title: Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
author:  John Pomfret 
description: Pomfret's first sojourn in China came as an American exchange student at Nanjing University in 1981, near the outset of China's limited reopening to the West and its halting, chaotic and momentous conversion from Maoist totalitarianism to police state capitalism and status as world economic giant. Over the next two decades, he returned twice as a professional journalist and was an eyewitness to the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Pomfret's enthusiasm and personal access make this an engaging examination of three tumultuous decades, rooted in the stories of classmates whose remarkable grit and harrowing experiences neatly epitomize the sexual and cultural transformations, and the economic ups and downs, of China since the 1960s. At the same time, Pomfret draws on intimate conversations and personal diaries to paint idiosyncratic portraits with a vivid, literary flair. Viewing China's version of capitalism as an anomoly, and focused overwhelmingly within its national borders, the book's lack of a greater critical context will be limiting for some. But Pomfret's palpable and pithy first-hand depiction of the New China offers a swift, elucidating introduction to its awesome energies and troubling contradictions. <I>(Aug.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  CHINESE LESSONS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  > FIVE CLASSMATES AND  
  > THE STORY OF THE NEW CHINA
  
  
  > JOHN POMFRET
  
  
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  Henry Holt and Company, LLC  
   _Publishers since_ 1866  
  175 Fifth Avenue  
  New York, New York 10010  
  [www.henryholt.com](http://www.henryholt.com)
  
  
  Henry Holt® and ![f0iv-02](images/00004.jpg)® are registered trademarks of  
  Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
  
  
  Copyright © 2006 by John Pomfret  
  All rights reserved.  
  The author would like to thank _The Washington Post_ for allowing him to use a  
  version of his piece, “My Place in the Procession of Tradition,” © 2003,  
   _The Washington Post_. Reprinted with permission.
  
  
  Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
  
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  Pomfret, John.
  
  
  Chinese lessons : five classmates and the story of the new China / John
  Pomfret.
  
  
  p. cm.
  
  
  Includes index.
  
  
  ISBN-13