num_pages: 336
description: As one the first American students admitted to China after the communist revolution, John Pomfret was exposed to a country still emerging from the twin tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Crammed into a dorm room with seven Chinese men, Pomfret contended with all manner of cultural differences, from too-short beds and roommates intent on glimpsing a white man naked, to the need for cloak-and-dagger efforts to conceal his relationships with Chinese women. Amidst all that, he immersed himself in the remarkable lives of his classmates.Beginning with Pomfret's first day in China, Chinese Lessons takes us down the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982: Old Wu's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; Book Idiot Zhou labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; and Little Guan was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father. As Pomfret follows his classmates from childhood to adulthood, he examines the effect of China's transition from near-feudal communism to first-world capitalism. The result is an illuminating report from present-day China, and a moving portrait of its extraordinary people.
language: English
title: Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
titlecomplete: Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
genres: History, Biography, Memoir, Asia, Education, Biography Memoir, Travel, Cultural, Nonfiction, China
ratings_count: 1399
awards: awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Ryszard Kapuściński Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Henry Holt and Co.