Par for China, the first English-language book about golf in modern China, follows peasant farmer turned professional golfer Zhou Xunshu and a host of other colorful characters through the ups and downs of a season on the China Tour, China's fledgling professional golf circuit founded in 2005. Par for China is much more than just a book about golf, however. It's a rich and engrossing portrait of a country and a people undergoing dramatic and historic change. Golf, its emergence and growth in China, is a barometer for this change and the country's rapid economic rise. But golf is also symbolic of the less glamorous realities of a nation's awkward and arduous evolution from developing to developed — historical prejudice, class struggle, political corruption, environmental neglect, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor — and first-time author Dan Washburn weaves it all into his captivating narrative. (more)

Dan Washburn, a 35-year-old American journalist who has been based in Shanghai since 2002, has already committed more than two years of his life and several thousand dollars of his own savings to the Par for China book project, which saw him go on the road with the golfers of the China Tour in 2007. Washburn's work has appeared in Budget Travel, ESPN.com, Outside's GO, Business China (part of The Economist), Economist.com, Baseball America and the South China Morning Post. In 2008, Washburn's writing was featured in the book Inside The Ropes: Sportswriters Get Their Game On, an anthology of the best of participatory sports journalism. (more)

Click on the images to see the two NBC Nightly News clips related to Par for China.

Read Dan Washburn's series on golf in China on the worldwide leader in sports:

• Zhou makes remarkable leap into professional golf
• How they got to the China Tour
• Golf in China: All growing, all new, all raw
• Washburn: Q&A with Zhang Lianwei
• Golf still an elitist pursuit in China
• Golf in China grows bigger by the day
• Chinese events bring interesting questions

From Shanghai-based Daedalum Films, a 17-minute film inspired by the Par for China book project:

Click here to read Steven Jiang's CNN.com story about Dan Washburn, Zhou Xunshu and Par for China.