'It remains hard to imagine a short-term bearable future for the people of China,' wrote John Willis, who teaches history at Southern Cal, in 1994.

He also said that a continuing theme of Chinese society has been 'optimism about what man can be and can accomplish.'

It is certainly a portentous question, how a country with a thoughtful and ancient social philosophy of optimism can have attained the sorry state it is in now. Wills attempts to answer the question by looking at the lives of about 20 great Chinese, to understand what they thought they were doing and, also, what later Chinese thought about them.

'This book . . . is intended for people who never have paid much attention to China and now want a quick and graspable introduction to some main themes in its stirring history.' The development of Chinese political theory is far easier to grasp than the equally significant development of Chinese religion.

Portraits of famous men (and one woman, the scandalous Empress Wu) are an appropriate way to enter Chinese mentality, says Wills, because the Chinese have been 'more inclined than most peoples to cast their moral and political principles and arguments in terms of individuals who are idolized or reviled.'

Whether they really are more inclined to personalize their own history than other people is doubtful, but Wills makes a good case that the Chinese have placed more value on theory than on good practice. 'The drama was heightened, the selflesslness more perfect when nothing else was accomplished except to demonstrate one's firmness in principle in the face of futility, humiliation and death,' he writes.

Many other societies have preferred to honor leaders who got things changed. Robin Hood, for example. but the great Chinese outlaw story, 'Water Margin,' does not have the happy ending (for the common folk) of the Robin Hood story, or William Tell or many another hero outside China.

From earliest times -- that is, from the third emperor, Yu, the first subject of 'Mountain of Fame' -- the Chinese have systematized government, in sharp contrast to the helterskelter turmoil of, say, Europe following the German invasions. The result, says Wills, has been paradoxical.

'From Wang Mang to Deng Xiaoping, Chinese policymakers all too often have lacked Su's suspicion of uniformity and have made trouble for themselves and their people by trying to impose on all Chinese policies that make sense for some important part of it.'

Su is Su Dongpo, a poet and politician of the 11th century, the earliest hero in 'Mountain of Fame' who is more history than myth. A mass of Su's essays, poems and state papers have survived.

This is surprisingly late. For Europe, Sumeria, Egypt and India, we have much earlier famous men that we can think we understand. Whether we can understand the early Chinese luminaries or not, though, Wills believes we can understand what their myths mean today.

The reason 'Mountain of Fame' is important is that China has too many people to ignore and, as Wills observes, has been impervious to outside suasion. If China is to be governed, the Chinese will have to do it, and, given their deep consciousness of the past (even Mao the revolutionary was enthralled to it), it will have to happen in the context of the Wus, the Sus and the other towering figures of Chinese history.