History Archives | Page 6 of 7 | China Books Review

Marco Polo: Travel Writer? Fraud? Sexpat?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

Ep. 1: Chinese Fiction in the Reform Era

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...

Mao to Now

Mao to Now

Communist China, once all but impenetrable, opened up only to tighten politically again. Has Xi circled back to the Mao era? And what can we...

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Sep 8, 5:30-7p, NYC; Sep 1, 6-7:30p, DC

Book Club: Eileen Chang's Time Tunnel

Join us in September to discuss our next book club pick: "Time Tunnel," a collection of previously untranslated stories by Eileen Chang, one of the 20th century’s finest writers, 30 years after her death.

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