As China continues to see a mass migration of people from the countryside to bustling urban centers, it makes sense that fiction writers, too, should focus on the alienation and difficulties of living in an urban jungle. Xuecun Murong’s Leave Me Alone follows the lives of university buddies Chen ... Read More
Race, politics and family history intertwine in Dipika Mukherjee’s debut novel Thunder Demons.
In the dead of night, Colonel S straps explosives to the mistress of a senior Malay minister and presses the detonator. Cold and calculating, his character is perhaps aptly described as both a mad military scientist ... Read More
Two years have elapsed since the whirlwind that was the World Expo Shanghai. For those who want to revisit all the glory of the six-month extravaganza, REVEALbooks+fotos has released The Unbeatable: Contemporary Masterpieces, a 480-page tribute that comprehensively captures the Expo design and experience. The anthology brings together funny ... Read More
Shanghai-based professional coach and motivational speaker Raf Adams moved from Belgium to China a few years ago. Business was going well, but he found himself “acutely dissatisfied with all aspects of his life.” His new book The Suited Monk: A Guide to Life Purpose and Happiness opens with—and repeatedly ... Read More
Why does it seem so incredibly difficult to get motivated on a weekend to leave Shanghai? 40 Weekend Breaks From Shanghai encourages city dwellers to become weekend warriors and go explore the wonders at our doorstep. The hand-sized manual helpfully breaks down trips by destination type and duration, whether it ... Read More
They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but they should also say don’t judge a book by its author. Midnight Walking, a new teen comic-horror novel, is written by a 17-year-old Beijing international high school student. Since the publisher makes this fact part of the book ... Read More
A simple peasant girl journeys to a Guangdong factory to support her family by painting sky-blue eyes on the doll she idolizes. A public servant becomes disillusioned with the job market and leaves Canada for opportunity in Shanghai. They meet in China, where she fills his head with Chinglish commentary ... Read More
Quick guys! Our competition to win VIP passes to Shanghai's Literary Festival is nearly over. If you want the chance to meet Matt Groening (the creator of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama"), go here now and enter. Up for grabs are two VIP passes to the festival. These passes will ... Read More
Thanks to the success of her 2010 novel Habit of a Foreign Sky, Hong Kong writer Xu Xi’s new book was highly anticipated worldwide. A collection of 13 short stories written between 2004 and 2010 and published in various international journals, Access: Thirteen Tales does not disappoint.
The anthology ... Read More
Sandwiched between China and India, Burma has long been fraught with contentious politics since its 1948 emergence as a modern nation. As Asia forges forward, Burma grows increasingly important, rising from the shadows of its two powerful neighbors as a staging ground for their rivalry.
Thant Myint-U’s new book ... Read More
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