Marco Polo: Travel Writer? Fraud? Sexpat?
‘The Travels of Marco Polo’ is often held up as the earliest Western account of China and Asia. What’s actually inside the covers might surprise...
Washing History
A new novel about the Chinese Civil War feels true to the author’s experience of it, but also amplifies the Party’s preferred version of the...
Ep. 3: How China’s Future Looked in the Past
A 20th century Chinese public intellectual fell for the socialist dream, only to become disillusioned. His biographer tells us the full story.
The Bones Remember
Three new books grapple with the suppressed histories of modern China, from the Cultural Revolution to the Covid pandemic. But for every state effort to...
Yasheng Huang on Autocracy vs. Creativity
From its earliest imperial history, China's bureaucratic system and civil service exams have ensured homogeneity and control. But at what price?
The Shadow of Chiang Kai-shek
China’s nationalist former leader has a mixed legacy. Two new books present him in a revisionist light — but what inheritance did the Generalissimo really...
Ep. 2: American Correspondents in China
Foreign correspondents have been instrumental in telling the story of how China has changed since World War II. So, we turned the microphone on them.
A Contested Century
In China, the 19th century is presented as an era of national humiliation. Two new books and an exhibition attempt to humanize it. But who...
Peter Fleming: News from Tartary
The British adventurer’s 1936 account of his journey across the Tibetan Plateau and Xinjiang shows its age but remains a classic of travel writing.
A Spark Extinguished
At the height of the Great Famine in 1960, a group of students exiled to the countryside launched a magazine that dared to tell the...
China Books Review Launch Event
Three generations of China writers discussed how the nation, and the way outsiders observe it, has changed from the 1960s to today.
Ep. 1: Chinese Fiction in the Reform Era
When China opened up in the 1980s, how did fiction writers respond to their new-found — but fragile — freedoms of expression? The China Books...