China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture

China Pop is a highly original and lively look at the ways that contemporary China is changing. Jianying Zha, hailed by The Nation as "incisive, witty and eloquent all at once," examines a wide range of developments largely unknown to Western readers: the careful planning of television soap operas to placate popular unrest after Tiananmen, the growth of the sex tabloid and pornography industries, and the politics of censorship and commercial success of the film directors Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) and Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern).