"This book is a manifestation of Perry Link’s deep love for the Chinese people, their humor, struggles, and courage. The Anaconda in the Chandelier is packed with a deep understanding of China, astute observations of Chinese society, and unrelenting criticism of the Communist Party, all stemming from Link’s devotion to one thing: truth. If you want to understand why the West got China wrong and how to get it right in the ongoing rivalry between democracy and autocracy, you...

…. to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.--Ludwig Wittgenstein(Philosophical Investigation, 1953)Whatever specific goal motivated people who study Chinese at first eventually dissolves into the larger Chinese world, and that world—its loves and joys, its stings and frustrations, in any case its incapability of being boring—takes over.This is a fascinating, insightful collection of essays by some of the world’s most renowned China experts, who...

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao exhorted the Chinese people to “smash the four olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. Yet when the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square chanted “We want to see Chairman Mao,” they unknowingly used a classical rhythm that dates back to the Han period and is the very embodiment of the four olds. An Anatomy of Chinese reveals how rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey time-honored meanings of which Chinese speak...

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrest...

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced it was awarding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese literary critic and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, it made special note of his role in writing a remarkable political manifesto called Charter 08. In China, that same document has caused officials to throw him in jail with an 11-year sentence that is extraordinary even by Chinese standards, while taking drastic measures to silence any mention of the text.But what is Charter 08 ...

Late one night in December 2008, police arrived at the home of Liu Xiaobo—China’s leading dissident, a key figure in the prodemocracy manifesto Charter 08—and took him away. When Liu won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize as a political prisoner, the award was bestowed on an empty chair. Inside China, the regime sought to erase every trace of his existence. Liu died of liver cancer in 2017 without ever having been allowed to return home.I Have No Enemies is the definitive biograph...

Why do people in socialist China read and write literary works? Earlier studies in Western Sinology have approached Chinese texts from the socialist era as portraits of society, as keys to the tug-of-war of dissent, or, more recently, as pursuit of "pure art." The Uses of Literature looks broadly and empirically at these and many other "uses" of literature from the points of view of authors, editors, political authorities, and several kinds of readers. Perry Link, author of Ev...

An NYRB Classics OriginalSet in the early years of Mao’s China, Naked Earth is the story of two earnest young people confronting the grim realities of revolutionary change. Liu Ch’üan and Su Nan meet in the countryside after volunteering to assist in the new land reform program. Eager to build a more just society, they are puzzled and shocked by the brutality, barely disguised corruption, and ruthless careerism they discover, but then quickly silenced by the barrage of pro...

This is a fascinating, insightful collection of essays by some of the world's most renowned China experts, who share personal recollections of their time in China-often beginning in the 1970s, when foreigners were just beginning to navigate the linguistic and cultural terrain of that country-and reflect on what learning Chinese has meant to them in their careers and lives. Ian Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist notes in his essay, it is only by knowing the language that we can ...

Using ingenious research methods, the contributors to this book explore the search for meaning among ordinary people in China today. The subjects of these vivid essays span the social spectrum from hip young entrepreneurs to sweatshop workers and homeless beggars. The issues are equally diverse, ranging from domestic violence to homosexuality to political corruption. The culture of popular China emerges as a mixture of exhilarating new aspirations—as seen in the basketball fans who dream o...

This book presents a view of social life in China and discusses different methods for studying contemporary China as a tool for introducing students to the study of popular culture. Through a diverse set of case studies, it introduces readers to a wide range of issues facing Chinese society.

This unique book is the first to bring together a group of influential China experts to reflect on their cultural and social encounters while travelling and living in the People’s Republic. Filling an important gap, it allows scholars, journalists, and businesspeople to reflect on their personal memories of China. Private experiences—vivid and often entirely unanticipated—often teach more about how a society actually works than a planned course of study can. Such experiences can also expos...