This evocative and fascinating book shows how, from muddy village crossroads to raucous city streets, Chinese exhilarated by new dreams are shaping the future of their nation. Over the course of five years spent as China correspondents for the Christian Science Monitor, James and Ann Tyson dodged government surveillance and sought out the life stories of Chinese throughout the country: in the yak-hair tents of Tibetan nomads, the cramped Shanghai garret of China's most courageous dissident, the seaside mansion of a multimillionaire, and the tiny sheet-metal workshop of a peasant migrant. Allowing the Chinese to speak for themselves, the Tysons have written a book unique among Western studies of China for painting in vivid detail a firsthand portrait of a broad spectrum of Chinese. Through these diverse voices, the Tysons reveal how, with economic reform weakening the grip of the state over everyday life, the people of China are taking the future into their own hands. The initiative for change is coming increasingly from below, as millions of Chinese pursuing their own dreams propel reform far beyond the Communist Party's original intent. Chinese Awakenings provides an intimate understanding of the feelings, aspirations, and workaday lives of ordinary Chinese. It offers the crucial insight into grassroots society that is essential for discerning what lies ahead for China's 1.2 billion people.

The Tysons show how the initiative for change is coming from below as millions of Chinese pursuing different dreams propel reform far beyond the Communist Party's original intent. They paint an intimate portrait of the feelings, aspirations, and workaday lives of ordinary Chinese.

As the authors point out, "China has arrived, big time. To ignore the Chinese is foolish." Yet, where does one begin? Getting a handle on China, with its sweeping history and vast cultural diversity, is, for most, a daunting task. China: Ancient Culture, Modern Society provides a much-needed starting point for piecing together the many parts of the complex puzzle that is China. More than simply a guidebook or historical survey, this rich volume bridges geography, culture, politics, and beliefs to present a nuanced picture of a nation that is often misunderstood by those seeking to view it through a Western lens. Whether one is approaching China for the first time or seeking to fill the gaps in one's existing understanding of things Chinese, this book provides an abundance of useful information.

This innovative work is the first to approach the awakening of China as a historical problem in its own right, and to locate this problem within the broader history of the rise of modern China. It analyzes the link between the awakening of China as a historical narrative and the awakening of the Chinese people as a political technique for building a sovereign and independent state. In sum, it asks what we mean when we say that China "woke up" in this century. Fiction and fashion, architecture and autobiography, take their places alongside politics and history, and the reader is asked to move about among writers, philosophers, ethnographers, revolutionaries, and soldiers who would seem to have little in common. Rumor is sometimes taken as seriously as truth, novels are consulted as frequently as documents, and dreams are given a prominence normally reserved for facts in the writing of history. This book follows the legend of China's awakening from its origins in the European imagination, to its transmission to China and its encounter with a lyrical Chinese tradition of ethical awakening, to its incorporation and mobilization in a mass movement designed to wake up everyone. The idea of a national awakening crossed all discursive boundaries to make room for nationalist politics in personal culture and helped to conscript personal culture into service of the revolutionary state. The book focuses on the Nationalist movement in south China, highlighting the role of Sun Yat-sen as director of awakenings in the Nationalist Revolution and the place of Mao Zedong as his successor in the politics of mass awakening. Of special interest is the previously untold story of Mao's role in the NationalistPropaganda Bureau, showing Mao as a master of propaganda and discipline, rather than as peasant movement activist.

Drawing on Chinese sources hitherto unavailable in the West including official documents and interviews with top athletes, the author explores the rise of Chinese super sportswomen and their relationship with politics, culture and society before and during the Cultural Revolution and through China's transition to a market economy.

An honest biography portraying the journey of an ordinary man into the world of Spirituality through his life experiences. A very moving recollection of each stage of his journey and how that has brought him to his ultimate spiritual path, and arriving at his life purpose as a spiritual mentor.

This book presents the first panoramic study of minkan (citizen publications) in China before the Internet. This recent history of citizen publications contributes to the reclamation of a lost past of resistance. It is an exercise in remembering a past that has been marginalized by official history and recovering ideas obliterated by state power.