Skip to product information
1 of 1

Paradise Redefined

Regular price $105.00
Regular price $105.00 Sale price $105.00
Sold out
This book picks up where author Vanessa Fong left off in Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy (Stanford, 2004), and continues by telling the stories of the Chinese youth who left...
Read More
  • 01 August 2011
View Product Details
In 2004, Vanessa Fong offered a groundbreaking ethnographic exploration of the social, economic, and psychological development of children born since China's one-child policy was introduced in 1979. Her book Only Hope left readers with a picture of stressed, ambitious adolescents for whom elite status was the ultimate goal, though relatively few were in a position to achieve it. In Paradise Redefined, Fong tracks the experiences of many in her initial cohort of Chinese only-children—now college-age—as they study abroad in Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, North America, and Singapore. While earning a prestigious college education in China is the main path to elite status, study abroad provides an alternative channel by offering a particularly flexible "developed world" citizenship. This flexible citizenship promises the potential for greater happiness and freedom afforded by transnational mobility, but also brings with it unexpected suffering, ambivalence, and disappointment. Paradise Redefined offers insights into China's globalization by examining the expectations and experiences that affect how various Chinese students make decisions about studying abroad, staying abroad, immigration, and returning home.
files/i.png Icon
Price: $105.00
Pages: 280
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Publication Date: 01 August 2011
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780804772662
Format: Hardcover
REVIEWS Icon
"Despite the obvious methodological challenges, which she describes in her 'Introduction,' Fong followed students to the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore, among others. The result is a rich and enjoyable book which leaves the reader feeling that he/she has genuinely achieved a deeper understanding of the people behind the much debated topic of China's role in the world."
Vanessa L. Fong is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Amherst College, and author of Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy (Stanford, 2004), winner of the 2005 Francis Hsu Book Prize from the Society for East Asian Anthropology.