Lu Xun

Great Books of China invites readers to discover―or rediscover―some of the major achievements of Chinese culture and civilization. The literature of China remains largely unknown in the West, yet it offers much insight into Chinese life. The long continuity of Chinese culture means that texts created more than two thousand years ago are still part of the education and background of today's China.

Recognition has been late in coming to China's "Angry Young, Old Man" of symphonic music, Wang Xilin. Or more accurately, POSITIVE recognition has been late in coming. Wang began his career as one of the most promising young graduates from the Shanghai Conservatory in the early '60s. He would be later rounded up and imprisoned as a result of Mao's political trap known as the "Hundred Flowers Campaign." Wang's Fifth Symphony (dedicated to the writer Lu Xun) is a bold and aggressive score. Composed for just 22 strings, Wang delivers a knock-out punch of densely scored canons, ostinati and timbral effects that will remind many of the best works of the new "Polish School" (i.e. Lutoslawski, and Penderecki).

In 1992 Deng Xiaoping famously declared, "Development is the only hard imperative." What ensued was the transformation of China from a socialist state to a capitalist market economy