The result is that while the book presents no obstacles to late-night reading, it somehow doesn't attach itself to the memory very readily. You see, I am getting into Hewitt's infectious balancing-act habit myself. (It was Samuel Johnson who in the 18th century perfected the "pointed" - ie. balanced - sentence, but at least his sentences were highly memorable).
But enough of this. There is much of serious interest in this book. The success among the young in China a few years back of Taiwan's TV drama series Meteor Garden, featuring four upper-class, "floppy-haired" university students, is vividly described, as is much of China's new youth culture, and the problems it raises for older generations. Hewitt also comments on how the success of TV shows made in Taipei has made Taiwan's "softer, southern-style" Mandarin pronunciation popular with China's TV and radio presenters. South Korean programs, films and popular songs have also been successful there (as they have here), we're informed.
Hewitt, with the instincts of a good journalist, makes a lot of his best contacts. The outspoken feminist and academic Ai Xiaoming (艾曉明), of Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University, is quoted on many aspects of what the book, no doubt ironically, calls "the great proletarian sexual revolution," as is Jin Xing (金星) - "one of the country's leading contemporary choreographers and dancers, and also China's first open transsexual." Jin is quoted as saying, "Some young people ... actually call me China's Statue of Liberty because ... . I did something completely against the mentality of traditional society."
This book deserves praise above all for its range. It doesn't contain any startling new claims or invigorating imaginative insights, but it does manage to deal with a lot. It's consequently a pity it doesn't have an index - journalists and others will find it useful, I suspect, primarily as a work of reference. But at least it deals with China today, and isn't yet another book on the ills of the Cultural Revolution.
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