Chinese Lives - an Oral History of Contemporary China
A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Two young Chinese journalists conduct sixty interviews in the Studs Terkel mode, with Chinese of all ages, backgrounds and standards of living, from those who have lived through 20th century China from the Manchus to the new free-markets, to today's youth.
From Publishers Weekly
Interviewing people throughout China in 1984, the authors, a journalist and a novelist, have compiled an unprecedented look at the People's Republic. The speakers range from an entrepreneurial street urchin selling popcorn, to a convict, a hippie-type young man hiking and biking around the country and a rehabilitated prostitute. One portrait is of a bookstore manager who earnestly defends the country's policy of controlling what books are sold. In his store, he says, to help guard public morality, when customers purchase a copy of Sex Information and What Newlyweds Need to Know " . . . we also make them take a copy of How to Repair Electrical Appliances." Many of the interviewees are survivors of the Cultural Revolution andare scrambling hard to succeed in China's new climate of materialism; nearly all speak informally and candidly. The result is an appealing, patchwork-quilt portrayal of contemporary life in a nation famed in the West for its inscrutability.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD; New Ed edition (January 1, 1989)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140116257
- ISBN-13: 978-0140116250
- Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
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