Deep China

“How do Chinese people formerly embedded in family and village justify their individualistic pursuits in a society undergoing vast changes? Here a uniquely trained senior psychiatrist/anthropologist and six Chinese with Ph Ds in anthropology probe the inner lives of Chinese people.” --Ezra F. Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

“Based on solid, in-depth ethnographic research, Deep China seeks to understand how emotional and moral lives of Chinese people have been affected by drastic changes that have taken place over the past several decades. The authors refuse to stay on the surface in their inquiry, and try to delve deeper into the intimate and sometimes hidden spheres of personal life, emotion, and social practice. A wonderful collection of engaging and timely studies!” – Li Zhang, author of In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis

"Deep China provides an indispensable antidote to the copious body of politically and economically oriented literature that dominates current writing about the Chinese super-power. This scholarly collection of ethnographic essays depicts the way in which Chinese are confronting and creating an entirely new moral landscape, one strikingly discordant with that of the recent past. Profound tensions between individual aspirations and claims made by families and social and political collectivities are laid bare through insightful discussion of suicide, depression, changing sexual mores, and much more." --Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death

"Eschewing the broad brush and facile generalizations that make for instant China experts, Deep China examines the struggles, accommodations, and embodied sufferings and pleasures of individual Chinese people at an unprecedented moment in their moral history. True to its title, it adds dimensions to its subject." --Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse