Book Review: Powered by Wellesley

Title: Powered by Wellesley 

Author: Jin Lan McCann

Date: 2017

Publisher: Newgrange

ISBN: 978-0-9989899-4-5 

Length: 288 pages

Illustrations: several photos 

Quote: "I thought I was an open minded modern Chinese woman when I came to the US in 2001." 

If novels by Bette Bao Lord, Amy Tan, and Lisa See have left you wondering about the lives of privileged young women in modern China, Jin Lan McCann is here to answer your questions. For all the rhetoric about equality and being proletarians...privileged Chinese people did not actually want or intend to be sent to work on farms. The young Jin Lan Deng worked on a cruise ship for rich tourists, met some and eventually married one of the super-rich men who were able to tour China in the late twentieth century. 

We learn, though, how some previous relationships went, and how modern Chinese given names translate into English, and how important private restaurants were in China's recovery from the Mao era. We learn more than we may have wanted to know about what can be substituted for tofu in authentic Chinese food. We learn what sort of misconduct did and didn't get people imprisoned, denounced, dismissed from their jobs, or even scolded by their families. 

Revelling in the freedom of good connections, the author invested in restaurants, became rich enough to help a less than deserving friend, was free to admire Henry Kissinger ("such a sweet old gentleman") and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and, once married to an American, to pursue a degree in economics at Mrs. Clinton's old college. Wellesley required its students to present "unique" points of view, to write credible papers even from cranks' points of view if necessary. Required to consider the "conservative" economic viewpoint, she realized that she'd already seen how much better it had worked than the socialist economic system did. 

The book is more a memoir than an economic study. It's told in an authentic, conversational voice; you'll hear traces of an accent. Fiscal conservatives might wish there was more exposition of the economic arguments, but that's what Thomas Sowell and Veronique de Rugy do. Powered by Wellesley offers a fresh, unique variation on the "This was what we used to do in China, and then we came to America" story. 

Other readers might wish there were more recipes, more poems, even more about fashion in this book--creating a market for future books, perhaps.

I recommend it particularly to those interested in Chinese history and women's history, but anyone who likes fact-based stories could enjoy Powered by Wellesley.