China and Orientalism

Preface

I came to the study of China and its representation by a circuitous route. I had long had an interest in Marxism and the centrality of the economic in social and cultural life, in part as a result of growing up working class in the Pittsburgh, PA area, and also due to some excellent political theory teachers at Lehigh University. Much later, during frozen winters in Urbana, I began to read on the Russian Revolution. I quickly became fascinated with the rise and fall of that momentous event. It was to be good preparation for an encounter with an even more complicated revolution and political trajectory, as well as its coding abroad. Cut to a later scene: my viewing of Chen Kaige's film, “Farewell My Concubine” at the New Art Theatre. Like ...