[In the following review, Fadiman discusses how Moment in Peking is not a very interesting story, but is remarkable panorama of Chinese way of life.]

If you wish to enjoy Lin Yutang's Moment in Peking, a Chinese novel written in English, you must read it in a special way. Not in the Chinese way, whatever that is, but certainly in a manner very different from that with which we approach Western books. For the simpler conventions of the Western novel just do not seem to apply to Dr. Lin's book. There is no suspense as we understand it, no succession of climaxes; except superficially, it has no beginning, middle, or end; it is 800 pages long but might quite as well be 8,000; while it has a group of central characters, it has neither hero nor heroine.

Also, from our point of view, it appears to lack one emotional dimension: romantic love. The characters indulge in sensual amusement or have affection of varying intensities for one another, but of romantic love in our modern acceptance of the word, there is none, as there is none in Homer. In the same way, though many people die in the book, there is very little tragic feeling. There is sadness, but never Shakespearean woe. Though war and revolution occupy many of its pages, the net effect of Moment in Peking is one of serenity.

Another, but by no means insuperable, difficulty for the Western reader is the seeming chaos of characters. There are at least two hundred, of whom perhaps fifty are important. They are bound together by the most complex family relationships, involving concubinage, adoption, semi-feudal service, and the common or garden variety of illicit love. At the beginning there is a cast of characters, which I strongly advise you not even to glance at. A quick look at it will discourage you from reading a fine book; a close study will give you nightmares. The list is headed by the author's note: “Brackets indicate families, grouped by generations, and including maidservants important in the story. Names in italics indicate maidservants. Names followed by (!) indicate illicit relationships. Names followed by (*) indicate concubines.” You see what you are in for.

I found by trial and error that the thing for a mere Westerner to do is not to worry about identifying the characters too closely but just to float along on the stream of narrative, casually picking up a dozen new acquaintances here and there, or encountering without much surprise or question personages who seem vaguely familiar from a couple of hundred pages back. It works out pretty well.

A few matters, however, you will have to get straight. Moment in Peking, in its light and philosophic irony, is a typical Chinese title. Actually the story chronicles almost forty years of Chinese (and mainly Peking) life, from the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 down to the present Japanese invasion. To Dr. Lin, whose ironic relativity will be familiar to you from his previous books, forty years are but a moment, yet a moment that partakes of eternity. This time notion lends color and tone to the whole book, but it is not insisted upon or given philosophic treatment, as it is, for example, in Thomas Mann's “The Magic Mountain.”

Two families dominate the story—the Tsengs and the Yaos. Both are upper-class, extremely wealthy, and intelligent. Hence the China revealed to us differs in important particulars from that which emerges from the books of Pearl Buck. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Lin's picture is a Proustian one (though his mind is less subtle than Proust's) in its abundance of psychological and social detail, its delicacy, its concern with manners. Moment in Peking, while it does not neglect history, is not a historical novel but a social one. Modes of feelings, customs of address, niceties of etiquette, shifts of convention—all these are Dr. Lin's particular concern, as they were Proust's.

At times his desire to make us understand the behavior of the Chinese aristocracy leads him into a fullness of detail which he perhaps would not employ were he writing for his own people. Occasionally a ludicrous hyper-educational effect is thus obtained. It is as if an American, writing an American novel in Chinese for the benefit of a Chinese audience, should say (I translate from the Chinese), “Mr. Jones advanced and extended his right hand and arm a little below shoulder level. Mr. Smith, recognizing the sign of a friendly greeting, followed suit, and the two clasped hands for a moment. At the same time Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith said simultaneously, ‘How are you?’ Then they dropped their hands to their sides, and, this greeting over, proceeded to open conversation.”

On the other hand, this emphasis on detail provides part of the charm of the novel. I do not know any other book that gives one more vivid pictures of Chinese family life, weddings, engagement ceremonies, funeral ceremonies, the rôle played by maidservants and concubines and sing-song girls, and the life—so brilliant, civilized, and indestructible—of Peking. Dr. Lin makes us understand the subtle and profound conventions that will induce a Chinese girl like Mannia, his classic old-style aristocrat, to vow herself to permanent widowhood after the death of her husband; or that will make another commit suicide; or that will impel old Yao, the wealthy Taoist, to leave his family for ten years and live as a poor monk; or that will permit a wealthy upper-class Chinese to marry a bond servant. The book is so full, so explicit, that in the end, if we read slowly enough and soak ourselves in its atmosphere, the Chinese way of life—at any rate the way of life of the cultivated bourgeoisie—becomes so real to us that it ceases entirely to have the shallow values of mere oddity and becomes as understandable and as precious as our own.

I repeat, you must read Moment in Peking slowly and, even if it may sound odd, with relaxed rather than rigid attention. The story is not exciting (though it contains a reasonable number of melodramatic episodes) nor are the characters absorbingly interesting. But the book is a remarkable panorama; you must sit back in your seat and allow it to flow past your eyes. Its charm and significance inhere not in any detail or any particular episode but in the movement itself, the flow of time, the incessant flux of gesture, people, habits, architecture, interiors, relationships—all somehow loosely uniting to give one a sense of a life at once alien and beautifully familiar.