Books about China

After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Hebei...

On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause celebre...

This is an original investigation into the transference of intellectual principles of natural beauty across cultures and disciplines.""Seeds of a Different Eden"" is a path breaking multidisciplinary study of the...

Creativity and Its Discontents is a sharp critique of the intellectual property rights (IPR)-based creative economy, particularly as it is embraced or ignored in China. Laikwan Pang argues that the...

In 2019, the United States' trade war with China expanded to blacklist the Chinese tech titan Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. The resulting attention showed the information and communications technology (ICT)...

Red at Heart conjures a tale of cross-cultural romance from a topic that is normally seen in geopolitical or ideological terms--and thereby offers a new interpretation of twentieth century communism's...

From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party...

Hu Feng, the 'counterrevolutionary' leader of a banned literary school, spent twenty-five years in the Chinese Communist Party's prison system. But back in the Party's early days, he was one...

The Panthay Rebellion of 1856-1873 held the armies of the Qing dynasty at bay for nearly two decades. This account by David Atwill offers a remarkable panorama of the cosmopolitan...

These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions, and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references...

In the early years of the People's Republic, the Communist Party sought to transform gender relations. Yet those gains have been steadily eroded in China's post-socialist era. Contrary to the...

A new picture of China's rise since the Age of Exploration and its historical impact on the modern world. The establishment of the Great Ming dynasty in 1368 was a...

In Dreams of Flight , Fran Martin explores how young Chinese women negotiate competing pressures on their identity while studying abroad. On one hand, unmarried middle-class women in the single-child...

Controversy over the medicinal uses of wild animals in China has erupted around the ethics and efficacy of animal-based drugs, the devastating effect of animal farming on wildlife conservation, and...

In Utopian Ruins Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories about China's Mao era by envisioning a virtual museum that reckons with both its utopian yearnings and...

In China in the World , Ban Wang traces the evolution of modern China from the late nineteenth century to the present. With a focus on tensions and connections between...

In Revisiting Women's Cinema , Lingzhen Wang ponders the roots of contemporary feminist stagnation and the limits of both commercial mainstream and elite minor cultures by turning to socialist women...

In Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture , Alessandro Russo presents a dramatic new reading of China's Cultural Revolution as a mass political experiment aimed at thoroughly reexamining the tenets of...

In 1968 a cohort of politically engaged young academics established the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS). Critical of the field of Asian studies and its complicity with the United...

In The Magic of Concepts Rebecca E. Karl interrogates "the economic" as concept and practice as it was construed historically in China in the 1930s and again in the 1980s...

Published in China in 2010, Revolution and Its Narratives is a historical, literary, and critical account of the cultural production of the narratives of China's socialist revolution. Through theoretical, empirical,...

A superbly illustrated and lavishly designed collector's treasure, charting an epic triumph against the odds without parallel in modern history, China's legendary Long March. History is marked by great moments...

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and...

The success of the Fifth Generation directors in the 1980s returned Chinese cinema to international prominence after decades of obscurity. Focusing on the work of six directors - Chen Kaige,...

Once a fishing town nestled on the banks of the Yangtze River Delta on the east cost of China, Shanghai is now the country's largest city and one of the...

This strikingly designed book explores how, through his work, Ai Weiwei raises a series of questions about cultural violence and critically reflects on China's history. He continues to fashion the...

With the world's second-largest (and fastest expanding) economy, a population of more than 1.3 billion, a place at the core of the G20, a permanent seat on the UN Security...

When Joe Bennett bought a five-pack of 'Made in China' underpants in his local New Zealand hypermarket for $8.59, he wondered who on earth could be making any money, let...

The Great Ride of China is the story of Buck Perley and Amy Mathieson's 21,000-mile, record-breaking trip around one of the world's oldest and most diverse countries. What started out...

This is a unique book to accompany an extraordinary new exhibition of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th centuries, the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of...

A witty and humane account of one man, multiple jobs and a driving desire to thrive A Book of the Year in the Guardian, Sunday Times, Economist and the Financial...

Informal finance consists of nonbank financing activities, whether conducted through family and friends, local money houses, or other types of financial associations. It has provided much-needed financing to small and...

One of the Best Cookbooks of 2021 by the New York Times Experience the sublime beauty and flavor of one of the oldest and most delicious cuisines on earth: the...

An inviting history of China from the days of the ancient Silk Road to the present, this book describes a civilization more open and engaged with the rest of the...

Three thousand years of Chinese history in an accessible and authoritative single volume. Despite the recent rise of China to a position of dominance on the world economic stage, Chinese...

Marco Polo (1254-1329) has achieved an almost archetypal status as a traveller, and his Travels is one of the first great travel books of Western literature, outside the ancient world....

Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately...

Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011 Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country...

Be inspired and plan your next unforgettable trip with DK travel guides Make your trip to Beijing and Shanghai extraordinary Admiring the imperial splendour of the Forbidden City. Walking along...

Discover magical princesses, mighty dragons, mischievous monkeys and more in this captivating collection of Chinese stories, specially retold for readers today. The book features stunning traditional-style brush and ink illustrations...

The searing follow-up to 2018's most celebrated fantasy debut - THE POPPY WAR. Rin is on the run... Haunted by the atrocity she committed to save her people, addicted to...

A practical guide on how to work out your Chinese horoscope. Though perhaps less well-known here than its Western counterpart, Chinese astrology is every bit as illuminating and provides an...

'Michael Sheridan is one of the best informed and wisest writers on China' - Chris Patten, last governor of Hong Kong The Red Emperor presents an eye-opening portrait of Xi...

One of the greatest classics of Chinese literature One of China's Four Great Classical Novels, Monkey King was written anonymously during the Ming dynasty and is most commonly attributed to...

'A series of intelligent and fiery essays' The Sunday Times 'A landmark in British food writing' Jonathan Nunn 'Makes you laugh, think, and get a little angry' iPaper 'I started...

THE CAPTIVATING, HEART-RENDING STORY OF TWO WOMEN IN 1800S CHINA 'Brilliantly written, masterful storytelling, and hard to put down. This story will stay with me for a very, very long...

Discover the stories of 100 women and men whose activities in the 19th century laid the foundations of modern China. Through telling the lives of one hundred significant individuals, this...