Using ingenious research methods, the contributors to this book explore the search for meaning among ordinary people in China today. The subjects of these vivid essays span the social spectrum from hip young entrepreneurs to sweatshop workers and homeless beggars. The issues are equally diverse, ranging from domestic violence to homosexuality to political corruption. Throughout, the book shows how economic and social changes caused by globalization, in combination with the continuing Party dictatorship, have presented ordinary Chinese with a new array of moral and cultural challenges that have changed the face of China.

Introduction / Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen and Paul G. Pickowicz -- 1. "I Believe You Can Fly": Basketball Culture in Postsocialist China / Andrew Morris -- 2. Corruption in Popular Culture / Richard Levy -- 3. Village Voices, Urban Activists: Women, Violence, and Gender Inequality in Rural China / Paul G. Pickowicz and Liping Wang -- 4. Shunkouliu: Popular Satirical Sayings and Popular Thought / Perry Link and Kate Zhou -- 5. The Rich, the Laid-off, and the Criminal in Tabloid Tales: Read All about It! / Yuezhi Zhao -- 6. The New Chinese Woman and Lifestyle Magazines in the Late 1990s / Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen -- 7. The Culture of Survival: Lives of Migrant Workers through the Prism of Private Letters / Anita Chan -- 8. The Chinese Enterprising Self: Young, Educated Urbanites and the Search for Work / Amy Hanser -- 9. Beggars in the Socialist Market Economy / Leila Fernandez-Stembridge and Richard P. Madsen -- 10. When a House Becomes His Home / Deborah S. Davis.

Perry Link is professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University.

Richard P. Madsen is professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

Paul G. Pickowicz is professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.