One of the best (if non-comprehensive) accounts of the forces changing life in modern China I've ever read.

learn about regular people battling to have their rights according to the chinese constitution honored

Beautiful! Sad! Inspiring!

I was most interested in the passages about Falun Gong. I learned many things I didn't know before.

"Wild Grass" is Book No. 24 for 2013!

After 16 years, people who had an extraordinary resilience to rebel to injustice were just wild grass smashed by a totalitarian regime. The same happened for the historical cores from old cities like Beijing. What mattered was to set up order, to focus the country to development and to give the world postcards of modernity through a savage and unequal capitalistic way. Good business was the reward from the peer countries. They closed the eyes, but not the writer who left a precise and sensitive testimony through three interesting stories written in a parallel structure which reach moments real of terror and describe the mechanisms of four pillars of Totalitarian State control: Unfair taxing to the weakest citizens, real state plundering, unfair Law at the side of Power, religion/reunion banning. The writer tries to end positively, giving a ray of hope in the last sentences of each story, but After 16 years from these facts this reader who spend long time in China is hopeless.

There are lots of pains China need to overcome facing a changing era. However, I hope the pains won't drive the country to death but alert more people to fight for it. Quoting a sentence I just read from a book about Chinese investigative journalists: "the world doesn't need just one Don Quixote; it needs a whole band of Don Quitoxte." I'm so glad and grateful to see foreign friends like Ian is also worried about the future of Chinese society and reveal the scar that we must see to all of us.

Wild grass also refers to the Chinese people who never give up on the way leading to a better China and better world, I think.

Johnson's writing is pretty mediocre and the editing is not great, but the last section of the book, about the suppression of Falun Gong, the religion that was banned in the early aughts and viciously cracked down upon, is reported super well and is fascinating.

In a clam quiet style Johnson depicts the lives of ordinary Chinese and the changes facing this nation. Johnson's style captures the essence of the problems faced by ordinary folk, who for the most part go about thier daily lives and are not fire-brand activists, but gradually realise that change is neccesary to thier very existence. Johnson has great understanding of the Chinese psyche but his writing does not patronise his subjects.

While we often read anti-authoritarianism piece from famous philosophers like Hannah Arendt and the Existentialists, or the left oriented personnel and anarchists, this book offer us a close-to-life stories how three people fought bravely against the norm and authority.

At times reads like a newspaper article, which makes sense given the author. Detail and subject matter are excellent.

I actually give this book 3.5 stars. Ian Johnson is not as skilled of a storyteller as say, Peter Hessler, when it comes to China. But if you're looking for a more journalistic tome on three issues of change in China, this is definitely recommended. The book is a little older (considering how fast China is changing), but these issues (petition/appeal process, fair taxing, censorship, Falun Gong crackdown, modernization and lack of historical preservation) are still at play. It's a solid read and as a reporter, Mr. Johnson does his legwork thoroughly.

3 intensely provocative true stories of the current Chinese government's corruption.