Looking for Chengdu

For decades, anthropologist Hill Gates had waited for an opportunity to get to know the citizens of China as she had done in Taiwan—face to face, over an extended period of time. At last in the late 1980s she set out on an excursion to Sichuan Province. That visit was the first of many she would make there on a remarkable double adventure: to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese women and to complete a difficult passage in her own life. Looking for Chengdu is her memoir of these trips. By turns analytic, witty, and bittersweet, Gates's observations on contemporary China are enlivened by a keen eye for the oddities of human behavior, including her own.The vast, inland province of Sichuan was the birthplace of the Chinese economic reforms of the 1970s, and is now speeding from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Was its economic boom transforming women's lives, Gates wondered? After a generation of socialist rule, would women risk the challenge of entrepreneurship? A feminist, she was especially curious to learn what Chinese of both sexes defined as women's rights.Gates traveled—by boat, train, bus, car, bicycle, and foot (her preference)—across the spectacular countryside, gleaning insight into China's massive bureaucracies from her experiences on an obligatory vacation, in a Tibetan dance-hall, and at a shouting match in her Chengdu home. She met dozens of hard-working, stylish women running family firms, and crossed paths with scholars and sailors. Her book is rich in anecdotes and compelling moments, from her journey through mountain villages in search of five thousand women with bound feet to low-voiced conversations about the Chengdu equivalent of the events at Tiananmen Square.A fascinating glimpse into the deeply personal vocation of anthropology, Gates's memoir will change the way readers think about the Chinese people.

Gates' presence among the Chinese was often like a dog among geese, ruffling feathers and disturbing the flock.... What emerges from Hill Gates' observations is a deeply sympathetic portrait of the Sichuanese that goes beyond cultural stereotypes and shallow assumptions., The book is best when Gates focuses on her research experiences. Gates reflects on the practical, ethical and institutional dilemmas of doing research in China.... Looking for Chengdu is especially recommended to Western scholars and graduate students of any discipline who plan to do research in China., Women's lives are hard, as they have been for most of China's history. Gates's acerbic, down-to-earth journal entries do an excellent job of conveying their shape and texture.

Hill Gates teaches at Stanford University. She is author most recently of China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism, also from Cornell.