China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture »

Born in China, Jianying Zha now spends part of the year there and the rest in the United States. From her constant contact (and in many cases friendship) with a dynamic group of young novelists, filmmakers, and artists in China, she is able to describe a wide range of developments largely unknown to Western readers: the careful planning of television soap operas to placate popular unrest after Tiananmen, the growth of sex tabloids and pornography, the new generation of entrepreneurs successfully bringing to the mainland the consumer techniques of Hong Kong and the West, and the politics behind the censorship and commercial success of the film directors Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) and Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern). The extraordinary transformation of China comes alive in these intriguing and enjoyable portraits. We see once-committed Communists becoming cynical capitalists, the regime seeking to control and manipulate the new media, and the confusion in the younger generation as to which values to follow. Writing from years of first-hand experience in China, Jianying Zha gives us a fascinating look at the transformation of contemporary China.

Publishers Weekly

Zha, who was born and raised in Beijing, examines the ways in which the proliferation of pop culture and mass media is changing traditional Chinese society. (Apr.)