China - Culture Smart!

For thousands of years, the Chinese believed that they had created a perfect social system, based on Confucian values and tempered by the Mandate of Heaven. Dynasties came and went, but the essence of being Chinese remained essentially unchanged until the twentieth century. Since then, change has taken place in Chinese society at unprecedented speed, as the country first experienced the turmoil of civil war and revolution before emerging on to the world stage as a global superpower. Culture Smart! China aims to put these changes into an historical context, explain deep-seated cultural attitudes, and guide you through the maze of unfamiliar social situations, in order to help you discover for yourself the pragmatism, genius, warmth, and humanity of this extraordinary people.

Indre Balcikonyte-Huang is an independent researcher, writer, and translator based in Shanghai. Fluent in Mandarin, she has lived in China for more than ten years and has a Master’s degree in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature from Fudan University in Shanghai. Kathy Flower has worked in the UK and China as a BBC radio producer, TV presenter, scriptwriter, teacher, and trainer. In China, she presented the country’s first major English-language teaching series, Follow Me, on Chinese TV and became known to hundreds of millions of enthusiastic Chinese viewers as Fay-lau-ah laoshi, or Teacher Flower