Chasing dreams: The common man in China today

Alec Ash and Rob Schmitz, two writers with books recently published on China, will be at Asia House to give a talk offering fresh perspectives of China in the 21st century.

While the media regularly focuses on Xi Jinping and his dream of China’s great renewal, this talk will instead give a bottom-up perspective of modern life in China, with the writers using personal narratives collected for their books to give the common man in China a voice that is rarely heard. The talk will emphasise the immense diversity in modern China and discuss the great ‘Chinese dream’ that the nation supposedly shares.

Rob Schmitz is author of Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road (May 2016) and Alex Ash Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China (June 2016).