Changing stories in the Chinese world

by Mark Elvin

This book is an innovative attempt to convey something of how it has felt since the early nineteenth century to be Chinese. It is based on the assumption that people live their lives in stories, or as if they themselves were in stories - stories that are largely a social inheritance but are also in some measure self-created or at least continually adapted, edited, or extended. The author describes and interprets some of the most important stories through which the Chinese have lived their lives in the last two hundred years and their understanding of them.