quantity and cooking style: poached, steamed or fried, with black bean, imperial sauce, or garlic and ginger. The waitress then nets your selection and sends the live seafood to the kitchen.
    For the Chinese, it seems there’s no greater joy in life than sitting down to a rare feast with friends and family. Even givenVivien’s discreet manner, it’s clear she loves food as well. Over tender razor clams with shallots and ginger and spiced baby octopus, I ask Vivien about her father.
    â€œHe was a mathematics professor. And later a high-school principal.”
    â€œWhat did his father do?”
    â€œHe was a peasant. A farmer.”
    â€œI could say my father’s father was born on a farm as well. But he died in 1934. So I hardly consider myself a farmer. You?”
    â€œNot really,” she says, laughing. “I’m a city girl. But I did spend a lot of time with my grandparents on the farm when I was a child. So country life is not at all foreign to me.”
    â€œAre your grandparents still alive?”
    â€œOh yes, all of them.”
    â€œI’m curious what it was like for your family during the Cultural Revolution.”
    â€œWell, for my grandparents nothing much changed. They were classified as ‘low to middle’ farmers. So they were spared any attacks. As for my father, since he was of peasant stock, at the university he was one of the few people who benefited from the Cultural Revolution. While the so-called intellectuals were being chased from the universities, my father did his doctorate.”
    â€œCan I meet him?”
    â€œCertainly