Throughout the text he examines the psyche of Chinese culture and how this idea of a unified state and a feeling of togetherness has persisted through peasant uprising, warlords, Japanese invasions, civil wars, revolution, famine and trauma. He examines both the cities and countryside equally, as “China in the 1920s and ’30s was a land of extraordinary extremes and hugely uneven development. In places in the deep countryside , peasants laboured barefoot with medieval implements, faced with famine and flood, selling their children into slavery while warlords and their militias extorted and murdered at will.” I know you were excited last year about a new translation of Monkey King coming out. Was it needed? Yu Hua says “If I were to try to attend each and every aspect of modern China, there would be no end to this endeavour, and the book would go on longer than The Thousand and One Nights. So I limit myself to just ten words.” With this foundation, Yu Hua covers Chinese culture, history, politics and society. He opens up the mysteries of modern China by sharing a witty and refreshing Chinese perspective. As one of the country’s most famous contemporary writers, you can’t miss reading this masterpiece. EXPERIENCE IT FOR YOURSELF: Best of China with Yangtze Cruise 4. Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang Image credit: Penguin Random House As one of the oldest preserved books in China and a timeless classic, The Art of War has influenced countless politicians, executives, military figures and anyone looking to master the art of conflict and become a better leader. Written by the warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu over 2,000 years ago, the author famously states that conflict is an inevitable part of life, but “to win without fighting is best.” This masterful book also delves into China’s history and it’s a must-read for anyone looking to learn more about the politics and psychology of conflict in China and the world.

China is huge and varied. So, if you want to understand its history and where it is today, you need to take an approach that’s just as varied. What I think makes Nien Cheng’s book rather different is it suggests a universalism about the possibility of any society suddenly turning itself upside down. That’s also true of many of the finest memoirs of the Third Reich – not that they suggest something very specific about Weimar Germany and Nazi Germany, but rather that any society given the wrong sort of stimuli could end up in that situation. Wang Hui is one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals at the moment, in terms of his international exposure. I think the book is interesting because it gives his very ambiguous – or ambivalent from his point of view – take on what’s happening in China today.

11 Chinese festivals (traditional and modern) in 2024

It’s one of those books that if you grow up in China, you know the story, even if you haven’t read the book. It’s a bit like Alice in Wonderland or the story of Romeo and Juliet if you’re growing up in England or America. Even if you’ve never seen Romeo and Juliet, you still know the characters, somebody can refer to Romeo and it means something. There are so many misery memoirs from the Cultural Revolution, and the period seems a bit of a Western obsession. Sometimes one can’t help but feel, “Oh God, not another Cultural Revolution book.” What is different about this book and Nien Chang’s experience that makes it worth reading? EXPERIENCE IT FOR YOURSELF: Classic China 2. The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu Image credit: Penguin Random House What I wanted to avoid was anti-Chinese bias and Western bias as much as I can. I did not want to read a history narrative rife with exoticism or told the story of the sun setting on the Chinese empire. These are common complaints that other books on Chinese history received and it was something I wanted to avoid because I knew it would bug the shit out of me.

He is not someone who argues that the Communist revolution and what came after it has failed completely, or that there was no point in having it. That rather disillusioned viewpoint has been heard from Chinese scholars – many of them have, perhaps sensibly, gone into exile in Hong Kong or elsewhere. Wang Hui says that’s not true, there are still things that the Chinese revolution has brought in terms of progress and modernisation that we need to appreciate. At the same time, we need to understand the limitations of what that first set of revolutions was able to bring about and think about what’s realistic. Hopefully they’ll whet your appetite and open your eyes so you can really appreciate China for what it is. Now, that wartime experience is used in a rather different way. Instead China is portrayed as having been part of a wartime alliance against fascism, and capable of being a cooperative and useful actor in the world community. Which of course suits China very well at a time when it wants to be seen today as a major player in the UN, as a country that takes part in peacekeeping operations and which has a cooperative rather than a confrontational role in international society. Firstly, despite this book being a history book (and the reputation that precedes academia in history), this book carries a great narrative. The author talks to the reader as if they are in a very spirited conversation with them, injecting nuance, wit, and even some dry humor to keep the reader engaged, but never talking down to the reader or using the first person and injecting themselves into the narrative.The book is also interesting because it gives an indication of how wide, and also how narrow, the parameters of this debate are in China today. It’s very clear that 20 years plus after [the] Tiananmen Square [demonstrations], China is still a very authoritarian society. It restricts freedom of speech in a variety of ways that would be unacceptable to almost any Western intellectual. On the other hand, it’s also clear that there is a very real and lively debate going on between a whole variety of different political positions – liberal, conservative, pro-revolution, anti-revolution. For example: it is just to claim that China was able to create and maintain a strong state bureaucracy much earlier than any other state. But the claim that China would probably have set out on a path of modernisation comparable to the one in Europe if it had only been left alone by outside forces seems totally unfounded to me. And even though early discoveries such as that of gunpowder are admirable, this really cannot be compared to the systematic formalisation of a 'scientific method' as happened in the West and which could serve as the basis for a /general/ program of investigation and increase of knowledge. Much more important, though, is the author's careful balance of information between East and West. Keay is Scottish, but he is careful to consider the different factors contributing to the knowledge he puts in the book. In his attempt to find a narrative most representative of "the truth," Keay often mentions conflicting sources of information, such as conflict between the official Chinese history as stated by the modern Chinese government, archeological finds throughout China, imperial records of Chinese affairs, and western accounts, all of which have their own motivations for altering history to fit their own narratives. RELATED CONTENT: 6 local and immersive food experiences you can do with Trafalgar in China 5. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao by Ian Johnson Image credit: Penguin Random House

Essentially it’s a sort of documentary with commentary, about why China in the 1980s – having emerged from the Cultural Revolution, and having had hundreds of years of history as a proud and confident civilisation – seems no longer to have that confidence in itself. The way in which the documentary makers look at this question is by examining the symbols of Chinese history – the dragon, the Yellow river, which have always been rather positive symbols – and instead regard them as negative. The Communist Party of China- With its roots in the May Fourth Movement protesting the Chinese government response to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the CPC officially formed. Sui and T'ang China, 589–906 AD, Part 2 (edited by Twitchett), ISBN 978-0-521-24329-2. This volume is intended to cover cultural and economic topics related to the Sui and Tang dynasties). [Still unpublished] [4] I am a big fan of Keay’s earlier work on India, which provides a much needed systemic look at the narrative of Indian history and dynasty for the general reader. Speaking from experience, such books are hard to come by. China’s a different case. There are dozens of histories of China which do more or less what this book aims to do: tell the history of China’s political ebb and flow. As such, while this is a very good book, it doesn’t feel as essential as that other one. Which is not exactly a criticism, except to say that if you’ve already read some introductions to Chinese history you’ll probably find little new here.In this case, what he suddenly sees, in the light of the moon while he’s in his mad state, is that the whole of Chinese culture has consisted of cannibalism. He looks between the lines of the great Confucian classics of literary tradition, and sees that the secret message is “go and eat people”. This is clearly a metaphor for Confucian thinking – for the old-fashioned way in which Chinese society had been bound up in expectations of the past, which had almost become encrusted on society and from which they needed to break free. Late Ch'ing 1800–1911, Part 2 (edited by Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu), September 1980. ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3. This volume covers the economy, foreign relations, political and social changes, and the revolution movement of the late Qing. Through rich stories, images and even political commentary, these Chinese history books will take you on a journey through this incredible country.