In China, a nation where the worlds of politics and art are closely linked, Western classical music was considered during the cultural revolution to be an imperialist intrusion, in direct conflict with the native aesthetic. In this revealing chronicle of the relationship between music and politics in twentieth-century China, Richard Kraus examines the evolution of China's ever-changing disposition towards European music and demonstrates the steady westernization of Chinese music. Placing China's cultural conflicts in global perspective, he traces the lives of four Chinese musicians and reflects on how their experiences are indicative of China's place at the furthest edge of an expanding Western international order.

This book presents a view of social life in China and discusses different methods for studying contemporary China as a tool for introducing students to the study of popular culture. Through a diverse set of case studies, it introduces readers to a wide range of issues facing Chinese society.

(Faber Piano Adventures ). PlayTime Piano Music from China is a musical journey featuring energetic dances, quiet folk melodies, and original Chinese pieces. The book is arranged especially for the early elementary student and correlates with Level 1 in the Piano Adventures method. At this level, five-finger positions reinforce tonalities and intervals. Teacher duets provide a full, rich background. Along the way, students meet LeLe the musical panda, their whimsical guide to exploring the Chinese sound through discovery questions, improvisation, and composition activities. A picture tour of China, unique at each level of the series, introduces highlights of history and culture. Songs include: Fengyang Flower-Drum * Frog Dance * Let's Sing * Pouch Embroidering * Song of the Newsboy * Tune from Xinjiang * What Is the Most Beautiful.

Explores the interplay of politics and the art of writing in China today to explain the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Chinese culture.

China's decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shook the politics of China and the world. Even as we approach its fiftieth anniversary, the movement remains so contentious that the Chinese Communist Party still forbids fully open investigation of its origins, development, and conclusion. Drawing upon a vital trove of scholarship, memoirs, and popular culture, this Very Short Introduction illuminates this complex, often obscure, and still controversial movement. Moving beyond the figure of Mao Zedong, Richard Curt Kraus links Beijing's elite politics to broader aspects of society and culture, highlighting many changes in daily life, employment, and the economy. Kraus also situates this very nationalist outburst of Chinese radicalism within a global context, showing that the Cultural Revolution was mirrored in the radical youth movement that swept much of the world, and that had imagined or emotional links to China's red guards. Yet it was also during the Cultural Revolution that China and the United States tempered their long hostility, one of the innovations in this period that sowed the seeds for China's subsequent decades of spectacular economic growth.

This biographical dictionary is an indispensable research tool for information about the prominent persons of the past seven decades in China. The book documents nearly 600 Chinese individuals who contributed, for better or worse, to the development of Chinese life and culture since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Though the book is weighted toward political figures, it includes persons in business, the military, academia, medicine, social movements, the arts, entertainment and athletics. In addition to an objective description of the person's life, an analysis is provided that identifies the individual's contributions and importance.

Western classical music has become as Chinese as Peking Opera, and it has woven its way into the hearts and lives of ordinary Chinese people. This lucidly written account traces the biographies of the bold visionaries who carried out this musical merger. Rhapsody in Red is a history of classical music in China that revolves around a common theme: how Western classical music entered China, and how it became Chinese. Chinas oldest orchestra was founded in 1879, two years before the Boston Symphony. Since then, classical music has woven its way into the lives of ordinary Chinese people. Millions of Chinese children take piano and violin lessons every week. Yet, despite the importance of classical music in China -- and of Chinese classical musicians and composers to the world -- next to nothing has been written on this fascinating subject. The authors capture the events with the voice of an insider and the perspective of a Westerner, presenting new information, original research and insights into a topic that has barely been broached elsewhere. The only other significant books touching on this field are Pianos and Politics: Middle Class Ambitions and The Struggle Over Western Music by Richard Kurt Kraus (1989), and Barbara Mittler's Dangerous Tunes - The Politics of Chinese Music. Both target the academic market. Pianos focuses narrowly on the political aspects of the Cultural Revolution and subsequent re-opening. Rhapsody in Red is a far better read and benefits from considerably more research with primary source material in China over the past decade; and it covers classical music in general over all the history of East-West interaction. This book will appeal to a general readership interested in China -- the same readers who made "Wild Swans" a bestseller. It will also appeal to all who are interested in the future of classical music. It could easily be used for college courses on modern China, cultural history and ethnomusicology.