(Book Review) The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China

In traditional Chinese colloquial wisdom, the saying "It's better to be famous while young" (chengming xujinzao) reflects how time is often used to measure one's success.Whether or not one agrees with this sentiment, time undeniably serves as a powerful evaluative lens through which we interpret life trajectories and construct personal identities.Yet, few have asked the provocative question posed by Cora Lingling Xu: Can time be inherited?Even fewer have connected time to broader structures of educational and social inequality.In her groundbreaking book, The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China, Xu offers a compelling analysis of how intergenerational transfers of privilege and deprivation are mediated and materialized through temporal dynamics.The book is structured into three parts.Part I (Chapters 1-3) lays the theoretical groundwork for understanding time inheritance and educational mobility.Chapter 1 introduces two key concepts-banked time and borrowed time-which correspond to the temporal capital of advantaged and disadvantaged individuals, respectively.Chapter 2 reframes education through a temporal and class-based lens, contrasting a sense of entitlement among the privileged with feelings of indebtedness among the less advantaged.Chapter