China Complex

Book excerpt: For more than a century, the United States and China have been partners in an occasionally graceful but often awkward cultural-political tango. In this insightful narrative, Shouhua Qi, part of a new generation of scholars whose life experiences in China and the West serve as the basis for an acute analysis of cross-cultural perceptions, weaves literary and cultural criticism together with journeys across time, politics, and popular culture. Part memoir, Qi reveals the China complex as a manifestation of the search for meaning at many levels; personal, national, and global. With the future of the U.S. and China so intertwined now more than ever before, Qi's cogent assessment of the interpersonal foundations of the US-China relationship in the twenty-first century is a must-read.