Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

China's Brave New World (eBook, ePUB)

And Other Tales for Global Times

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink delivers "a must-read for anyone interested in the world's most rapidly changing society" (James L. Watson, editor of Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia). If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjing's bookstore, the Librairie Avant-Garde, where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucault's philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwell's 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen China-or post-9/11 America? In these often playful, always enlightening "tales," Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom poses these and other questions as he journeys from 19th-century China into the future, and from Shanghai to Chicago, St. Louis, and Budapest. He argues that simplistic views of China and Americanization found in most soundbite-driven media reports serve us poorly as we try to understand China's place in the current world order-or our own. "Rather effortlessly brilliant . . . It penetrates with a lightly knowing eye and ear into the interior mind, heart and soul of giant China and the innumerable Chinese."- AsiaMedia "This book provides a powerful lens for outsiders to understand a globalizing China and a unique mirror for the Chinese to reflect on their own society in a global context."-Yunxiang Yan,author of Private Life Under Socialism "Readers will find themselves far more observant and attentive to local distinctions when they take their first or next trip to China."-Stanley Rosen, The China Journal No. 60

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Indiana University Press
• Seitenzahl: 237
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. März 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780253027764
• Artikelnr.: 47465394

Autorenporträt

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. He lives in Irvine, California.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword by Vladimir Tismaneanu
Introduction
Part One: Adventures in China-Watching
1. Burgers, Beepers, and Bowling Alleys
2. Mr. Mao Ringtones
3. All the Coffee in China
4. The Generalissimo Would Not be Amused
Part Two: The Inscrutable West
5. Searching the Stars for Emily Hahn
6. Traveling with Twain
7. Around the World with Grant and Li
8. The Time Machine of Tippecanoe County
Part Three: Turn-of-the-Century Flashbacks
9. Mixed Emotions: China in 1999
10. Karl Gets a New Cap: Budapest in 2000
11. Patriotism in Public Life: The United States in 2001
12. A San Francisco of the East: Hong Kong in 2002
Part Four: The Tomorrowland Diaries
13. China's Brave New World
14. Chicago in an Age of Illusions
15. Why Go Anywhere?
16. Faster than a Speeding Bullet Train
Afterword: Rhymes for Our Times
Notes
Acknowledgments
Bibliography of Works Discussed
Index