A bilingual graphic novel/comic book, Captain China, goes for $1.99 on Amazon.
I consider it money well spent!
The book's creator, Chi Wang, actually is a U.S. citizen rather than Chinese, but the book has a kind of absurdist cross-cultural sensibility that appeals to me.* More info here. This is the kind of soft-power influence China could easily have, if its officials relaxed.
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* From Chi Wang's explanation in the book:
In 2009 I took a trip to China and was exposed firsthand to what the culture really is like over there.... The thing that fascinated me the most was the coexistence of communist ideal and capitalist behavior, something that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Sounds right.
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James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best-seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.