Perhaps the most daring TV documentary series ever produced in mainland China, which directly affected the thinking of Chinese youth on the eve of the 1989 democracy movement. This richly-annotated translation of the original filmscript by Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang puts the series in its intellectual and artistic context and is suitable for use in classes on Chinese culture and contemporary China, with or without the videotape.
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Highly recommended. It fits the needs, above all, of undergraduate and graduate courses that use the videotape of He Shang as teaching material, but its usefulness goes well beyond this, providing an accomplished exposition of a highly complex cultural, intellectual and political phenomenon.
" - Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs
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The kind of text that university Chinese studies departments should be teaching as a literary/cultural text alongside or instead of canonical "literary" texts, and the book that Bodman and Wan have assembled greatly facilitates such a project.... an almost perfect package.
" - The China Quarterly
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As close to a definitive treatment of He Shang as we shall ever get.
" - Journal of Asian Studies