Remains of the Everyday

Joshua Goldstein is Associate Professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Southern California and the author of Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction Part One. The Republican Era (1912–1949)Recycling of a Different Sort1 Dreams of a Hygienic Infrastructure Deferred2 From Imperial Capital to Secondhand EmporiumModernity of a Different Sort Part Two. The Mao Era (1949–1980)Recycling According to Plan3 The Rural Exile of Urban Wastes4 Standardizing Chaos: Rationalizing the Junk Trades in the 1950s5 Effortful Equilibriums of the State-Managed Scrap Sector, 1960–1980Beijing’s Waste-Scape on the Cusp of Market Reform Part Three. The Reform Era (1980–Present)Fighting over the Scraps 6 A Tale of Two Cities, 1980–20037 Top of the Heap8 No Longer the World’s Garbage Dump!Whither Beijing’s Recyclers? Appendix: Timelines of Selected Events in the Recycling and Sanitation Bureaucracies, 1949–2000 Notes Index

"This is a highly engaging and important book. It provides a rich introduction to a subject that has received only scant attention in historical scholarship. . . . The book is a great achievement. It is sure to reward readers with its astute analysis of recycling at a time when finding solutions to our global environmental crisis could not be more urgent."