One in a Billion: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey Through Modern-Day China

Education scholar Pine debuts with an inspiring and exhaustive profile of An Wei, a Chinese peasant who has risen to become an “educated professional” and “a guiding light for young Chinese who want to improve their homeland.” Born in 1942 in the village of An Shang in Shaanxi Province, An Wei was seven years old when Mao Zedong’s Communist forces seized power from the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek. Growing up, An Wei survived famine, political purges, and oppression by local party bosses to become an interpreter for foreign dignitaries including Jimmy Carter, a translator of American journalist Helen Snow’s books on the early days of Communist China, a leader of cultural exchange programs with the U.S., and a party secretary in An Shang. An Wei brought a series of political and social reforms to the village, and in 2003 spearheaded the first “villagers congress” to approve a five-year plan for An Shang. Pine details how the new congress found widespread corruption in the previous regime, and brought the first personal computers to An Shang. Combining lucid, concise descriptions of China’s history with intimate details of peasant commune life culled from a decade’s worth of interviews with An Wei, Pine presents an eye-opening portrait of how ordinary Chinese people can become driving forces for reform. Readers seeking to go beyond the headlines about China will learn much from this account. (Nov.)