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Nothing to Their Name
A new history of Chinese in the American West catalogues a multitude of discriminatory laws that restricted their activity and immigration. The impacts from a...
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New China Books: Back to School
We recommend five titles to deepen understanding of China, from an argument that its economy is in trouble to histories of colonial trade wars and...
Fighting for Home
After 14 years of war in Syria, Damascus fell to the rebels in December 2024. Fighting with them was a small but critical cohort of...
Ep. 37: What China’s Writing with Na Zhong
Sally Rooney’s Chinese translator and our own “What China’s Reading” columnist talks to us about Chinese tastes in literature and her own debut novella.
J. G. Ballard’s Dystopian Shanghai
How the English novelist J. G. Ballard’s boyhood in war-torn Shanghai influenced his darkest fiction.
Shen Fu: Floating Life in a Fallen Realm
A Qing dynasty failson’s memoir of genteel poverty, parties and potting soil was rediscovered in a Suzhou book stall in 1874 and remains one of...
Inside the Camps
In 1991, a CBS investigation into China’s reform-through-labor camps shocked the world, exposing how prison-made goods were being exported to the U.S. Three decades later,...
What China’s Reading: Outside the Awards
Five books from China that deserve more recognition, from an internet novel about the fashion industry to a star reporter’s study of how Germany reckoned...
China’s Industrial Parks in Africa
Beijing is investing heavily in Ethiopia, helping to run Special Economic Zones similar to China's own. But African workers are questioning whether the states of...
John Minford’s China Bookshelf
The veteran literary translator tells us how his collection began, why his library is called “Three Dog Hall,” and that New Zealand pine is the...
Red Pine: Channeling Silent Voices
Over 50 years and 30 books, the American Bill Porter — better known as “Red Pine” — has followed the trails and trials of China’s...
Translated Chinese Literature: Hard Work
We recommend five new books translated from Chinese, spanning workers’ literature and disaffected youth, all the way to alien landscapes, Tibet and Silicon Valley.
