{"product_id":"floating-chinaman-hua-hsu-9780674967908","title":"A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific","description":"\u003cp\u003eWho gets to speak for China? During the interwar years, when American condescension toward \"barbarous\" China yielded to a fascination with all things Chinese, a circle of writers sparked an unprecedented public conversation about American-Chinese relations. Hua Hsu tells the story of how they became ensnared in bitter rivalries over which one could claim the title of America's leading China expert. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe rapturous reception that greeted \u003ci\u003eThe Good Earth\u003c\/i\u003e--Pearl Buck's novel about a Chinese peasant family--spawned a literary market for sympathetic writings about China. Stories of enterprising Americans making their way in a land with \"four hundred million customers,\" as Carl Crow said, found an eager audience as well. But on the margins--in Chinatowns, on Ellis Island, and inside FBI surveillance memos--a different conversation about the possibilities of a shared future was taking place. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Floating Chinaman\u003c\/i\u003e takes its title from a lost manuscript by H. T. Tsiang, an eccentric Chinese immigrant writer who self-published a series of visionary novels during this time. Tsiang discovered the American literary market to be far less accommodating to his more skeptical view of U.S.-China relations. His \"floating Chinaman,\" unmoored and in-between, imagines a critical vantage point from which to understand the new ideas of China circulating between the world wars--and today, as well.","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50268897542337,"sku":"9780674967908","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0781\/5512\/0833\/files\/9780674967908.jpg?v=1779987059","url":"https:\/\/www.porchlightbooks.com\/products\/floating-chinaman-hua-hsu-9780674967908","provider":"Porchlight Book Company","version":"1.0","type":"link"}