These acerbic essays, collected from Perry Link’s decades-long career as a noted Sinologist, reveal the depth of his attachment to China and his willingness to squarely face unpleasant truths about the many ways in which ordinary Chinese people have suffered from the self-serving, erratic, and often disastrous “leadership” of the Communist Party of China.

Link's essays touch on politics, society, economy, literature, and art, but their primary focus is on the thoughts, feelings, and values of Chinese people. He lays out his values as he explains how, like many of his Chinese friends, he began with a naïve attraction to socialist ideals only to eventually feel disgust at the cynical betrayal of not only those ideals but even garden-variety ethics. His writing probes the ways “comrades” in the ruling regime have ruthlessly clung to and pursued the one value whose pre-eminence has never been in question: political power.

The Anaconda in the Chandelier includes essays on Link’s “day job” interests in Chinese literature, popular culture, and language teaching at Princeton University. He also offers intellectual tribute to his teachers—both classroom teachers and several whose writing taught him how to see beneath the surfaces of things.