Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China

*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2014*

《紐約時報》、《華爾街日報》《華盛頓郵報》、《經濟學人》、《商業周刊》……
西方各大主流媒體及政治觀察家一致贊賞
新浪、搜狐、南都周刊、外灘畫報、新周刊、人物周刊……中國主流媒體也紛紛評論連線採訪
亞洲週刊、蘋果日報、中國時報、明報、風傳媒……港台媒體也討論歐逸文旋風

1996年，本書作者第一次到北京，這座城市讓他大跌眼鏡，他看到的中國首都，地理和風貌上更肖似蒙古風吹草原而非霓虹燈閃爍的香港。等他2013年離開中國後，新書《野心時代》則變成美國政治人物和普通人理解中國社會和政治的最新指南。

作者認定，在廿一世紀頭幾年，中國由兩個宇宙組成：既是全球最新超強，也是世上最大的集權國家。「有好些日子，我早上跟新大亨在一起，晚上則與軟禁在家的異議人士為伍。你很容易把他們看待成代表新中國、舊中國；涇渭分明的政經領域，只是到最後我歸結認為，他們是同體合一的。」

本書敘述兩股力量的碰撞：個人的野心志向與集權主義。因為政治及貧窮，四十年前的中國人事實上沒有取得財富、真相或信仰的管道，他們沒有機會經商；沒有力量挑戰政治宣傳及言論刪檢；沒有法子在共產黨外找到道德靈感。但在一個世代內，這三種東西他們都有管道取得，而且要得更多。只是共產黨依舊孜孜不倦於控制，他們想規定的東西，不止於誰領導國家，甚至列車服務員微笑時能露幾顆牙齒都想管，但這與外界生活的變化已相牴觸。「我在中國住愈久，愈感覺到黨釋放出世界史上最偉大的人類潛能擴張，而且可能孕育出對其存亡最強大的威脅。」

這本書奠基在作者長達八年的訪談，行文則側重在不同領域打拚的男男女女，他們奮力想從某一領域推開一條路到另外的領域，不僅限於經濟，也涉足政治、思想及性靈。這些人很多是你我耳熟能詳的中國公眾人物，如異議藝術家艾未未、偶像作家兼賽車手韓寒、戴著鐐銬跳舞的媒體人胡舒立、逃跑到美國北京大使館的盲人律師陳光誠、從台灣泅水潛逃中國的林毅夫，還有很多是我們不甚熟悉，但在中國則知名度甚高的人物，如瘋狂英語的創辦人李陽、中國最大相親網站的創辦人龔海燕、用近乎虔誠的方式復興愛國主義的「憤青」唐杰、以及網路身份是詩人、真實身份是從農村移居北京的清潔工。歐逸文栩栩如生地描繪這些人，並將他們置放於轟動全球媒體版面的各種公共事件的背景下、放置於中國的政治和歷史的邏輯框架中，檢視他們何以代表了這個野心時代，及他們賦予給中國的意義。這些人物從表面看幾乎並無相似之處，但他們共同呈現出野心勃勃的新中國關鍵詞：在經濟高速發展的同時，政治獨裁的高壓無處不在；人們追逐成功，與此同時也備感空虛，轉投信仰以尋求寧靜；自我意識的覺醒澆灌了個人主義，但也同樣滋生割裂感與不安。

唱衰中國和押寶中國，是目前外部世界看待中國的兩種主要視角，而作者不會如此簡化。他指出，由遠處看，大家經常描述中國已經無可逆轉地邁向康莊大道，但是在中國內部，人們則更小心謹慎。中國的一切，都是靠鐵、淚水及火而取得的，而中國人比誰都更曉得一切無常——誠如費滋傑羅形容：「真實的不真實，宛如一個許諾，即這個世界的基石乃是安置在精靈的翅膀上。」在北京的最後幾個月，那種脆弱感更深地纏繞著作者。

中國太複雜多樣，一直很難被定義，也永遠沒有終極答案。如今的中國，空氣中瀰漫著一種蠢蠢欲動的情緒，它驅動中國成為最新興的超級大國，也使得這個世界上最大的威權政府感到擔憂。官方用「中國夢」來回應這種情緒，將其描述為一種復興強國的慾望；本書作者敏銳精準地捕捉到這種情緒，但他稱之為中國的「野心時代」。

如果每個時代都有它獨一無二、不可替代的傳記，中國的這幾十年則是由歐逸文來蓋棺定論，冠之以「野心時代」。

A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China.
A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau.
The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’.

Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.

Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards. It has more Christians than members of the Communist Party. And why does a government that has lifted more people from poverty than any other so strictly restrain freedom of expression?

Based on years of research, Age of Ambition is a stunning narrative that reveals China as we have never understood it before.

Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. He was the magazine’s correspondent in China, where he lived in a restored house in Beijing north of the Forbidden City, from 2005 until 2013 when he moved to Washington, D.C.

He has received many prizes, including the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Osnos previously worked as the Beijing Bureau Chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Age of Ambition is the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for non-fiction.

What the critics say
The rise of China is the biggest story of the past twenty-five years. Evan Osnos captures the country in all its striving, thunderous diversity, through a narrative that moves, provokes and makes us laugh. Age of Ambition is a marvel of great reporting, careful thinking, and powerful writing.
- Dexter Filkins

If you have time to read only one book about China today, read this one. Woven from vignettes of Chinese life at many different levels, it provides unerring insights into what makes the Chinese the people they are while wearing its learning so lightly that the narrative never flags. It should be in every tourist’s baggage and every diplomat’s library.
- Philip Short, author of Mao: A Life

Evan Osnos is one of the most astute observers of contemporary China, and in this book he gives us a powerful and moving portrait of that country as it moves into the next decade. Using crisp and brilliant prose, Osnos uses some of the figures at the cutting edge of a changing China - artists, bloggers, religious leaders, and workers - to show us the strengths and weaknesses of this fast-changing and deeply important nation. This is a must-read book for those who want to understand China today - and where it is going.
- Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford

The best book on China I've ever read. Witty, indispensable, and often moving. I look forward to stealing Evan Osnos's wisdom and passing it off as my own for years to come.
- Gary Shteyngart

For most of a decade, Evan Osnos has been one of the most energetic, skilled, and thoughtful observers of China. Whether he’s accompanying Chinese tourists to the Best Western in Luxembourg or watching Ai Weiwei blur the lines between performance and protest, Osnos is always engaging. This is a wonderful book.
- Peter Hessler, author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze and Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip

The very hardest thing to convey about modern China is the combination of hope and despair, idealism and crassness, coordinated mass action and chaotic individual scheming, you encounter each day. Evan Osnos has captured all parts of this disorienting 'reality', but he has done so much more. Beautifully written, humane but critical-minded, funny on every page, Age of Ambition offers a better understanding of China's process of 'becoming' than most people could ever gain by living there. China veterans and amateurs alike will find it an illuminating and delightful read.
- James Fallows

How often have travelers asked: 'What is the one book about China that I should read before I depart?' Alas, for years I have had no good answer to this question. But now, Evan Osnos has provided a stellar candidate. Wonderfully engaging, readable and informative, this vivid tableau of actors from all walks of Chinese life goes a long way to helping us make sense out of the often confusing complexity that is today's China.
- Orville Schell, co-author of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

Compelling and accessible
- Washington Post Sunday

Osnos beautifully portrays the nation in all its craziness, providing a ringside seat for the greatest show on earth
- Economist

[Osnos] provides a fluent, cohesive view of the country that goes to the heart of the conflict between Party control and the rise of the individual
- Financial Times

Osnos writes beautifully… This is a book about China as it really is – not a book about China as we in the West would like, or fear, it to be
- Independent

The quirky, the colourful, the sideways look, the illumination of the general through a detailed journey around a small particular… It is in this that Osnos excels
- Observer

Fascinating glimpse behind the scenes
- Good Book Guide

A highly readable, colourful introduction to the complexities of modern China
- Guardian

Pacy… Read and be amazed by the antics of our future masters
- Mail on Sunday

Assiduous and stylish reportage
- Guardian

An enjoyable and useful introduction to events in China over the last decade
- Literary Review

[A] lively panorama of evolving contemporary China… A highly readable, colourful introduction to [its] complexities
- Guardian Weekly