Chaos and Grime: A Year in the Life of a Chinese City

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"A true story of crime and corruption that the Chinese authorities do not want you to know. A detailed chronicle of everyday life in modern China, a window into the lives of Chinese peasants and the foreigners with whom they fall in and out of romance, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Chaos and Grime: A Year in the Life of a Chinese City takes you where no memoir has dared to go before now. Seven years in the making, this riveting, day-by-day account of the transformation of a city and an American who finds himself stranded there pulls no punches in painting a complex portrait of contemporary China. Jim is an optimistic American scholar. In the summer he arrives in the city of Wuhan on the Yangtze River. Wuhan, the heart of China, boasts a population of ten million and an extreme number of simultaneous construction projects, estimated at 100,000. In the midst of this rapid and chaotic transformation, Jim and a local peasant girl meet and fall in love. Yet their relationship must remain secret, for reasons that put both of their lives in jeopardy. Their story leads to devastating revelations about what really happens to China's "leftover women" and how the authorities stop at nothing to try to prevent such knowledge from getting out. An intensely personal story of understanding and connection, as well as an illumination of power relations in a society in flux, Chaos and Grime captures in exquisite detail the lives of those caught up in the currents of history as it occurs here and now."--Back cover