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NEW UCSD BOOK EXPLORES CHINA’S UNOFFICIAL CULTURE

The economic and social changes brought on by globalization, along with the continuing Communist Party dictatorship, have presented the Chinese people with a new array of moral and cultural challenges. 

In Popular China: The Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society, longtime China watchers Paul Pickowicz and Richard Madsen, both professors at the University of California, San Diego, explore the search for meaning among ordinary people in China today.  Pickowicz, a historian, and Madsen, a sociologist, are editors of the book, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, along with Perry Link, a professor at Princeton. 

The colorful essays in the book span the social spectrum from hip young entrepreneurs to sweatshop workers to migrant laborers to homeless beggars.  The issues analyzed in the essays range from domestic violence, to homosexuality, to political corruption – social issues not usually recognized in the “official” China. 

“The culture of popular China is a mixture of exhilarating new aspirations --as seen in the basketball fans who dream of ‘flying’ like Michael Jordan -- rueful cynicism, as seen in the many satirical jingles that circulate by word of mouth -- and painful ambivalence,” said Pickowicz.  “The people depicted in this book build their popular culture out of ideas and symbolic practices drawn from old cultural traditions, including ideas about modernity, the legacies of Maoist socialism, and contemporary global culture.”

Pickowicz and Madsen are highly respected China scholars.  They have authored numerous books on Chinese society and culture, including a 1989 book Unofficial China:  Popular Thought and Culture in the People’s Republic they co-edited with Perry Link.