Buchumschlag

"Training the body for China" is the first book on Chinese sports based on extended fieldwork by a Westener. Author introduces the notion of "body culture" to analyze Olympic sports as one element in the whole set of Chinese body practices: the "old people's disco dancing" craze, the new popularity of bodybuilding (following reluctant official acceptance of the bikini), mass calisthenics, martial arts, military discipline, and more. Translating official and dissident materials into English for the first time and drawing on performance theory and histories of the body, author uses the culture of the body as a focal point to explore the tensions between local and global organizatons, the traditional and the modern, men and women. Her intimate knowledge of Chinese social and cultural life and her wide range of historic examples make "Training the body for China" a unique illustration of how gender, the body, and the nation are interlinked in Chinese culture. Klappentext