Are you traveling to China? Are you an arm-chair traveler fascinated by what's going
on in China? Have you just gotten interested in China and are looking for a small
number of quality books to read on it? I have from time to time been asked to
recommend readings for such travelers and here are some titles I would put on such
a reading list. [Please let me know if you have additional suggestions.]
General History:
Patricia Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge University Press, 1999,
paperback) covers China’s history in one volume. This elegant book doesn’t offer the sort
of detailed scholarly analyses found in the multi-volume and yet-to-be-finished Cambridge
History of China but it conveys the sweep of Chinese history remarkably well. For coverage
of recent centuries, Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China (W.W. Norton, 2001,
paperback) is superbly written, especially in its treatment of the Ming and Qing dynasties. A
more scholarly survey of Chinese history is China: A New History (Belknap Press, 1998), by
John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, available in an enlarged paperback edition.
It's harder to take a scholarly tome on the trip, let alone Joseph Needham's massive Science
and Civilization in China. Yet there's no more readable volume than Simon Winchester's
biography of Needham: The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric
Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. You won't regret it.
DVDs:
For those more visually inclined, the documentary series China: A Century of Revolution is still
excellent in spite of a few inaccuracies; it is now available in a DVD format. The PBS
program, China from the Inside, does a good job of allowing viewers to see China's giddy
growth and growing pains from the insider's perspective.
Travel Books:
Nearly every brand of travel books, Fodor’s, D.K. Publishing’s Eyewitness Travel guides,
Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, Let’s Go, already has a volume on China and some of these have
also published volumes dedicated to the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and so on.
Here I would like to point to the books by foreigners or Chinese that convey the immediacy
of life as lived in China. In this genre, Peter Hessler’s story of his life as a teacher in the
town of Fuling, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (Harper Perennial, 2002 paperback),
deserves a look for its perceptive observations of Chinese society and life. A recent and
more hilarious addition to this genre is Rachel DeWoskin’s Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the
Scenes of a New China (W.W. Norton 2005, hardcover). DeWoskin was a star in a Chinese
TV drama and this experience offers her a unique perspective on China’s social
transformation and much more. Equally interesting is South of the Clouds: Exploring the
Hidden Realms of China (St. Martin's, 2004) by Seth Faison, the former Shanghai Bureau
Chief for the New York Times.
Foreigners since at least Marco Polo—though the debate continues on whether Polo was
actually in China—have written about their travels through China. After China began to
open up in the 1970s, there have been a large crop of such books. Simon Winchester’s The
River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time (Picador,
2004 paperback) has been especially popular. One reader, however, were turned off by
Winchester’s description of corpses floating down the Yangtze in Winchester’s book. For
the record, our tour groups never saw these. And, despite the building of the Three Gorges
Dam, the Three Gorges and the Lesser Three Gorges are still magnificent.
Books by Journalists stationed in China:
Journalists stationed in China have often offered highly readable accounts of their
experiences in China. John Pomfret, formerly of the Washington Post, tells a masterful story
of China's transformation in Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
(Henry Holt, 2006). Equally remarkable is Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of
Modern China (Simon & Schuster 2008) by Philip Pan (Pomfret's successor in Beijing) and
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power (Random House 2008) by Rob Gifford
of National Public Radio. Wild Grass : Three Stories of Change in Modern China by the Pulitzer
winner Ian Johnson (Wall Street Journal, Pantheon 2004) captures the painful struggles
ordinary Chinese have waged for their rights and justice.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter James McGregor offers a vastly different story in One
Billion Customers : Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Free Press, 2005).
Leslie T. Chang, also of the Journal, tells the other side of the story in Factory Girls: From
Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau, 2008). John Gittings offers a one-volume
history of the PRC in The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market (Oxford University
Press, 2005).
Titles that have received much attention in the past decade include China Blues: My Long
March from Mao to Now by Jan Wong (Globe and Mail, published by Anchor paperback
edition 1997); China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising China by the Pulitzer prize
team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (New York Times, Vintage paperback edition
1995).
Fiction:
Though Chinese writers residing in China have yet to win the Nobel Prize in literature, they
have nonetheless produced many fine works. Many volumes written in the past quarter of
century have received critical acclaim and been translated into English. Here are three--Ha
Jin writes in English--to get you started with. These works contain sad stories, so beware.
Ha Jin, Waiting;
Ha Jin, The Crazed;
Yu Hua, To Live.
For maps of China and of China's provinces, click here
on in China? Have you just gotten interested in China and are looking for a small
number of quality books to read on it? I have from time to time been asked to
recommend readings for such travelers and here are some titles I would put on such
a reading list. [Please let me know if you have additional suggestions.]
General History:
Patricia Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge University Press, 1999,
paperback) covers China’s history in one volume. This elegant book doesn’t offer the sort
of detailed scholarly analyses found in the multi-volume and yet-to-be-finished Cambridge
History of China but it conveys the sweep of Chinese history remarkably well. For coverage
of recent centuries, Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China (W.W. Norton, 2001,
paperback) is superbly written, especially in its treatment of the Ming and Qing dynasties. A
more scholarly survey of Chinese history is China: A New History (Belknap Press, 1998), by
John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, available in an enlarged paperback edition.
It's harder to take a scholarly tome on the trip, let alone Joseph Needham's massive Science
and Civilization in China. Yet there's no more readable volume than Simon Winchester's
biography of Needham: The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric
Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. You won't regret it.
DVDs:
For those more visually inclined, the documentary series China: A Century of Revolution is still
excellent in spite of a few inaccuracies; it is now available in a DVD format. The PBS
program, China from the Inside, does a good job of allowing viewers to see China's giddy
growth and growing pains from the insider's perspective.
Travel Books:
Nearly every brand of travel books, Fodor’s, D.K. Publishing’s Eyewitness Travel guides,
Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, Let’s Go, already has a volume on China and some of these have
also published volumes dedicated to the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and so on.
Here I would like to point to the books by foreigners or Chinese that convey the immediacy
of life as lived in China. In this genre, Peter Hessler’s story of his life as a teacher in the
town of Fuling, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (Harper Perennial, 2002 paperback),
deserves a look for its perceptive observations of Chinese society and life. A recent and
more hilarious addition to this genre is Rachel DeWoskin’s Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the
Scenes of a New China (W.W. Norton 2005, hardcover). DeWoskin was a star in a Chinese
TV drama and this experience offers her a unique perspective on China’s social
transformation and much more. Equally interesting is South of the Clouds: Exploring the
Hidden Realms of China (St. Martin's, 2004) by Seth Faison, the former Shanghai Bureau
Chief for the New York Times.
Foreigners since at least Marco Polo—though the debate continues on whether Polo was
actually in China—have written about their travels through China. After China began to
open up in the 1970s, there have been a large crop of such books. Simon Winchester’s The
River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time (Picador,
2004 paperback) has been especially popular. One reader, however, were turned off by
Winchester’s description of corpses floating down the Yangtze in Winchester’s book. For
the record, our tour groups never saw these. And, despite the building of the Three Gorges
Dam, the Three Gorges and the Lesser Three Gorges are still magnificent.
Books by Journalists stationed in China:
Journalists stationed in China have often offered highly readable accounts of their
experiences in China. John Pomfret, formerly of the Washington Post, tells a masterful story
of China's transformation in Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
(Henry Holt, 2006). Equally remarkable is Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of
Modern China (Simon & Schuster 2008) by Philip Pan (Pomfret's successor in Beijing) and
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power (Random House 2008) by Rob Gifford
of National Public Radio. Wild Grass : Three Stories of Change in Modern China by the Pulitzer
winner Ian Johnson (Wall Street Journal, Pantheon 2004) captures the painful struggles
ordinary Chinese have waged for their rights and justice.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter James McGregor offers a vastly different story in One
Billion Customers : Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Free Press, 2005).
Leslie T. Chang, also of the Journal, tells the other side of the story in Factory Girls: From
Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau, 2008). John Gittings offers a one-volume
history of the PRC in The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market (Oxford University
Press, 2005).
Titles that have received much attention in the past decade include China Blues: My Long
March from Mao to Now by Jan Wong (Globe and Mail, published by Anchor paperback
edition 1997); China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising China by the Pulitzer prize
team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (New York Times, Vintage paperback edition
1995).
Fiction:
Though Chinese writers residing in China have yet to win the Nobel Prize in literature, they
have nonetheless produced many fine works. Many volumes written in the past quarter of
century have received critical acclaim and been translated into English. Here are three--Ha
Jin writes in English--to get you started with. These works contain sad stories, so beware.
Ha Jin, Waiting;
Ha Jin, The Crazed;
Yu Hua, To Live.
For maps of China and of China's provinces, click here
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