“Enough Big Picture Books on China” says Time

The Bookworm’s 2010 Literary Festival is rapidly approaching, and to get Beijingers in the mood Jeffrey Wasserstrom of Time magazine takes a look at the crowded field of China books, criticizing many “big picture works” while extolling the virtues of books that present a “ground-level view of the country.”

According to Wasserstrom, “big picture” China books have two things in common: “A conviction that they know what will happen next (even though the P.R.C. has been defying the best guesses of pundits and academic specialists alike for decades) and an ability to provide easy-to-summarize answers to Big Questions.”

He cites several examples, including Gordon G. Chang's The Coming Collapse of China and Martin Jacques' well-known When China Rules the World, criticizing these works not only for frequently being wide of the mark in terms of their predictions, but also for treating “China's population as an undifferentiated mass.”

Wasserstrom contrasts these bird’s-eye views of China with books like Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls, which he describes as “a moving account of migrant workers that was wonderfully sensitive to divides rooted in location, gender and generation.”

Leslie T. Chang's husband Peter Hessler (River Town, Oracle Bones) is also singled out as a writer expert at detailing the nuances of life on the ground in China, and Wasserstrom discusses Hessler’s new work Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory in some detail.

Most China hands have read the classic River Town and eagerly await the release of Country Driving, due out in February. Hessler will be appearing at the Bookworm Literary Festival on Friday, March 12 at 12.30pm (RMB 50). Tickets on sale February 4.

The festival's full schedule available here.