Everyone enjoying Wang Huning's America Against America, either in the original or through grassroots scanlation efforts, I recommend another contemporary portrait of America: Beijinger in New York, a TV series adapted from a 1991 novel about a sojourn in America.
The series came at a moment not completely unlike the present, when the West was making a show of turning its back on China, while things and money and people were still going back and forth. So, this is about a lot of things—but the portrait of America is interesting...
America is corrosive. Our protagonist—Qiming (Jiang Wen)—a shaggy but humane and cultured musician is destroyed: he's reduced to a beast of burden, his wife starts sleeping with her boss (white, sleazy missionary grandson, fluent in Chinese), and his daughter is hooked on dope.
So but this is presented as a portrait of America and the immigrant experience and it might be but it's also a look into the future, a warning about what happens when a morality and culture are sacrificed to market logic. Looking back on how it was written about at the time...
I mean in English, it's described as part of a new nationalist wave. It's like there's disgust at the hubris of the Chinese—how could they be dissatisfied with the promise of liberating themselves through capitalism and democracy! How could they see America as a wicked place?
The way Geremie Barmé sums things up there is obviously not completely inaccurate, though. But some of the "nationalistic" reaction to opening up feels different now. You can watch the series here: . The translation of the novel is long out of print.
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