Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society. Edited by Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen and Paul G. Pickowicz. [Lanham, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 316 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 0-7425-1078-6; paperback $21.95, ISBN 0-7425-1079-4.]

Extract

The dozen chapters in this book, based on papers for a 1999 conference, comprise an interdisciplinary glimpse into the increasingly diverse and contradictory world of Chinese popular culture. A theme of Popular China is representation: most of the chapters examine the way in which group and individual identity is represented (in newspapers, magazines, popular sayings, and advertisements, and in the stories people tell about their lives). Many of the authors draw on surveys and interviews – of young basketball fans, rural women, home owners in Shanghai, migrant workers, and entrepreneurs – allowing the people of China to speak for themselves. The book contains nothing that is revelatory (especially for anyone who visits China regularly and reads Chinese), but it provides a detailed, informed look at each of several phenomena often noted only in passing.