Family and the State in Modern China

Joseph W. Esherick will talk about his new book, "Ancestral Leaves", at UC Berkeley.

Speaker/Performer: Joseph W. Esherick, UCSD and Director, University of California EAP Beijing Study Center, Peking University

In his new book, "Ancestral Leaves," Joseph W. Esherick tells the story of one family through a tumultuous period of Chinese history. Through the lives of the Ye (“leaves” in Chinese) family members, we see the human dimensions of the grand narrative of modern China: the vast and destructive rebellions of the nineteenth century, the economic growth and social change of the Republican Era, the Japanese invasion in World War II, and the Cultural Revolution under the Chinese Communists. This is a story of social and political change told through family history, and the implications for our understanding of the relationship between the family and the state in modern Chinese history. Introduced by Alex Cook, History, UC Berkeley.

This talk is part of the IEAS Book Series "New Perspectives on Asia."