Ep. 22: Michael Luo on the Chinese-American Story
The New Yorker writer discusses his new history of the Chinese in America, and immigrant identity from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Donald Trump.
How to Hide a Chinese Empire
After millennia of imperial history, China today has distanced itself from the concept of empire. But the new forms of Chinese imperium are more subtle...
Joseph Torigian on Xi Zhongxun
The author and academic discusses his new biography of Xi Zhongxun, father of Xi Jinping, and the hidden history of the Chinese Communist Party.
What Xi Jinping Learnt from his Father
Xi Zhongxun was once a reformist voice within the Communist Party — and was purged multiple times for it. So how did his son Xi...
James Mann: Selling Jeeps in China
The autopsy of an American automaker’s failed dream of making and selling jeeps in China reveals much about the delusional thinking of joint ventures in...
Why “All Under Heaven” is Wrong
Tianxia, Beijing’s favorite theory of global power, is held up by Chinese scholars as an alternative to West-centrism. The latest work of its loudest cheerleader...
An American Marine In China’s Red Army
In 1937, a U.S. military officer set off with Mao Zedong’s troops to raid Japanese-occupied territory in the north of China. The Communist guerillas, he...
Ep. 20: Linda Jaivin on the Cultural Revolution
The writer and China watcher talks us through her microhistory of Mao’s last decade in power, and its relevance to Trump’s MAGA movement.
Ann Bridge: Peking Picnic
A 1930s novel of manners with evocative descriptions of Old Beijing offers surprisingly timeless observations about what it means to be an expat in China.
Ep. 19: Steven Schwankert on the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors
The author of "The Six" tells us about the Chinese survivors of the Titanic, and how they were met with racist scorn on arrival in...
Lin Yutang: My Country, My People
In 1935, the Chinese author Lin Yutang offered Westerners an insider’s guide to China's society. It endures today despite his own cultural contradictions.
Kublai Khan, from Land to Ocean
Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty, like the Mongol empire, is thought of as a land power. A new work of popular history argues that its real...