John Pomfret's Chinese Lessons -- LOVED IT!

I just finished John Pomfret's recently published book, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of a New China.  Though it is going to sound like a newspaper movie ad, I cannot resist quoting the tag lines from the five people who reviewed this book (so far) for Amazon, all of whom gave it five stars:

1.   "Masterful account of modern China"

2.   "Superb"

3.   "A book you can't put down"

4.   "An exceptional book, exceptionally written"

5.   "Extraordinary"

6.   "I laughed, I cried"

Okay, so I made up the last one. 

The book beautifully (and usually depressingly) describes how China's past so heavily influences its present.  I felt I knew everyone in the book because they were composites of the real life Chinese with whom I deal in my work.  It was a joy to read and it increased my understanding of China.

For those interested in learning more about Chinese Lessons, I recommend the following:

1.   Karl Taro Greenfeld in the Washington Post

2.   The Peking Duck

3.   Imagethief

4.   Danwei (contains an interesting interview with the author)

5.   Amelia Newcomb in the Christian Science Monitor

6.   Orville Schell in the New York Times

7.   Jinran (in Chinese) 

Read it.