In Tide Players, acclaimed author Jianying Zha depicts a new generation of movers and shakers who are transforming today's China. In a half-dozen sharply etched and nuanced profiles, Tide Players captures both the concrete detail and the epic dimension of life in the world's fastest-growing economy.

Zha's vivid cast of characters includes an unlikely couple who teamed up to become the country's leading real-estate moguls; a gifted chameleon who transformed himself from Mao's favorite “barefoot doctor” during the Cultural Revolution to a publishing maverick; and a tycoon of home-electronic chain stores who insisted on avenging his mother, who had been executed as “a counterrevolutionary criminal.” Alongside these entrepreneurs, Zha also brings us the intellectuals: a cantankerous professor at China's top university; a former cultural minister turned prolific writer; and Zha's own brother, a dissident who served a nine-year prison term for helping to found the China Democracy Party.

Zha's insightful insider-outsider portraits garnered nationwide acclaim, as they offer a picture of a China that few Western readers have seen before.