The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China

Perry Link is a noted Sinologist, sentimentally attached to China in deep ways but also, unlike some, ready to face unpleasant truths squarely. His acerbic essays, collected from a decades-long career, are written in plain, accessible language and reveal the many ways in which ordinary Chinese people have suffered from the self-serving, erratic, and often disastrous "leadership" of the Communist Party of China.

The essays involve politics, society, economy, literature, and art, but their primary focus is on the thoughts, feelings and values of Chinese people. At one point Link reveals his own values by explaining how he, like many of his Chinese friends, began in a na鴳e attraction to socialist ideals only to land, eventually, in disgust at cynical betrayal of those ideals as well as garden-variety ethics. "Comrades" in the ruling regime have battled endlessly--both among themselves and against groups in the society they dominate--in pursuit of the one value whose pre-eminence has never been in question: political power.

The Anaconda in the Chandelier includes essays on Link's "day job" interests in Chinese literature, popular culture, and language teaching. He offers intellectual tribute to teachers--both classroom teachers and several who taught him through their writing how to see beneath the surfaces of things.