Taking aim at the conventional narrative that standard, national languages transform "peasants" into citizens, Gina Anne Tam centers the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan - languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language, Mandarin. She traces how, on the one hand, linguists, policy-makers, bureaucrats and workaday educators framed fangyan as non-standard "variants" of the Chinese language, subsidiary in symbolic importance to standard Mandarin. She simultaneously highlights, on the other hand, the folksong collectors, playwrights, hip-hop artists and popular protestors who argued that fangyan were more authentic and representative of China's national culture and its history. From the late Qing through the height of the Maoist period, these intertwined visions of the Chinese nation - one spoken in one voice, one spoken in many - interacted and shaped one another, and in the process, shaped the basis for national identity itself.

本书分析了形成民族主义的各种力量，考察各个东南亚国家具体的民族主义表现并加以比较，最后提出为在冷战后遭受冷遇的民族主义正名，对东南亚、殖民主义和民族主义都有深刻的洞见。
“人文与社会译丛”秉承“激活思想，传承学术”之宗旨，以精良的选目，可靠的译文，赢得学术界和公众的广泛认可与好评，被认为是当今“最好的社科丛书之一”。