A yet-untranslated essay collection on the importance of critical thought, from one of the foremost Chinese intellectuals of the 1990s.Wang Xiaobo’s Pleasure of Thinking is an essay collection as riotous as it is contemplative. Between rollicking anecdotes about living between the East and West and serious musings on the intellectual situations at home and abroad, Xiaobo examines modern life with the levity missing from so much of today’s politico-cultural...

"Like a Chinese Kurt Vonnegut. By turns lyrical and satirical, Wang Xiaobo's sexual comedies set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution are as improbable as that genre sounds. His long overdue publication in English comes as a gift. Golden Age is funny and brave and profound."—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick"At the time Wang was writing, novels about the Cultural Revolution tended to be fairly conventional tales ...

This book illustrates how Seoul's transition into a digitally networked city has reshaped governance structures, economic systems, and cultural life.Central to this transformation is the proactive role of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which has guided the city through multiple stages of smart urbanization with strategic planning and policy innovation.Organized into three parts, the contributors first examine the government's leadership in building a smar...

Metamaterial Design and Additive Manufacturing covers optimization design, manufacturing, microstructure, mechanical properties, acoustic properties, mass-transport properties and application examples of PMs fabricated by selective laser melting additive manufacturing technology. The book introduces the definition and concept of pentamode metamaterials and then describes their characterization, including manufacturing fidelity, mechanical response, acoustic properties and so on. Final sect...

Reviews latest research on crop physiology and genetic diversityDetailed coverage of key advances in breeding and their application to produce more resilient drought, salt and cold-tolerant varieties of soybeanSummarises good agricultural practices to optimise crop cultivation and make it more sustainable

Like Gary Shteyngart or Michel Houellebecq, Wang Xiaobo is a Chinese literary icon whose satire forces us to reconsider the ironies of history.Wang Er, a twenty-one-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession of his crimes, but he instead takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writ...

An essay collection on the importance of critical thought, from one of the foremost Chinese intellectuals of the 1990s.Wang Xiaobo's Pleasure of Thinking is an essay collection as riotous as it is contemplative. Between rollicking anecdotes about living between the East and West and serious musings on the intellectual situations at home and abroad, Xiaobo examines modern life with the levity missing from so much of today's politico-cultural discourse....