In ''Tide Players, '' acclaimed New Yorker contributor and author Jianying Zha depicts a new generation of movers and shakers who are transforming modern China. Through half a dozen sharply etched and nuanced profiles, ''Tide Players'' captures both the concrete detail and the epic dimension of life in the world's fastest-growing economy. Zha's vivid cast of characters includes an unlikely couple who teamed up to become the country's leading real-estate moguls; a gifted chameleon who transformed himself from Mao's favorite ''barefoot doctor'' during the Cultural Revolution to a publishing maverick; and a tycoon of home-electronic chain stores who insisted on avenging his mother, who had been executed as ''a counter-revolutionary criminal.'' Alongside these entrepreneurs, Zha also brings us the intellectuals: a cantankerous professor at China's top university; a former cultural minister turned prolific writer; and Zha's own brother, a dissident who served a nine-year prison term for helping to found the China Democracy Party. Deeply engaging, lucid, and poignant, Zha's insightful ''insider-outsider'' portraits offer a picture of a China that few Western readers have seen before. ''Tide Players'' is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand today's China.