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Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
Henry Holt
August 2006
On Sale: August 14, 2006
336 pages ISBN: 0805076158 EAN: 9780805076158 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A first-hand account of the remarkable transformation of
China over the past forty years as seen through the life of
an award-winning journalist and his four Chinese
classmates
As a twenty-year-old
exchange student from Stanford University, John Pomfret
spent a year at Nanjing University in China. His fellow
classmates were among those who survived the twin tragedies
of Mao�s rule�the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution�and whose success in government and private
industry today are shaping China�s future. Pomfret went on
to a career in journalism, spending the bulk of his time in
China. After attending the twentieth reunion of his class,
he decided to reacquaint himself with some of his
classmates. Chinese Lessons is their story and his
own. Beginning with Pomfret�s first days in
China, Chinese Lessons takes us back to the often
torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University
History Class of 1982. One classmate�s father was killed
during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an
intellectual; another classmate labored in the fields for
years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; a
third was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her
father. As we watch Pomfret and his classmates begin to make
their lives as adults, we see as never before the human cost
and triumph of China�s transition from near-feudal communism
to first-world capitalism.
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