Dimensions
154 x 232 x 36mm
On the day IKEA opened a superstore in Shanghai, the response from the Chinese public was unprecedented. Thousands of people descended on the shop, picnicked at the tables, slept on the beds and examined the western cooking implements as if they were exhibits in a museum. Most significantly, they brought their parents: the IKEA displays allowed hordes of young people from the new 'aspiration generation' to show their mothers and fathers what modern living is all about.
Less than a decade ago, such scenes would have been inconceivable in China. They are testimony to the extraordinary change that has swept through the nation since Deng Xiaoping began pursuing serious economic reform in the 1990s. It is change on a scale and at a pace perhaps unprecedented in human history and it has had an irreversible impact on people's daily lives.
Duncan Hewitt has been living and working in China since 1986. He has watched this process from close-up, yet even he finds it hard to keep step with it all. In Shanghai whole streets are rebuilt from one day to the next, while car ownership soars, education goes private and Chinese teenagers embrace boy bands, fashion and reality TV. It is a transformation that has brought huge benefits to the nation, but it has also come at a cost. Deng Xiaoping's pronouncement that China should "let some of the people get rich first" may have been adopted enthusiastically by many, but China has in recent years been described as one of the most divided societies on earth.
This book seeks to provide a glimpse inside this new society, as China's isolation melts away and the nation, its people and its problems become increasingly linked to the wider world.
