<
https://theconversation.com/were-all-trained-to-be-good-obedient-children-but-what-do-you-want-delving-into-the-inner-lives-of-women-in-neoliberal-china-230547>
"
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China – Yuan Yang (Bloomsbury)
Yuan Yang is what migration academics call a “1.5 generation migrant” – meaning
she was born in her country of origin and then migrated to another country as a
child.
She belongs, too, to what Chinese people call
jiulinhou – the generation of
people born in the 1990s. As a writer, she is interested in the experience of
individuals like her – young women eager to make something of their lives.
A journalist who reported on China as a correspondent for the
Financial
Times, Yang knows firsthand the editorial constraints of China reporting. In
fact, a new study finds the vast majority of articles published in British
media outlets between 2020 and 2023 framed China negatively, sometimes strongly
so. For myriad, complex reasons, the dominant image of China constructed by
foreign correspondents is largely one-dimensional, simplistic, and increasingly
conforms to a Cold War editorial framework.
Increasingly, China is portrayed as an economic powerhouse, an authoritarian
regime and a security threat. Some foreign correspondents, after a stint there,
feel they know enough about China to write a book. Some claim to have found the
ultimate “truth about China”. Consequently, the Chinese population is mostly
imagined by Western readers as a monolith and faceless crowd: divided into
those who are victims of a repressive Chinese regime, or heroic individuals who
dare to defy the system.
Ordinary Chinese people living their mundane, unremarkable everyday lives are
persistently missing. While Western media do report on the phenomenon of
rural-to-urban migration in China, the cultural and emotional lives of rural
migrants – their hopes and aspirations, worries and frustrations in private
life, especially in intimate, familial relations – remain largely unknown.
As a journalist writing to meet the editorial agenda of her paper, Yuan Yang
may not have been able to step outside the
Financial Times’ negative
framework of China reporting. However, her book does not fall into this trap.
For this reason, she may not achieve the phenomenal fame of someone such as
Jung Chang, author of
Wild Swans, the story of three generations of Chinese
women (published in 1991), which some claim pandered to Western readers’
pre-existing perceptions. The publishing world does not always reward nuance
and complexity."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
