China-watchers

[2nd ed.];Includes index.

Aching to expand from a couple to a family, Jeff Gammage and his wife, Christine, embarked upon a journey that would carry them across a shifting landscape of emotion - excitement, exhilaration, fear, apprehension - and through miles of red tape and bureaucratic protocol, to a breathtaking land on the other side of the world where a little girl waited. When they met Jin Yu, a silent, stoic two-year-old, in the smog-choked city of Changsha in Hunan Province, they realized that every frustrating moment of their two-year struggle was worth it. But they also realized that another journey had only begun. Now there was much to experience and learn. How do you comfort a crying toddler when you and she speak different languages? How do you fully embrace a life altered beyond recognition by new concerns, responsibilities - and a love unlike any you've felt before.

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down. In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country's frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China's rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colourful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way. As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.

A collection of interviews with Chinese people of all ages. The stories they tell reflect the immense societal changes and their subsequent effect on families and relationships.

Offers a previously untold story about the immense population of unknown women who work countless hours, often in hazardous conditions, to provide us with the material goods we take for granted.

At the age of 10, Li Cunzin was chosen to train as a ballet dancer at Madam Mao's Peking Dance Academy. His selection was based purely on his physique and the fact that he came from a family that had been peasants for three generations - he knew nothing about the art form at all.

This book takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's past - the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule - and to take control of its future. Capitalism has brought prosperity and global respect to China, but the Communist government continues to resist the demands of its people for political freedom. The author, who reported in China for the Post for seven years and speaks fluent Chinese, eluded the police and succeeded in going where few Western journalists have dared. From the rusting factories in the industrial northeast to a tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town courtroom to the plush offices of me nation's wealthiest tycoons, he tells the gripping stories of ordinary men and women fighting for political change. An elderly surgeon exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A filmmaker investigates the execution of a young woman during the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a crusade against forced abortions carried out under the one-child policy. The young people who filled Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 saw their hopes for a democratic China crushed, but Pan reveals that as older, more pragmatic adults, many continue to push for justice in different ways.

This unusual memoir describes how China's foremost male ballet dancer (and colonel in the People's Army) underwent one of China's first sex-change operations and became the Shanghai Ballet's prima ballerina.

Xinran's ability to understand and empathise with the women who called her talkback programme ensures that this is a profoundly moving book.

A portrait of the mid-twentieth-century scientist and adventurer traces his British government mission to China, his love affair with visiting student Lu Gwei-Djen, and his pivotal influence on the Western world's understanding of China's culture and history.

In June 2003 Xinran began writing about China in her weekly column in the Guardian. Each of her colums inspired letters and questions and more opportunites for Xinran to shed light on the culture of her native land. What the Chinese don't eat collects these pieces together for the first time to give on unique Chinese woman's perspective on the connections and differences between the live of British and Chinese people today.

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, this is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.