Financial Times Best Book of 2014
It’s still known as the rich man’s game” and considered taboo, and yet golf is booming in China hundreds of new courses have opened in the past decade, despite it being illegal for anyone to build them. Award-winning journalist Dan Washburn follows the lives of three men intimately involved in China’s bizarre golf scene. We meet Zhou, a peasant turned golf pro who sees the game as his way into China’s new middle class; Wang, a lychee farmer whose life is transformed when a massive, top-secret resort springs up next door; and Martin, a Western executive maneuvering through a highly political business environment, ever watchful for Beijing’s golf police.”
Charting these three different paths to the new Chinese Dream, The Forbidden Game is a rich and arresting portrait of a country of contradictions.
It’s still known as the rich man’s game” and considered taboo, and yet golf is booming in China hundreds of new courses have opened in the past decade, despite it being illegal for anyone to build them. Award-winning journalist Dan Washburn follows the lives of three men intimately involved in China’s bizarre golf scene. We meet Zhou, a peasant turned golf pro who sees the game as his way into China’s new middle class; Wang, a lychee farmer whose life is transformed when a massive, top-secret resort springs up next door; and Martin, a Western executive maneuvering through a highly political business environment, ever watchful for Beijing’s golf police.”
Charting these three different paths to the new Chinese Dream, The Forbidden Game is a rich and arresting portrait of a country of contradictions.
