Description
Book SynopsisEvery year over 200 million peasants flock to China's urban centers, providing a profusion of cheap labor that helps fuel the country's staggering economic growth. This title follows the trials and triumphs of eight such migrants - including a vegetable vendor, an itinerant knife sharpener, a free-spirited recycler, and a cash-strapped mother.
Trade Review"What Loyalka finds is fascinating... Details ... make the book read like an ethnography, with a lot of first-hand discovery, and give it lasting power as a historical record of the biggest, fastest urbanization in human history." -- April Rabkin San Francisco Chronicle "A vivid portrait of the migrant experience in the burgeoning western Chinese city of Xi'an... An insightful look at the hard lives of real people caught in a cultural transition." Kirkus Reviews "A thorough and insightful examination of the gritty, arduous side of the Chinese economic miracle." Publishers Weekly "One of the first books to examine the complexities of rural-to-urban migration through the life stories of individuals." -- Maura Elizabeth Cunningham Pacific Standard "Eating Bitterness sheds light on another dimension of the vast spectrum of Chinese society and is a valuable addition to the nonfiction literature on China." -- Hilton Yip Asian Review Of Books "Extremely readable, with each portrait of a migrant's life qualifying as a literary short story." -- Kimiko Suda China Perspectives "The book is a welcome complement to the many monographs and economic studies that have charted China's economic progress... Highly recommended." -- F. Ng Choice "Loyalka's intimate portraits are able to provide new insight into the daily lives of the workers whose stories might otherwise seem too small and too humble to represent the Chinese economic juggernaut." -- May-Lee Chai Asian Affairs 41, no. 3
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Veggie Vendors 2. The Impenetrable Knife Sharpener 3. The Teenage Beauty Queens 4. The Ever- Floating Floater 5. The Landless Landlords 6. The Nowhere Nanny 7. The Opportunity Spotter 8. The Big Boss Epilogue Research Notes Acknowledgments Index
