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| Tide Players : The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China
ISBN: 9781595586988
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / New Press, The
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: History;
China-powerful, expanding, and evolving-remains inscrutable to Westerners confounded by its contradictions, as well as the rapidity of its growth and the intensity of its repressive government. A child of the Cultural Revolution, Zha (China Pop) offers a nuanced and textured picture of a country constrained by totalitarianism but buoyed by the pioneering spirit and resilience of its people. The author observes a shift from a post-Tiananmen political idealism to a steely but hopeful pragmatism among many of her compatriots. It's a conflict that exists at the heart of Chinese contemporary culture, and one Zha illuminates through interviews with writers and academics dodging or suffering censorship, her own political dissident brother languishing in jail, or Zhang Dazhong, who, motivated by the political imprisonment of his mother, built a fortune and spent his life attempting to clear her name. Zha's effort is an honest and thoughtful portrait that forces outsiders to check their preconceptions at the door and see China as a convergence of passion and trauma, memory and hope. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Jianying Zha is a writer, media critic, and China representative of the India China Institute, The New School University, New York. She is the author of one book in English, China Pop , and five books in Chinese: three collections of fiction and two nonfiction books, including The Eighties , an award-winning cultural retrospective on 1980s China. She has published widely in both Chinese and English, including the New Yorker , the New York Times , Dushu , and Wanxiang . She received her BA from Peking University, MA from the University of South Carolina, and M.Phil from Columbia University. She lives in Beijing and New York. |
