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A Chinese Intellectual in Oxford
In the 1930s Chiang Yee, a Chinese writer and artist, moved to England. His work, and that of his wartime circle of Chinese literati, deserve...
How Communism Won China
The CCP presents its victory in 1949 as historical inevitability, hard-won after years of struggle. A new book suggests it had more to do with...
Did Peng Zhen Rebel Against Mao?
A startling Chinese-language biography of Mao’s one-time enforcer reveals the folly of hoping that Party officials will break ranks — and the importance of revisionist...
Sir Edmund Backhouse: Decadent Imagination
Historical witnessing or salacious slash fiction? The memoirs of an English eccentric in Beijing during the last days of the Qing remain controversial, but are...
King Lear And China’s Big Leader Kultur
Shakespeare has much to teach us about the hubristic fragility of despotic leaders, from the tyrants of the mid-20th century to those of today. But...
Logging Unpaid Hours
When a state-run sawmill from the Mao era privatized and eventually closed, its female workers were denied fair compensation. Its story doubles as an alternate...
Sins of the Father
Xi Zhongxun, one of China’s early communist revolutionaries, tried to balance reformist instincts with loyalty to the Party. His failure left an indelible mark on...
Vikram Seth: Hitchhiking From China to India
Before he became an award-winning novelist, the Indian writer Vikram Seth was an exchange student in China. In the 1980s, he traveled overland from Nanjing...
Wanted: Pandas, Dead or Alive
In 1928, the eldest two sons of President Theodore Roosevelt set out to capture or kill a giant panda. Their hunting trip accidentally contributed to...
Sima Qian: Records of the Grand Historian
History is supposedly written by the victors. Sima Qian, author of China's original historical classic, showed it could also be written by the condemned.
Mark Kitto on Shanghai in the 2000s
The author and former media mogul explains why he chose fiction as the best way to capture Shanghai’s go-go years in his new novel.
Jane Gardam: The Old Filth Trilogy
A clever skewering of British colonials in pre-handover Hong Kong became a best-seller for its portrait of imperial ruin and class jockeying.
