Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom & Angilee Shah 
Chinese Characters 
Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land

An artist paints landscapes of faraway places that she cannot identify in order to find her place in the global economy. A migrant worker sorts recyclables and thinks deeply about the soul of his country, while a Taoist mystic struggles to keep his traditions alive. An entrepreneur capitalizes on a growing car culture by trying to convince people not to buy cars. And a 90-year-old woman remembers how the oldest neighborhoods of her city used to be.


These are the exciting and saddening, humorous and confusing stories of utterly ordinary people who are living through China’s extraordinary transformations. The immense variety in the lives of these Chinese characters dispels any lingering sense that China has a monolithic population or is just a place where dissidents fight Communist Party loyalists and laborers create goods for millionaires.


Chinese Characters is a collection, as Pankaj Mishra writes in his foreword, ‘to herald a new golden age of journalism about a ceaselessly fascinating country.’ Contributors include a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a Macarthur Fellow, the China correspondent to a major Indian newspaper, and scholars whose depth of understanding is matched only by the humanity with which they treat their subjects. Their stories together create a multi-faceted portrait of a country in motion and an introduction to some of the best writing on China today.


With contributions from: Alec Ash, James Carter, Leslie T. Chang, Xujun Eberlein, Harriet Evans, Anna Greenspan, Peter Hessler, Ian Johnson, Ananth Krishnan, Christina Larson, Michelle Dammon Loyalka, James Millward, Evan Osnos, Jeffrey Prescott, Megan Shank

 

Table of Content

Foreword

Pankaj Mishra


Acknowledgments


Introduction: ‘Who Are You This Time?’

Jeffrey Wasserstrom


PART ONE. DOUBTERS AND BELIEVERS

1. The North Peak

Ian Johnson

2. The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists

Evan Osnos

3. Out of Tibet

Alec Ash


PART TWO. PAST AND PRESENT

4. Belonging to Old Beijing

Harriet Evans

5. Another Swimmer

Xujun Eberlein

6. Looking for Lok To

James Carter


PART THREE. HUSTLERS AND ENTREPRENEURS

7. The Ever-Floating Floater

Michelle Dammon Loyalka

8. King of the Road

Megan Shank

9: Painting the Outside World

Peter Hessler


PART FOUR. REBELS AND REFORMERS

10. The Road to a Better Life

Ananth Krishnan

11. Yong Yang’s Odyssey

Christina Larson

12. The Court Jester

Jeffrey Prescott


PART FIVE. TEACHERS AND PUPILS

13. The Great Wall of Education

Anna Greenspan

14. Gilded Age, Gilded Cage

Leslie T. Chang

15. Shredding for the Motherland

James Millward


Afterword

Angilee Shah


Notes and Reading

List of Contributors

Credits

About the author

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of books such as China in the 21st Century, Global Shanghai, and China’s Brave New World, and the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.Angilee Shah is a freelance journalist. Her work has appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Mother Jones, Time Out Singapore, Global Voices, and Asia Media, among other publications.