Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China
by JoAnn Dionne
Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 2008, ISBN 978-1-55002-756-3, 254 pp., $24.99 paper.

Ever since Marco Polo, western travellers to China have chronicled their journeys--first as merchants and missionaries, and more recently as teachers of English--which may amount to almost the same thing. In recent years, books about teaching in China have become a sub-genre in themselves. Accounts such as Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy, Rosemary Mahoney's The Early Arrival of Dreams, and Peter Hessler's River Town answer a growing curiosity about the Middle Kingdom by exploring their authors' relationships with ordinary Chinese. JoAnn Dionne's Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China, falls squarely into this tradition. What makes this book different from others in the same category is the fact that Dionne works not with adolescents or adults, but with young children aged six or seven to fourteen. The book's cover depicts one of them. With hands on top of his head, mischief lighting his eyes, and his tongue stuck out at the viewer, he offers a very different image of China than the dignified sages or stalwart comrades of the past.

Dionne took the photo herself. She's an appealing guide to the new China this boy represents. Little Emperors describes her late-nineties sojourn in the southern city of Guangzhou with compassion, honesty, and humour. One of her first tasks is to select English names for her new charges. In a play on her own surname, she includes those of the Dionne quints--minus Cecile, which, as her orientation materials inform her, sounds a lot like toilet in Chinese, and ought to be avoided. Despite her careful observance of this precaution, toilets seem to haunt Dionne. Not only must she search far and wide to find one that offers the kind of privacy and cleanliness she craves (a common experience for westerners in China) but she also ends up teaching in a renovated bathroom, whose sealed plumbing pipes still jut from the walls.

You can't take yourself too seriously when you teach in a former toilet--and fortunately, Dionne doesn't try. Instead, she shows us her own vulnerabilities--her homesickness and the resulting visits to shopping malls and American franchise outlets; her tipsy encounters with curious young men; even her embrace of certain Chinese habits that she formerly found disgusting. And day by day, through the prism of her classroom interactions and her conversations with her Chinese peers, she details the amazing pace of change in her adopted country, where a person can come home from a day at work to find an entire neighbourhood razed to the ground; where swaying bamboo scaffolding comes off to reveal new skyscrapers at almost every corner. Generation gaps are real and serious here. How can those who lived through the Cultural Revolution understand or share the values of those who frequent the Golden Arches? These days, "communist China" is an oxymoron, Dionne claims. But the question remains--what will replace it?

Although Little Emperors purportedly centres on Dionne's pupils, we don't get to know many of them as individuals, so they operate more as a backdrop. What we do see of these kids convinces us that they are as lively, curious, affectionate, and open to experience as Dionne herself. Still, for me, the most moving and interesting passages of the book were those that depicted Dionne's encounters with her Chinese peers. There is a searching honesty in these exchanges that anyone who has spent time with ordinary Chinese people will recognize, and that puts the lie to worn-out stereotypes about "inscrutable" Asians. Dionne often comes away humbled by these conversations. To a contemporary visitor, she sees, China may no longer look like a dictatorship. But it still operates as one to its citizens, in multiple, life-changing ways.

Dionne shows an interest in language and a flair for metaphor. Placing the slogans of Mao and McDonald's side-by-side, she ironically points up their similarities: Serve the people; Billions and billions served (137). Cabbing home with a gift from a student--a glass sundae dish filled with paper cutouts--she notes, "It's not every day you hold a bowl full of stars in your hands" (127). Given such moments, it's disappointing when her attention slackens and she allows clichés like "adorable" (50) and "full of beans" (253) to stand in for more individualized descriptions of her students. Also, while the beginning, middle and end of Dionne's stay in China supply her book with a built-in story arc, the present-tense narration can wear a little thin, and in certain sections, such as the one about the handover of Hong Kong, details accumulate to no apparent purpose and anecdotes fall flat for want of better pacing.

Still, we forgive Dionne these lapses for the sheer pleasure of her company--her warmth, her decency, and her commitment. She may begin her time in China as a thrill-seeking tourist, but she ends it as a passionately engaged citizen of "Chinada" (a word coined by one of her pupils). Partway through the book she starts to walk to work instead of taking cabs and buses; the change in transportation mirrors a shift in her consciousness. She has fallen in love with the country and its people; both literally and metaphorically, she has learned to read its signs. When the "old man" of one of the last chapters befriends her because she has "a good face" we know what he means, and applaud his own good sense in recognizing a kindred spirit.

Susan Olding has written about China and about teaching, but not at the same time. She is the mother of a daughter adopted in China. She hasn't broken the code and learned to read in Chinese, but she hasn't given up yet, either.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

Back to Reviews Index