Documenting the changes to public life in Chengdu since the communist takeover on the eve of 1950, Wang regales readers with a feast of vivid details about the social dynamics within the teahouse in relation to state power among diverse actors, from owners and staff to patrons, entertainers, fortune tellers, and earwax pickers. Complementing his earlier work, The Teahouse: Small Businesses, Everyday Culture, and the Public Politics in Chengdu, 1900–1950 (Stanford, 2008), the current book continues to treat the teahouse as a microcosm of urban society not only to delineate the decline and renewal of public life under socialism but also to compare it with the pre-communist era to reveal the persistent elitist views of teahouse culture and the unceasing state efforts to reform it throughout the twentieth century.
Wang’s research about Chengdu draws from new Maoist-era archives and his own ethnographical observations and interviews in the reform era to...