Description: How does emotion shape public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic, Hang Tu proposes emotion as a new critical framework to approach a post-Mao cultural controversy. Covering forty years (1978-2018) of bitter cultural wars, Tu analyzes how liberals, the Left, cultural conservatives, and nationalists debated Mao's revolutionary legacies.
Brief description: Hang Tu is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore.
Review Quotes: Admirable...Chronicling the culture wars over the Maoist past during China's post-socialist transition, Tu focuses on four schools of Chinese thought from 1978-2018...Drawing on intellectual history and popular literature, he argues that anger, guilt and melancholy shaped the trajectory of the reform era intelligentsia.-- "China Books Review" (1/13/2026 12:00:00 AM)