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Contemporary China provides a special case to study the plurality of traditions along with profound social and cultural change. Within the past decades, the country has risen from its Maoist past to a globalizing superpower while also widening social inequalities and creating uncertain futures. This introductory course is designed to familiarize students with contemporary scholarly discussions of Chinese culture and society in transformation. The organization of the course is thematic, with each week covering a topical theme that relates to our overall subject of understanding the dynamics and dialectics of traditions and transformations. The period of focus is on the reform era (1978 to the present), but our discussions of the present will be anchored in a firm understanding of both the so-called traditional China and socialist experiments of the Maoist era. Through carefully reading studies of the village, family, gender, migration, class, consumption, and morality, we will examine how grand narratives such as socialism, Confucianism, and neoliberalism are reflected and contested in the interstices of everyday life as well as how they cause contradictions and yearnings for change. Students will not only gain a solid knowledge of contemporary China but also receive instruction in critically engaging the texts and utilizing different analytical frameworks to understand social and cultural phenomena.