Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China

Ian Johnson is an excellent journalist, and this book showcases his skill. He comes off as extremely observant and well-informed, exploring a side of China in startling depth in spite of government surveillance. The three essays in this book tell the stories of three different activists pressuring the government to change its policies and respect their rights.The value of this book is that it provides some very concrete, well-investigated examples of the Chinese government's oppression of its citizens and their response to it. This is more difficult to come by than one might imagine since the Chinese government is very effective at suppressing this information. Johnson penetrates unusually deeply into Chinese society to bring us back the stories of humble, unlikely Chinese activists standing up to their government. The first essay is on a lawyer suing the local government for overtaxing farmers. The second is on a college student and group of Beijing residents trying to save their old homes from being demolished. The third is about Falun Gong protesters.The essay on the Falun Gong is probably the best in the book because of the way it combines macro- and micro-level stories to give an overarching picture of the issue. Johnson gets inside the heads of the Falun Gong adherents, their relatives, their opponents, the central government, the local police force, etc., and gives a compelling explanation for the tragic events. By intermingling the overarching explanation with vignettes about people he met, Johnson makes an important story very accessible.The reason I didn't give this book five stars is that I think Johnson wastes far too much space on the trivial details of his personal story. It's nice to have a little description of the setting of his interviews now and then for flavor, and knowing something about the complications in getting interviews in spite of government surveillance is interesting, but after a while it started to get in the way of the story for me. I found my eyes glazing over as I read that "I sat down on a giant black leather sofa and she in a matching easy chair." Perhaps others will enjoy his eye for the aesthetic, but I'd just as soon cut to the chase. I want to understand Chinese society and politics, not visualize the furniture Ian Johnson just happened to sit on.

This book, a sort of prequel to Phillip Pan's "Out of Mao's Shadow", consists of three extended essays on Chinese dissidents in the post-Mao era. The first is about one lawyer's battle against the legal system; the second on an young architect's struggle to preserve historic Beijing sites; and the third and longest is on the Falun Gong controversy. It was this last chapter that I found most illuminating and informative, since I had never fully grasped the nature of the exercise cum meditation movement and why it drove the Commissars into such a frenzy of persecution. Johnson crisply explains it all and introduces us to some of the persecuted. See also Ma Jian's novel,"Beijing Coma", for a fictional but incisive potrait of an adherent of Falun Gong which reveals some of the reasons for its appeal.Is there a country in the world where more fascinating things are taking place than modern day China?

Very informative true stories of everyday heroes who stood up to the Communist Chinese government to make life a bit better. Pulitzer Prize winning book!

Arrived on time. The book is in good quality.

I'm preparing to move to China for a couple years. Wild Grass by Ian Johnson gave me lots of insight on how life is there. Amazing how well he relates to the Chinese people! Makes me more eager to get on my way.

A wonderful book that is carefully researched and nicely written.

good.

This book fascinating. The author understands the Chinese people and the communist party both very well. It was interesting to read about the spiritual void felt by many after communism lost its "religion" status.