In 1992, General Motors, the largest automobile company in the world, came to China to break into the car market. At the time, the number of cars sold in China was miniscule―less than the total sold in the U.S. state of Michigan. However, GM knew that the sales ... Read More
A scholarly exploration of a conflict which even today rankles British-Chinese diplomatic relations, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China is an engaging piece of work, where the lead-up to and consequences of the first Opium War are meticulously laid out. Supplementary materials, such as maps of ... Read More
Few expat chefs can claim the kind of the success Willy Trullás Moreno has had. Not only did he open one of Shanghai’s trendiest restaurants—el Willy—in 2008, he’s also the man behind el Cóctel and another restaurant in Hong Kong. Now, ahead of another two enterprises ... Read More
Chinese rock is a divisive issue among expat music lovers. Some land in China, see a live rock show and—shocked that the genre even exists here—place Chinese rock solidly in their musical blind spots, singing the praises of bands and musicians and refusing to hold any of it ... Read More
Sino-African relations are charged with stereotypes which paint China as a neo-colonial tyrant greedy for Africa’s oil. If you want to get an idea of what China has really been up to in Africa, pick up The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa.
This timely ... Read More
Well, it looks like Western capitalism will last through the end of the year, after all. But with more malls opening daily to serve Shanghai’s fast spenders and speculation of a “double dip” recession on the horizon, real life looks startlingly similar to Chan Koonchung’s vision of the ... Read More
Paul French probes a bone-chillingly true murder story in Midnight in Peking.
We’ve been anticipating Paul French’s account of a real-life crime in 1930s Beijing since he gave a talk about the book at the 2010 Shanghai International Literary Festival. The result, Midnight in Peking, is well worth ... Read More
Schools, sports and leisure facilities, high-end hotels, logistics, housing and even (limited) nightlife options have cropped up around Beijing’s airport, exemplifying a development model called the aerotropolis, which could be our future.
In Aerotropolis, Greg Lindsay explores the ideas of John Kasarda, who travels the world preaching the need ... Read More
The most accurate title for Henry Kissinger’s new book might be something wonky like On the Perception of the International System Among the Elite Chinese Leadership. On China has a more commercial ring to it though, and when you pick up a volume by Kissinger, the living ghost of ... Read More
Blog-to-book isn’t new (see Stuff White People Like), but we still get happy when blogs we love get bound up brightly (it makes them easier to read in the bathroom). My Mom Is a Fob is the brainchild of Teresa and Selena Wu, California-based ABCs. Each page of the ... Read More
Have you ever met your Shanghai neighbors? Not just shared an elevator with them, but properly gotten to know them? If, like us, you’ve never shared more than a simple nihao with the people on your floor, read Peter Loveheim’s In The Neighborhood. Though it takes place in ... Read More
Alan Paul was playing suburban dad in the US when his wife Rebecca was offered the position of Wall Street Journal Beijing bureau chief. In August 2005, the couple and their three kids, then aged 22 months, 5 and 7, moved to China, diving headfirst into the wilds of pre-Olympics ... Read More
With its front cover image, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Foremost Good Fortune is yet another expat romp through the vagaries of laowai life. But you wouldn’t be further from the truth. Set mostly in Beijing, where Conley had relocated for her husband’s job, it ... Read More
Best known for his series of Inspector Chen Cao crime thrillers, Shanghai-born writer Qiu Xiaolong recently released a collection of linked short stories that were printed in French newspaper Le Monde in 2008. Like Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City that were serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle, Qiu ... Read More
We caught up with authors Alan Paul and Susan Conley to chat about their lives in China. Alan is the author of Big in China, which follows his life in Beijing with his wife, three kids and award-winning blues band Woodie Alan from August 2005 to January 2008. Susan is ... Read More
A major problem in Chinese literature today, at least for the foreign reader, is a dearth of translated works of modern fiction, plays and poetry. The word is being written in China, but finding someone to tell you what that word is, is a different story. Fortunately there are publications ... Read More
Go to M1NT or Muse on any Friday night and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the posing, shimmying and hip-jiggling of Shanghai’s beautiful people is a new phenomenon. In his book Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics 1919-1954, Andrew Field proves that dance fever ... Read More
Spanning New York City, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Xu Xi’s seventh novel is the story of a high-flying career woman whose tightly-wound life has unravelled. Gail Szeto is the illegitimate daughter of an American businessman and a Shanghainese dancehall escort. Having worked herself out of a poverty-stricken childhood in ... Read More
A decade after Ding Village escaped poverty by mobilizing its population to sell blood, it finds itself in the throes of an AIDS epidemic as a result of needle sharing.
Bleak, yes, but you’ll be moved by the villagers’ will to survive as their world crumbles around them, and ... Read More
Paul French’s newest book is a compendium of Shanghai’s Concession-era street names, consisting of a thorough historical and geographical introduction to the international settlements, a two-way index of road names and descriptions of each street. Within the text are hundreds of beautiful photographs, illustrations and reprints of historical ... Read More
Video of the Week: The Trailer for "S...
By MF2232
why is the word expat in quotes in all of this film's promo material? i guess... >>