Hui Faye Xiao's Family Revolution and Shuyu Kong's Popular Media, Social Emotion and Public Discourse in Contemporary China are welcome contributions to what both authors point out is the sparse scholarly literature on popular media texts and their role in contemporary Chinese society. Despite the manifest limits of high culture's ability to connect us to the concerns and passions of ordinary Chinese cultural consumers today, it continues to attract more research. Xiao's book is perhaps the more conventional of the two in its focus on textual analysis and it is also more pessimistic, whereas Kong's focus on the participatory role of audiences leads her to be more optimistic. These two very clearly argued texts complement each other well, and we can hope that they will stimulate further work of this type.
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