“The Phoenix Years: Art, resistance and the making of modern China” by Madeleine O’Dea
A few years ago, President Xi Jinping gave a speech which offered his views on the role art should play in Chinese life.
“The Souls of China” by Ian Johnson
How does one quantify something as ephemeral as faith? We have become familiar with accounts of China which predicate their analysis on statistics—hard numbers seeming one of the few means of offering an objective view of the scale and complexity of the country. And certainly when it comes to faith in modern China the numbers…
“Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power” by Howard French
One need look no further than Britain’s impending departure from the European Union for an example of how once apparently dormant elements of a nation’s self-image can be reawakened. An abiding historical sense of aloofness and suspicion of Europe, which seemed to have been quelled by the forces of globalisation in recent decades, has emerged…
“Intruder in Mao’s Realm” by Richard Kirkby
Richard Kirkby’s China memoir Intruder in Mao’s Realm has a hint of the nineteenth century about it: frank and scrupulous in recording quotidian detail, it is a refreshingly unrefined book, in the manner of those accounts returned by Victorian missionaries and travellers after visits to unknown lands.
“The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China” by Jeffrey Wasserstrom (editor)
Integral to the misguided conception of China as unknowably complex is the sheer scale of its history. While historians of the United States, for example, need to cultivate a knowledge base which extends back a few centuries or so, scholars of Chinese history must contend with a national story of anything between three thousand and…
“Flock of Brown Birds” by Ge Fei
In the author’s preface to Flock of Brown Birds, Ge Fei writes of his response to those who have told him that they do not understand the work: “I don’t blame you. I’m not sure I understand it either.” Straightforward comprehension is, however, far from the point in this slight novella. Self-consciously inspired by the…
