Only Hope: Coming of Age under China’s One‐Child Policy. By Vanessa L.  Fong. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp. 242.

2005 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 925-927
Author(s):  
Susan E. Short
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy

China’s Century

Tracing China ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen F. Siu
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Family Change ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Rural To Urban Migration

This essay reviews the following books: Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village 1949–1999, by Yan Yunxiang, Only Hope: Coming of Age under China’s One-Child Policy, by Vanessa Fong, and On the Move: Women in Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China, edited by Arianne M. Gaetano and Tamara Jacka.

Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy. By Vanessa L. Fong. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 242 pp. £29.95. ISBN 0-8047-4961-2.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 1104-1105
Author(s):  
Joyce K. Kallgren
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban China ◽  
School Of Education ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Single Child ◽  
Harvard School

This is an ethnographic study, conducted in Dalian between June 1997 and 2002, of a sample of singleton urban youths and their families. The author interviewed high school boys and girls and their families about their hopes for college and the elite jobs expected upon graduation. Given that Fong (now an assistant professor in the Harvard School of Education) was then a graduate student at Harvard, home of some of the most respected anthropology and sociology faculty whose careers began with survey projects such as this, there are understandingly high hopes for this book (the revised product of her dissertation). Although the footprint of the dissertation (in style and, to some extent, in theory) remains to distract the China specialist occasionally, the book is fascinating and, as book editors often say, “a good read.”Over the last 20 years, there have been a number of studies by Chinese and foreign scholars on the establishment, provision, effectiveness and consequences of the so-called single child family (SCF) policy. This controversial policy, subject to different interpretations and more effective in urban China than in rural areas, seems well established. The generation of young people now coming of age includes the so-called singletons. Fong has contributed to our understanding of their situation by her use of the term “only hope,” by which she means these children are the only hope for a growing number of aging, city-dwelling parents, who are without jobs or welfare protection, and thus facing a bleak future.

China's infamous one-child policy

The Lancet ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 365 (9455) ◽  
pp. 215-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
M KING
Keyword(s):  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy

scholarly journals Frog Metaphors in Mo Yan’s Novel 蛙 /UA55/ (Frog): A Cognitive Perspective

MANUSYA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-153
Author(s):  
Yao Siqi
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mo Yan ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Chinese Author

《蛙》/ua55/ (frog) by the Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Mo Yan describes China’s changing its highly controversial one - child policy and system of forced abortions over the past half-century. Frog metaphors are omnipresent throughout the novel. The present study aims to investigate these metaphors within the framework of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the “GREAT CHAIN OF BEING” system of George Lakoff and Mark Turner (1989) to deepen our understanding of their nature and manifestations. Zoltán Kövecses’s (2002) “HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS” and “ANIMALS ARE HUMAN BEINGS” were also considered as cognitive metaphorical models. Moreover, the viewpoint of “phonetic metaphor” initially proposed by Ivan Fónagy (1999) was also taken into account. Results were that in Mo Yan’s work, the frog plays an essential role in the conceptualizing conventional views of certain areas in China. The analysis demonstrates how a cognitive approach offers an effective way to explore the cognitive basis of the text’s view on the complex relationship between the basic human rights and the dilemmas of living in a repressive society. This paper also hopes to make a certain contribution to comprehending frog metaphors in terms of more clearly delineated concepts and ideology reflecting China’s real society of a one-child policy and its traditional counter - policy notion.

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