Synopses & Reviews
In
Tide Players, acclaimed New Yorker contributor and author Jianying Zha depicts a new generation of movers and shakers who are transforming modern China. Through half a dozen sharply etched and nuanced profiles,
Tide Players captures both the concrete detail and the epic dimension of life in the worlds fastest-growing economy.
Zhas vivid cast of characters includes an unlikely couple who teamed up to become the countrys leading real-estate moguls; a gifted chameleon who transformed himself from Maos favorite barefoot doctor” during the Cultural Revolution to a publishing maverick; and a tycoon of home-electronic chain stores who insisted on avenging his mother, who had been executed as a counter-revolutionary criminal.” Alongside these entrepreneurs, Zha also brings us the intellectuals: a cantankerous professor at Chinas top university; a former cultural minister turned prolific writer; and Zhas own brother, a dissident who served a nine-year prison term for helping to found the China Democracy Party.
Deeply engaging, lucid, and poignant, Zhas insightful insider-outsider” portraits offer a picture of a China that few Western readers have seen before. Tide Players is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand todays China.
Review
In Jianying Zhas remarkable and fast-paced book, the tide players are the pragmatists of modern China, who strive and prosper but who push events along in the process. The author is a Chinese woman who appears equally at home in Chinese and English, in Beijing and in New York. A returnee to China after a long stint in the US, she becomes the readers person on the inside.
—Financial Times
Like many of her subjects, Jianying Zha (China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture, 1995) has a fraught relationship with her homeland. Born in Beijing, she received a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, then returned to China. Since then, shes established herself intellectually in both societies. Her cultural survey The Eighties was a surprise bestseller in China; in America, she endeavors to keep focused on the Chinese to explain China.”
This book is divided into two sections, The Entrepreneurs” and The Intellectuals,” built around narratives and interviews with individuals who have prospered during the last two decades of economic reform, yet remain mindful of the Chinese states authoritarianism. The entrepreneurs include a good tycoon” whose mother was executed during the Cultural Revolution for criticizing Mao; after hed made a fortune in appliance marketing, he devoted his energy to clearing her name. A chapter on married real-estate developers, nicknamed The Turtles,” provides a good window into Chinese-style gentrification: Developers are regarded as Chinas robber barons, men who have taken advantage of the muddled transition to capitalism by means of guanxi (connections), bribery, and fraud.”
In the second section, the author examines how Peking University (Chinas premier university) and esteemed writers and critics are weathering the tides of transformation. She reveals a more personal connection to the countrys ongoing turmoil, in that her brother, once an ardent Maoist, served a 9-year prison sentence for subverting the state.” The author argues that despite searing recollections of Tiananmen, a new consensus has formed against political activism, given that marketplace reforms have raised 400 million Chinese out of poverty. Overall, she presents a crisply narrated panorama of the strange journey taken by her generation of Chinese, whove gone from being Maos little red children to bitterly disillusioned adults.”
Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Zha beautifully combines the hard-earned expertise of an insider with the moral candor of an outsider. In exploring Chinas defining struggles . . . [she] illuminate[s] the shadows in between, with empathy and courage."
—Evan Osnos, The New Yorker
"If you want to understand the astonishing developments in Chinas contemporary cultural life . . . there could be no surer or more entertaining guide than Zha."
K. Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
"An engaging, comprehensible cross-section of the personalities and cultural concerns rising with Chinas ascent."
Kirkus
"No one who writes in English about contemporary China is more thoroughly bilingual and bicultural than Jianying Zha. She truly 'gets it.'"
Perry Link, author of Evening Chats in Beijing
Synopsis
Tide Players depicts a new generation of entrepreneurs and intellectuals in a rapidly transforming China through six sharply etched and nuanced profiles which capture both the concrete detail and the epic dimension of life in contemporary Beijing.
The cast of characters includes: an unlikely couple who teamed up to become the countrys leading real estate mogul; a gifted chameleon who transformed himself from Maos favorite barefoot doctor” during the Cultural Revolution to a publishing maverick; a tycoon of home electronic chain stores who insisted on avenging his mother, a counter-revolutionary criminal” executed in the most brutal manner. Zha also brings us to the intellectuals: the cantankerous professors at Beida, Chinas number one University; a famous, prolific writer who, after stepping down as the Cultural Minister, kept people divided about whether he is an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party or a great author that might one day win a Nobel Prize in literature. Then there is the heart-rending story about Zhas own brother, a dissident who served a nine year prison term for helping to found the China Democracy Party, yet remains an unrepentant idealist.
About the Author
Jianying Zha is a writer, media critic, and China representative of the India China Institute, The New School University, New York. She is the author of one book in English,
China Pop, and five books in Chinese: three collections of fiction and two nonfiction books, including
The Eighties, an award-winning cultural retrospective on 1980s China. She has published widely in both Chinese and English, including the
New Yorker, the
New York Times,
Dushu, and
Wanxiang. She received her BA from Peking University, MA from the University of South Carolina, and M.Phil from Columbia University. She lives in Beijing and New York.