China Candid: The People on the People's Republic [Paperback]

Leading Chinese journalist Sang Ye follows his successful bookChinese Liveswith this collection of absorbing interviews with twenty-six men, women, and children taking the reader into the complex realities of the People's Republic of China today. Through intimate conversations conducted over many years,China Candidprovides an alternative history of the nation from its founding as a socialist state in 1949 up to the present. The voices of people who have lived underand often despitethe Communist Party's rule give a compelling account of life in the maelstrom of China's economic reformsreforms that are being pursued by a system that remains politically rigid and authoritarian. Artists, politicians, businessmen and -women, former Red Guards, migrant workers, prostitutes, teachers, computer geeks, hustlers, and other citizens of contemporary China all speak with frankness and candor about the realities of the burgeoning power of East Asia, the China that will host the 2008 Olympics. Some discuss the corrosive changes that have been wrought on the professional ethics and attitudes of men and women long nurtured by the socialist state. Others recall chilling encounters with the police, the law courts, labor camps, and the army. Providing unique insight into the minds and hearts of people who have firsthand experience of China's tumultuous history, this book adds invaluable depth and dimension to our understanding of this rapidly changing country.

Sang Yedivides his time between China and Brisbane, Australia. His most recent book isThe Year the Dragon Came(1996).Geremie R. Barm?is a Professor of Chinese History at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. He is the author ofAn Artistic Exile: A Life of Feng Zikai(California, 2002),In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture(1999), andShades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader(1996).Miriam Ll£$