1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154713503321

Autore

Wasserstrom Jeffrey N

Titolo

China's Brave New World : --And Other Tales for Global Times / / Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom ; foreword by Vladimir Tismaneanu

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bloomington, Indiana ; ; Indianapolis, Indiana : , : Indiana University Press, , 2007

©2007

ISBN

9780253027764

0253027764

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (236 pages)

Disciplina

951.06

Soggetti

Civilization, Modern - 1950-

Electronic books.

China Civilization 2002-

China Civilization 1976-2002

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-203) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Foreword: beyond Marx, Lenin, and Mao / Vladimir Tismaneanu -- Introduction -- Part 1. Adventures in China-watching -- Burgers, beepers, and bowling alleys -- Mr. Mao ringtones -- All the coffee in China -- The generalissimo would not be amused -- Part 2. The inscrutable West -- Searching the stars for Emily Hahn -- Traveling with Twain -- Around the world with Grant and Li -- The time machine of Tippecanoe County -- Part 3. Turn-of-the-century flashbacks -- Mixed emotions: China in 1999 -- Karl gets a new cap: Budapest in 2000 -- Patriotism in public life: the United States in 2001 -- A San Francisco of the East: Hong Kong in 2002 -- Part 4. The tomorrowland diaries -- China's brave new world -- Chicago in an age of illusions -- Why go anywhere? -- Faster than a speeding bullet train -- Afterword: rhymes for  our times.

Sommario/riassunto

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