Tide Players

January 17, 2011
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.

January 15, 2011

Understanding China's trajectory through the lives of its aggressive yet wary top achievers.

Like many of her subjects, Jianying Zha (China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture, 1995) has a fraught relationship with her homeland. Born in Beijing, she received a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, then returned to China. Since then, she's established herself intellectually in both societies. Her cultural survey The Eighties was a surprise bestseller in China; in America, she endeavors to "keep focused on the Chinese to explain China." This book is divided into two sections, "The Entrepreneurs" and "The Intellectuals," built around narratives and interviews with individuals who have prospered during the last two decades of economic reform, yet remain mindful of the Chinese state's authoritarianism. The entrepreneurs include a "good tycoon" whose mother was executed during the Cultural Revolution for criticizing Mao; after he'd made a fortune in appliance marketing, he devoted his energy to clearing her name. A chapter on married real-estate developers, nicknamed "The Turtles," provides a good window into Chinese-style gentrification: "Developers are regarded as China's robber barons, men who have taken advantage of the muddled transition to capitalism by means of guanxi (connections), bribery, and fraud." In the second section, the author examines how Peking University (China's premier university) and esteemed writers and critics are weathering the tides of transformation. She reveals a more personal connection to the country's ongoing turmoil, in that her brother, once an ardent Maoist, served a 9-year prison sentence for "subverting the state." The author argues that despite searing recollections of Tiananmen, a new consensus has formed against political activism, given that marketplace reforms have raised 400 million Chinese out of poverty. Overall, she presents a crisply narrated panorama of the strange journey taken by her generation of Chinese, who've gone "from being Mao's little red children to bitterly disillusioned adults."

An engaging, comprehensible cross-section of the personalities and cultural concerns rising with China's ascent.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011
To understand rapidly changing China, suggests Zha (China Pop, 1996), focus on the Chinese people. In this book, she draws on her insiders connections and outsiders perspective to examine the trajectories of several entrepreneurs and intellectuals who are living proof of an ancient cultures amazing source of energy, intelligence, and unending drive to achieve dignity and glory. Their life stories shed light on the ongoing transformation of Chinese society. Among those profiled are the husband-and-wife real-estate moguls behind Beijings western-style SOHO New Town and a Cultural Revolution-era barefoot doctor who reinvented himself as a successful publishing entrepreneur before returning to medicine, his first love. Her favorable profile of Wang Meng, a writer engaged in the delicate and controversial art of serving the state while nudging it toward change, contrasts with Zhas loving but critical look at her own brother, a political dissident whose imprisonment curtailed his ability to influence the changes around him. The resulting book is a cautiously optimistic assessment of the Chinese peoples ability to succeed, whatever the coming years may hold.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)