The ripples of a Sand Pebble

Finished reading this book, The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna, a couple of nights ago. Anybody who has been paying attention to my reading list will have noticed that there has been a fair bit of time elapsed between this book and the previous one. That's because Sand Pebbles came as somewhat a surprise, and demanded a bit more attention than most.

I came across this second-hand copy at the annual OXFAM giant book fair in Eltham. The book was only fifty cents, and I freely admit that I bought it for all the wrong reasons. I thought it would be a real boy's book, with lots of bang-bang-shoot-em-ups and lusty interludes. Instead, I found a well crafted story that gives us a unique view of the birth pains of a nation.

The tale is set in China in 1926 - 1927, just before, and at the beginning of, the revolution that was to shape China into the nation it is today. It tells of an opressed, disenfranchised people struggling to find their identity, of a country steeped in the feudal ways of warlords, ready to explode. Chiang Kai-shek will write his name in the pages of history.

And in the middle of it all is the gunboat the San Pablo (Sand Pebble) and her crew, the Sand Pebbles. Their transition from opressor to opressed is as inevitible as the annual flooding of the Yangtze River which they patrol, and equally as unstoppable.

Well worth the careful read. And it inspired me to look up and gather some more information on that period which, in turn, has led to a better understanding of where the China we know today came from.

Just goes to show. When you throw a pebble in the river, sometimes the ripples become a tidal wave.