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china the beautiful is raymond zhou's paean to his motherland, written after returning home following a long absence, which provided him with new perspectives and new opportunities to travel to places he had previously only read about. it is anything but a guidebook for roughly half of the country's provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
zhou takes a multifaceted approach to each place he writes about. his real interest is always in ordinary people - their joys, concerns and anxieties, the breath-taking beauty of the sceneries, and the quandaries between economic growth and ecological preservation.
the book is a kaleidoscopic view of a country on the cusp of change - a country always yearning for something new, yet constantly reminded of its past glory; a country caught between the need for improving living standards for all and the hard decisions of what has to be given up in the process;a country where everything is happening so fast it's a blur and capturing it with words and images amount to sculpting in time.
besides portraying everyday lives on the ground and up close, zhou makes one exception by examining the great wall from an international space station. with the help of an astronaut, he busted,once and for all, the urban myth about the wall as the only man-made structure visible from outer space.
the book is a kaleidoscopic view of a country on the cusp of change - a country always yearning for something new, yet constantly reminded of its past glory; a country caught between the need for improving living standards for all and the hard decisions of what has to be given up in the process;a country where everything is happening so fast it's a blur and capturing it with words and images amount to sculpting in time. besides portraying everyday lives on the ground and up close, zhou makes one exception by examining the great wall from an international space station. with the help of an astronaut, he busted,once and for all, the urban myth about the wall as the only man-made structure visible from outer space.