From her contact with a group of young novelists, film-makers and artists in China, Zha examines a wide range of developments largely unknown to Western readers: the planning of soap operas to placate popular unrest after Tiananmen; the growth of the sex tabloid and pornography industries; the new generation of entrepreneurs bringing to the mainland the consumer techniques of Hong Kong and the West; and the politics behind the censorship and commercial success of the film directors Chen Kaige (Farewell my Concubine) and Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern). The result is an insight into the commercialization of China's cultural world and the anxiety that change is causing in China's intellectuals.