IN BRIEF (Page 22)

Violence is pervasive

Crimson Rain - Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County, William Rowe's narrative study on the local history of Macheng, a county in Hubei province, paints an unfamiliar picture of China: that it's more than the meek and polite Confucian society. According to Rowe, violence, as exemplified by the bloody crimson rainfall, is ubiquitous in the country, has its own agenda and is deeply connected to the nation's revolutionary 20th-century experience. The book covers Macheng's history from the 14th century to 1938 and extrapolates how collective history and cultural mores shape rural China's acceptance of violence.

Architecture, East to West