China from the outside looks almost like a caricature: pragmatic communists, a “colossus with feet of clay”, robotic students, a “workshop of the world”, fearless corrupt officials and dissidents, the “yellow menace”... A real cauldron of contradictions under a bouncing lid. The New Yorker magazine correspondent shares his impressions of culture, politics and economics, but most importantly, about the people of the rapidly changing People's Republic of China, where he lived for eight years. This book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in the Nonfiction category in 2015.