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. Throughout, the book shows how economic and social changes caused by globalization, in combination with the continuing Party dictatorship, have presented ordinary Chinese with a new array of moral and cultural challenges that have changed the face of China.
Introduction / Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen and Paul G. Pickowicz -- 1. "I Believe You Can Fly": Basketball Culture in Postsocialist China / Andrew Morris -- 2. Corruption in Popular Culture / Richard Levy -- 3. Village Voices, Urban Activists: Women, Violence, and Gender Inequality in Rural China / Paul G. Pickowicz and Liping Wang -- 4. Shunkouliu: Popular Satirical Sayings and Popular Thought / Perry Link and Kate Zhou -- 5. The Rich, the Laid-off, and the Criminal in Tabloid Tales: Read All about It! / Yuezhi Zhao -- 6. The New Chinese Woman and Lifestyle Magazines in the Late 1990s / Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen -- 7. The Culture of Survival: Lives of Migrant Workers through the Prism of Private Letters / Anita Chan -- 8. The Chinese Enterprising Self: Young, Educated Urbanites and the Search for Work / Amy Hanser -- 9. Beggars in the Socialist Market Economy / Leila Fernandez-Stembridge and Richard P. Madsen -- 10. When a House Becomes His Home / Deborah S. Davis.

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 effectively enter people’s lives—their myths and histories, their interior lives and dreams. Trying to do this without speaking the language is usually fraudulent and results in only a clichéd understanding of other cultures. Simply knowing Chinese won’t solve all these problems, but the reverse proposition is true: we can’t really understand China and interpret it for audiences back home unless we know the language. Thomas Gorman’s equally sprightly essay tells how, in 1974, he set out hitchhiking to Vancouver in order to take a cheap flight to Hong Kong, where he arrived with only $150 in his pocket. Twenty-one years later, he was president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.
These ten native English speakers (including veteran journalists, expert in Chinese art history, scholar in classical Chinese literature, teacher of Chinese language, economics policy advisor, businesspeople, and expert in Chinese law) share rare and, at times, humorous and intimate moments, of how learning and speaking Chinese has removed barriers, built rapport, opened doors, and sometimes led them down entirely unexpected roads that have changed the course of their lives.

This compelling book explores the explosive pace of change in China and how its citizens are grappling with a dramatically new world, both in the public and private spheres. China’s stratospheric growth has made it the second largest economy in the world—and one of the most unequal. Marxist ideology and socialist ideals have almost completely collapsed, replaced by a combination of materialism and assertive nationalism. The vast migration of labor from countryside to city has continued apace. The pressures of a hypercompetitive market economy are ripping apart the traditional family and threatening the environment. Corruption has reached new heights. The political system is even more rigid, but perhaps more brittle, than a decade ago.
There is enormous popular pride in the ascension of China to the rank of global superpower and general satisfaction in the material benefits that the poor as well as the rich have been gaining from an expanding economy. But there is also great restlessness, anger about structural injustice and political corruption, and a search for new forms of spirituality and ethics to replace a collapsing moral order. The question “What does it mean, in the new day, to be Chinese?” lurks just beneath the surface. This unique interdisciplinary book frames this central issue through an innovative set of case studies on such cutting-edge topics as reality dating shows, countercultural invented language, star bloggers, faith healers, and subversive jokes.

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.
reveals how rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey time-honored meanings of which Chinese speakers themselves may not be consciously aware, and contributes to the ongoing debate over whether language shapes thought, or vice versa.
Perry Link's inquiry into the workings of Chinese reveals convergences and divergences with English, most strikingly in the area of conceptual metaphor. Different spatial metaphors for consciousness, for instance, mean that English speakers wake up while speakers of Chinese wake across. Other underlying metaphors in the two languages are similar, lending support to theories that locate the origins of language in the brain. The distinction between daily-life language and official language has been unusually significant in contemporary China, and Link explores how ordinary citizens learn to play language games, artfully wielding officialese to advance their interests or defend themselves from others.
Particularly provocative is Link's consideration of how Indo-European languages, with their preference for abstract nouns, generate philosophical puzzles that Chinese, with its preference for verbs, avoids. The mind-body problem that has plagued Western culture may be fundamentally less problematic for speakers of Chinese.

Rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey meanings of which Chinese speakers themselves may not be aware. Link’s Anatomy of Chinese contributes to the debate over whether language shapes thought or vice versa, and its comparison of English with Chinese lends support to theories that locate the origins of language in the brain.

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.
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
, considers texts ranging from elite misty poetry to underground hand-copied volumes (shouchauben) and shows in concrete detail how people who were involved with literature sought to teach, learn, enjoy, explore, debate, lead, control, and resist.
Using the late 1970s and early 1980s as an entree to the workings of China's socialist literary system, the author shows how that system held sway from 1950 until around 1990, when an encroaching market economy gradually but fundamentally changed it. In addition to providing a definitive overview of how the socialist Chinese literary system worked, Link offers comparisons to the similar system in the Soviet Union. In the final chapter, the book seeks to explain how the word good was used and understood when applied to literary works in such systems.
Combining aspects of cultural and literary studies,
will reward anyone interested in the literature of modern China or how creativity is affected by a socialist literary system.

On the night of June 3-4, 1989, Chinese troops violently crushed the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in the history of the communist regime. In this extraordinary collection of hundreds of internal government and Communist Party documents, secretly smuggled out of China, we learn how these events came to pass from behind the scenes. The material reveals how the most important decisions were made; and how the turmoil split the ruling elite into radically opposed factions. The book includes the minutes of the crucial meetings at which the Elders decided to cashier the pro-reform Party secretary Zhao Ziyang and to replace him with Jiang Zemin, to declare martial law, and finally to send the troops to drive the students from the Square.

Just as the Pentagon Papers laid bare the secret American decision making behind the Vietnam War and changed forever our view of the nation's political leaders, so too has The Tiananmen Papers altered our perception of how and why the events of June 4 took the shape they did. Its publication has proven to be a landmark event in Chinese and world history.

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 biography of Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi explore Liu’s upbringing, immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, bold challenges to literary conformity, and involvement in democratic movements. They trace the lifelong evolution of his thinking and chronicle his persecution, incarceration, and death.

I Have No Enemies emphasizes Liu’s principled commitment to dissent and the significance of the example he set in China and around the world. Liu was a farsighted strategist whose ultimate goal was “to change a regime by changing a society.” In Tiananmen Square, he showed others how to face down armed soldiers; in daily life, he looked for ways to build a more democratic culture. A powerful record of Liu’s life and times, this book also tells the story of a generation of Chinese intellectuals who sought a better way forward.

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 biography of Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi explore Liu's upbringing, immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, bold challenges to literary conformity, and involvement in democratic movements. They trace the lifelong evolution of his thinking and chronicle his persecution, incarceration, and death. I Have No Enemies emphasizes Liu's principled commitment to dissent and the significance of the example he set in China and around the world. Liu was a farsighted strategist whose ultimate goal was "to change a regime by changing a society." In Tiananmen Square, he showed others how to face down armed soldiers; in daily life, he looked for ways to build a more democratic culture. A powerful record of Liu's life and times, this book also tells the story of a generation of Chinese intellectuals who sought a better way forward.

"This book is a manifestation of Perry Link's deep love for the Chinese people, their humor, struggles, and courage. 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 need to read it."
--Li Yuan, The New York Times"Incisive, wise, deeply humane, this collection is a true gem from a China scholar who is a rarity in his field. Distilled from a lifelong engagement with Chinese language and culture at an astonishingly high level, a wealth of compelling, compassionate observations and critical dissections, including some rather uncomfortable truths about China, is revealed here through fluid essays as well as Link's ironic personal transformation, to borrow CCP lingo, from 'a friend of China' to 'a hostile foreign element.'"
--Jianying Zha, author of Tide Players and China PopThese acerbic essays, collected from Perry Link's decades-long career as a noted Sinologist, reveal the depth of his attachment to China and his willingness to squarely face unpleasant truths about the many ways in which ordinary Chinese people have suffered from the self-serving, erratic, and often disastrous "leadership" of the Communist Party of China.Link's essays touch on politics, society, economy, literature, and art, but their primary focus is on the thoughts, feelings, and values of Chinese people. He lays out his values as he explains how, like many of his Chinese friends, he began with a naïve attraction to socialist ideals only to eventually feel disgust at the cynical betrayal of not only those ideals but even garden-variety ethics. His writing probes the ways "comrades" in the ruling regime have ruthlessly clung to and pursued the one value whose pre-eminence has never been in question: political power.The Anaconda in the Chandelier includes essays on Link's "day job" interests in Chinese literature, popular culture, and language teaching at Princeton University. He also offers intellectual tribute to his teachers--both classroom teachers and several whose writing taught him how to see beneath the surfaces of things.