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Chinese Comedy with Jesse Appell
The bilingual comedian talks us through the traditional “xiangsheng” form of Chinese comic repartee, and explains whether Beijing can take a joke.
Life On a Blacklist
A scholar on China reflects on the moment he was denied access to the country — and the compromises others must make to maintain it.
Lijia Zhang on Women’s Stories
The memoirist and novelist talks us through her grandmother's and mother’s stories, as well as her own, and discusses how the status of women has...
Is China’s Post-1978 Legal System a Mirage?
The scholar of Chinese law argues that post-Mao legal reform — as aided by Western lawyers including him — may yet prove enduring. Its critics...
How Little We Knew
Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn were the sole New York Times correspondents in Beijing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his...
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...
Where the River Reaches Home
Three recent books narrate family histories that flow over time and space. But when identities evolve across borders, language holds the memory that carries us...
A Game of Cat and Mouse
In a graphic novel rendition of his life, the acclaimed artist reflects on the Chinese zodiac, its connection to his own family story, and the...
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.
Radical Changes
A Chinese novelist moves to New York. Uprooted in a new country, how can she make sense of her past? And why are they called...
