Tide Players

In Tide Players, acclaimed author Jianying Zha depicts a new generation of movers and shakers who are transforming today's China. In a half dozen sharply etched and nuanced profiles, Tide Players-selected as a Best Book of 2011 by The Economist-captures both the concrete detail and the epic dimension of life in the world's fastest growing economy. Zha's vivid cast of characters includes an unlikely couple who teamed up to become the country's leading real-estate moguls; a gifted chameleon who transformed himself from Mao's favorite "barefoot doctor" during the Cultural Revolution to a publishing maverick; and a tycoon of home-electronic chain stores who insisted on avenging his mother, who had been executed as "a counter-revolutionary criminal." Alongside these entrepreneurs, Zha also brings us the intellectuals: a cantankerous professor at China's top university; a former cultural minister turned prolific writer; and Zha's own brother, a dissident who served a nine-year prison term for helping to found the China Democracy Party. Hailed as "remarkable and fast-paced" ( Financial Times), Zha's insightful insider-outsider portraits garnered nation-wide acclaim, as they offer a picture of a China that few Western readers have seen before.