"This unsettling book about the moral encounter between America and
China is a study of privilege, innocence, and risk. It is a tragedy of
manners and a portrait of Beijing -- amplified and torqued and
unmistakable."-- Evan Osnos, autor of Age of Ambition, winner of the
National Book Award
A coming-of-age story set in modern day China centering on the
friendship between an American and a Chinese boy who meet while training
with Beijing's Junior National Tennis Team.
Chase Robertson arrives in Beijing as a fourteen-year-old boy still
troubled by the recent death of his older brother. He discovers a
country in transition; a society in which the dual systems of Communist
Era state control and an emerging entrepreneurial culture exist in
paradox.
A top ranked junior tennis player in the U.S., Chase joins the practices
of the Beijing National Junior Tennis Team and is immersed in the
brutal, cut-throat world of Chinese sport. It is a world in which gifted
children are selected at the ages of six or seven for specialized sport
schools where they devote their entire youth to the pursuit of athletic
excellence and are paid as professionals by the state. Athletes find
themselves compelled to do anything possible to succeed--right or wrong.
Those who fail to reach the pinnacle are cast aside and are left facing
a desperate future without hope.
In China, Chase gains access to a culture rarely open to Westerners, and
soon finds himself caught up in secrets. When his closest friend and
teammate turns to him for help, Chase is faced with the dilemma of what
to do when friendship, rules, and morals are in conflict.
A big-hearted debut, Beautiful Country explores a friendship against
the backdrop of a quickly changing country.
