Reginald Johnston: Twilight in the Forbidden City
A Scotsman’s memoir of tutoring Puyi, China’s “last emperor,” is more than just court gossip — it’s a tantalizing portrait of China’s imperial trappings.
What If Hu Yaobang Had Lived?
The former Chinese Communist Party leader’s ousting and death led to the Tiananmen protests, but his life reveals a deeper push and pull between reformist...
The Thrilling Truth
A new thriller set in 1930s Shanghai includes just enough historical detail to be believable. But is history at risk of being overtaken by fiction?
The Curse of the “Good Premier”
Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s second-in-command, has been lionized as a moderating force who held back Mao’s excesses. But does he deserve that reputation, when he...
Graham Peck: Two Kinds of Time
An American writer’s memoir of World War II China remains a timely diagnosis of the pathologies of U.S. foreign policy in the wake of the...
Ep. 15: Paul French on Wallis Simpson’s China Year
In 1924, an American socialite — who would later cause a scandal by marrying Britain's King — traveled the length of China. Her experience was...
Dancing To Prison
1983’s Strike Hard Against Crime Campaign led to the arrests of many innocent victims, caught up in a culture of fear. One of them was...
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on China from 1988 to Now
The Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalists reflect back on their time in Beijing three decades ago, and what has changed since.
Emily Hahn: China to Me
In her memoir of 1930s and 40s China, the New Yorker correspondent brought the country to life while coming down from opium binges in Shanghai...
Fox Butterfield on Bringing the New York Times to China
The veteran journalist and author tells us about his first trip to China, and how he opened the Beijing bureau of "The New York Times"...
Move Fast and Break Things
Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of 1992 has been heralded as the unofficial act that kick-started China’s economic miracle. But other voices were also calling for...
Philip Kuhn: Sorcery in Qing China
A supernatural crisis pits an anxious autocrat against his own functionaries, when a hunt for soul-stealing sorcerers turns into a political witch-hunt among 18th-century China’s...