{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260418T162306Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RM5Z592?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"B00RM5Z592","authors":["Haiyan Lee"],"book_id":"9780804785914","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/the-stranger-and-the-chinese-moral-imagination-B00RM5Z592","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780804785914.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","description":"In the last two decades, China has become a dramatically more urban society and hundreds of millions of people have changed residence in the process. Family and communal bonds have been broken in a country once known as \"a society of kith and kin.\" There has been a pervasive sense of moral crisis in contemporary China, and the new market economy doesn't seem to offer any solutions. This book investigates how the Chinese have coped with the condition of modernity in which strangers are routinely thrust together. Haiyan Lee dismisses the easy answers claiming that this \"moral crisis\" is merely smoke and mirrors conjured up by paternalistic, overwrought leaders and scholars, or that it can be simply chalked up to the topsy-turvy of a market economy on steroids. Rather, Lee argues that the perception of crisis is itself symptomatic of a deeper problem that has roots in both the Confucian tradition of kinship and the modern state management of stranger sociality. This ambitious work is the first to investigate the figure of the stranger—foreigner, peasant migrant, bourgeois intellectual, class enemy, unattached woman, animal—across literature, film, television, and museum culture. Lee's aim is to show that hope lies with a robust civil society in which literature and the arts play a key role in sharpening the moral faculties and apprenticing readers in the art of living with strangers. In so doing, she makes a historical, comparative, and theoretically informed contribution to the on-going conversation on China's \"(un)civil society.\"","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780804785914","publication_date":"20141112","publisher":"Stanford University Press","slug":"the-stranger-and-the-chinese-moral-imagination","subtitle":"1st Edition, Kindle Edition","title":"The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Chinese Literary Criticism","score":0.7739,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO004010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Chinese Literary Collections","score":0.7589,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Lit Crit","score":0.7538,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Chinese Literary Criticism","score":0.7739,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO004010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Chinese Literary Collections","score":0.7589,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Lit Crit","score":0.7538,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008010","confidence_band":"high","label":"Chinese Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Chinese Literary Criticism","score":0.7739,"slug":"chinese-literary-criticism"},{"label":"Chinese Literary Collections","score":0.7589,"slug":"chinese-literary-collections"},{"label":"Asian American Lit Crit","score":0.7538,"slug":"asian-american-lit-crit"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy Chinese Literary Criticism","Good for readers interested in woman","Good for readers who enjoy Chinese Literary Criticism and Chinese Literary Collections."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Hua Hsu"],"book_id":"9780674967908","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780674967908.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":13.2062,"title":"Floating Chinaman","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780674967908"},{"authors":["Lydia Liu","Lydia H. 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McDougall","Kam Louie"],"book_id":"9780231110853","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231110853.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":13.1344,"title":"The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231110853"},{"authors":["Say-ling Cynthia Wong"],"book_id":"9780195116540","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780195116540.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":13.0126,"title":"Maxine Hong Kingston's the Woman Warrior","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780195116540"},{"authors":["Yi Zheng"],"book_id":"9781557535764","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781557535764.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":10.6162,"title":"From Burke and Wordsworth to the Modern Sublime in Chinese Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781557535764"},{"authors":["Jeffrey Kinkley","Jeffrey C Kinkley"],"book_id":"9780231167680","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231167680.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":10.3604,"title":"Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231167680"},{"authors":["Yunte Huang"],"book_id":"9780393353808","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780393353808.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":10.3194,"title":"The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780393353808"},{"authors":["Mingwei Song"],"book_id":"9780231204439","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231204439.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-18T23%3A16%3A50Z","score":10.2793,"title":"Fear of Seeing","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231204439"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:woman"],"label":"Woman","score":0.0745,"slug":"woman"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Woman.","Reading lane: Chinese Literary Criticism and Chinese Literary Collections.","Publisher: Stanford University Press."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":2,"goodreads_ratings_count":5,"goodreads_reviews_count":1,"quality_score":0.8245}}