Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament

New York: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1992. First Printing . Hard Back. Near Fine/Very Good. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2. 321 Pages. Indexed. Purple boards with gray cloth quarter-spine and gold lettering. Dust jacket price $24.95 is unclipped. Red remainder Not for Resale on all three page edges. No internal marks or stamps and text is flawless. Link takes us behind the closed doors and official language of the party's China and into the lives and thoughts of China's leading intellectual dissidents. Here first-hand is the depair of lives corneered by oppressive party rule as well as the hope that continues to animate these heirs to China'srich cultural traditions. Link shows the intricate cruelties and corruptions of the work-unit system, which lies at the heart of party power in China's cities. He exposes the official language that is the medium for all public communications, and the divide between this and the informal language Chinese use in their private relations. He explores the identity crisis experienced by Chinese who struggle to find some alternative to the party's prescription for what it means to be Chinese in the modern world. This book is divided into Six Parts: Social World, Livelihood, History, Language and Ideology, Identity Within Groups, and Responsibility. Contents in 34 Chapters: Corruption; The Work-Unit System; Money First Education Last; Repression; Daily Life; Financial Squeeze; Housing Pinch; Morale; Public Incivility; No Way Out; May Fourth; Peasant Consciousness; The Campaigns of the 1950s; The Revelations of Dai Qing; The Cultural Revolution; The Reforms of the 1980s; The Course of Twentieth-Century Chinese; History; Historical Parallels; The Problem of Pessimism; Living with the Official Language; The Search for an Ideology; Patriotism; Identity with the State; Identity with Other Groups; Individualism; Four Generations; The Returned Student; The Worrying Mentality; The Responsibility of Expression Two Traps; The Problem of Knowledge for Use; New Definitions of Responsibility; Advancing Democracy; and The Debate Over New Authoritarianism.