The unusual word “limerence” in the title of Momo Yamaguchi’s debut novel is never in fact used in the book itself. It is a term coined by a psychologist in the 1970s and which hasn’t yet entered common parlance, requiring it to be defined on the book’s back cover—“the state of being obsessively infatuated with…
Xuenan Cao offers an unexpected angle on China’s technological rise, spotlighting the role of deficit-driven improvisation. As Cao demonstrates, where printing paper, computers, and microchips have been in shortage, media improvisations and AI gadgetry have filled the gap and become the unlikeliest accelerants of tech imaginaries. Equal parts media-historical and literary analysis, the book connects…
Born one year before the Republic of China, Qian Zhongshu was to become one of its most revered fictional chroniclers. The cast of Fortress Besieged—the only novel he ever completed—characters were to become stand-ins for a generation of the Republic’s fumbling (pseudo-)intellectuals. The novel follows one Fang Hung-chien, starting with his 1937 return from Europe…
For most readers and filmgoers, the emotional architecture of the final Qing court was built not by historians but by Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 visually intoxicating film The Last Emperor. It fixed certain ideas about the enigmatic emperor Puyi in the public imagination: a spectral figure wandering through a museum of vanished power, emotionally stunted, politically…
The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, often feels like a spectacle—in no small part due to the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor. Yet the true story being Puyi, as well as his wife, the empress Wanrong, is more complicated. Two foreigners were asked to tutor both Puyi and Wanrong: Reginald Johnston and…
Both the subtitle of historian Michael Dillon’s new book Shanghai: The Story of China’s Most Dynamic City and its jaunty pink and yellow cover, punctuated with stylised drawings of the city’s landmarks, suggest this might be a fairly breezy version of the Shanghai story. Certainly, the city seems to encourage such accounts, which often foreground…
How can a small democracy resist the influence of a powerful authoritarian neighbor? Taiwan is frequently praised for its successful economic development and peaceful transition to democracy, serving as a model for other developing countries. However, it faces substantial challenges, both from internal political divisions and external geopolitical pressures. As Stormy Seas reveals, Taiwan’s political…
At first glance, Minyoung Kang’s new book, Plant Lady, might be mistaken for yet another addition to the Korean comfort fiction genre. After all, Shanna Tan has translated Korean novels set in bookshops, laundromats, and photo studios, to name but a few. On the cover of the US edition of Plant Lady, a young woman…
When Japan was first opened to widespread Western contact in the late 19th century, visitors saw it as a glimpse into the past. In its arts and crafts, they perceived an unconscious artistic genius lost to those who lived in industrial societies. At some point in the late 20th century, travellers started to see not…
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China argues that China built the world’s first governed AI ecosystem, a market in which regulation, commercial capability, and distribution developed together. Since August 2023, China has required consumer-facing generative AI services to clear government filing before public launch. The book traces how that machinery emerged and how it determines which models reach users and which companies gain distribution. Twenty chapters across…
What’s going on in the Chinese economy? China reported GDP growth of just 4.3% last quarter. Consumption is sluggish, exports are booming, electronics manufacturers and chipmakers are reporting huge profits as car sales slump. Joe Ngai and Nick Leung dive into the Chinese economy in their latest book The Next China Is Still China: An Insider’s…
At just 45 square kilometers, Orchid (Lanyu) Island might be tiny but it is a completely different world from nearby Taiwan, to which it belongs and of which it lies east in the Pacific. The island is populated by the indigenous Tao, who live a lifestyle that is tied to the sea. In Eyes of…
The poetic tradition of China has historically found a warm welcome in Japan, and both cultures draw on a common well of poets, religious currents, and sacred texts. It is thus fitting that two new volumes by essential poets from each country should be published nearly side by side by New Directions. The first, Cold…
Among the earliest examples of sculptural art are representations of the human figure, like the 25,000-year-old Willendorf Venus discovered in Austria in 1908. In western art, fascination with portraiture and anatomical realism were features of the earliest sculptures around the Mediterranean, from Nefertiti and King Tut to Roman emperors and Greek gods. This important volume—the…
Born in Jiangsu Province in 1889, Xiong Yanghe grew up on his family’s estate. His early decades were marked by warfare among various factions within China and devastating encroachments by foreign powers as well. The worldview gave great impetus for his career choice and set him on a course that would affect all around him….