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Books about China

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Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang

This book is a perennial favorite among my students.  Chang tells the story of China through the eyes of three generations of women in her family. Her narrative is quite vivid - you will feel like you are in China with her as you read this.  This is well written - a great 'airplane' travel-reading book. 

 

Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China
by Zhu Xiao Di

This is, essentially, the story of the cultural revolution through the eyes of a young man whose family was proufounding affected by it.  Because of this unique perspective, it is very much an "insider's view" of China in this period. 

 

Life and Death in Shanghai
by Nien Cheng

This is a biographical story of a woman who was part of the educated elite in China when the Communists prevailed in 1949.  Cheng accepted the changes and got on with her life, but during the Cultural Revolution was attacked and jailed.  This is her story of survival. 

 

Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now
by Jan Wong

Wong's story is unique - she voluntarily and willingly went to China as a study (one of the first Mao allowed in as a visiting student), bought into Maoism, and stayed.  Returning to the west for graduate school, she returned as a journalist.  She was a personal witness to Tiananmen Square in 1989, and writes frankly about her personal transformation from an ardent Maoist to a more political moderate. 

 

China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia
by James R. Lilley and Jeffrey Lilley

James Lilley was a member of the CIA and later the U.S. State Department diplomatic corp.  He had a unique vantage point regarding China, because he was among the first of the diplomatic corp to serve in China when relations were re-established.  This is his story of service, including his unique insights and plenty of good stories.

 

The Private Life of Chairman Mao
by Li Zhi-Sui and Anne F. Thurston

Surely one of the most fascinating books about Chairman Mao, this is the account of his personal physician.  Remarkably, Li is quite dispassionate throughout his story-telling.  He relates events without judgment, and tells about his relationship with Mao as well as providing his view of the events throughout the decades he served Mao.  He had the unenviable task of attending to Mao at his death, and being responsible for his preservation for posterity. 

 

China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sharon WuDunn

Kristof and WuDunn, and husband and wife journalist team, write interesting insights into China as it emerges from its controlled economy to join the global economy.  Their unqiue approach to authorship is enlightening - Kristof and WuDunn each author independent chapters, rather than trying to blend ideas.  The book is stronger as a result. 

 

Red-Color News Soldier

by Li Zhensheng with Jonathan D. Spence (Illustrator)

Understandably banned in China, this is a book of photos of the Cultural Revolution.  They were saved from destruction during that tumultous time by being buried in a forest, later retrieved and smuggled from China.  After reading some of the other books in this reading list that describe in vivid detail the wrath and destruction of the Cultural Revolution, this book confirms your mental images with actual photos that chronicle those times.

 

China's New Rulers: The Secret Files

by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley

China's leadership has always been mysterious to western observers.  Nathan and Gilley provide interesting insights into the backgrounds, ideologies, political relationships, and dependencies of China's ruling class.  This book helps make sense of the upper cadres of Chinese leadership.

Born Red

by Gao Yuan

From small town boy to participant in the Cultural Revolution, this is another perspective of the Cultural Revolution.  This narrative helps to illustrate how "innocent" students became marauding killers, caught up in the frenzy of the Red Guards unleashed by Mao.

 

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

by Simon Winchester

Winchester is a great story teller.  This is his account of a boat trip from the mouth of the Yangtze to the upper reaches of this great and mighty river.  He wanted to complete this journay while the river was still free flowing, before the Three Gorges Dam changed it forever.  He ventures off the boat into the villages and takes you, the reader, with him. 

 

1421: The Year China Discovered America

by Gavin Menzies

Menzies spent his professional career looking at the world through a periscope and a commander in the British Navy.  As a result, he brought a different perspective to the analysis of archaeological relics and anthropolitical evidence around the world that seemed to indicate the Chinese "had been there first" as explorers.  A PBS special on this topic was confrontational and insulting to Menzies, and quite off the mark.  His theories are gradually gaining credence (even if he is not getting the credit he deserves).  He has a website and publishes all the evidence he collects, constantly updating the findings published in this book.  This is fascinating sleuthing and interesting storytelling.

Mr. China

by Tim Clissold

This has been widely reviewed as a tale of how not to do business in China.  I must concur.  Clissold exhibits hubris that is almost unfathomable.  This book received a lot of attention when it was published first in England and later in the U.S.  It's a short, easy to read tome, otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.  But, it's good for one of those long flights when you need a diversion and it definitely illuminates the wrong way to do things in China.