Wild Grass

One of the best books I have read so far on China. This is one of the few books out there that takes a microscopic look on how individuals are navigating through the vast changes that are sweeping across China on every level from political, economic to social, and still coming out with their sanity intact. Wild Grass is a compilation of three accounts on the experiences of ordinary Chinese. The first involves a self-educated peasant lawyer who takes on the local political elite over the excessive and illegal taxation of impoverished farmers, and mobilizes thousands in the process. He ended up being illegally held and denied a trial for 5 years. (Incidentally, I just found out that the Chinese government taxes everyone with an income, big or small, and the minimum tax rate is 5%, for the monthly income bracket of RMB 1-500.) The second case pits owners of homes in the historic heart of old Beijing against city planners who want to bulldoze nearly everything old to make way for high-rise developments for the Olympics showcase and succeed spectacularly through sheer brute coercion. The third case exposes the persecution and determined persistence in her faith of one woman who joined Falun Gong protests, and ended up losing her life. Her daughter takes up her wronged death to the authorities but realises only fading hopes of a redress against the baffling bureaucracy and general indifference of the cadres.

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with the Wall Street Journal.