LAND WITHOUT GHOSTS: Chinese Impressions of America...

LAND WITHOUT GHOSTS: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present edited by R. David Arkush & Leo O. Lee (University of California Press: $14; 309 pp., illustrated). This often fascinating anthology traces the shifting image of the United States in Chinese reportage. The first observers saw America as an exotic land of opportunity, but that vision darkened when reports of anti-Chinese laws and violence began to reach Asia. Throughout the past century and half, Chinese writers have been puzzled and dismayed by the small place the family occupies in American culture, despite the rhetoric to the contrary; these comments retain their cogency--and their sting.