The Chinese Century
is a magnificent and moving photographic chronicle of the past tumultuous
century of china's history. Yale history professor Spence, a noted China
expert, and his wife, Chin, who teaches intellectual and cultural history at
Yale, have produced a stirring, spectacular political and social chronicle
indispensable to understanding modern China.
These astonishing
black-and-white images--more than 300, many of them never seen before outside
China--provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of China from the late Qing dynasty
through the present. Here are the last rulers of the waning empire and the
revolutionaries who were to overthrow them; the warlords and capitalists who
exploited the new order; the chaos of civil war and the brutality of the
Japanese invasion and occupation; the Long March and the great famine; the
triumph of the Red Army and the terrible cruelty and suffering of the Cultural
Revolution; the depredations and downfalls of the Gang of Four; and the tragedy
of Tiananmen Square.
Alongside these
often shocking scenes are glorious landscapes and teeming cities, intimate
portraits of Chinese men and women, townspeople and peasants, artists, writers,
film stars and the country's leaders, as they have rarely been seen in the
West.
The Chinese Century's
spectacular array of photographs bring to life, as never before, the hidden
face of China.
