China: Renaissance of the Middle Kingdom (Odyssey Illustrated Guides, 8th edition) – Chan and Art and Yangtze River: The Yangtze and The Three Gorges (Odyssey Illustrated Guide, 7th edition) – Bonavia, Hayman, Bishop, Booz, Holdsworth and Man.
Both excellent and informative guide books; with lots of stunning photographs and maps illustrating discussions of the history, culture, religion and contemporary lives of the many different areas of China. Well written and informative.
Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China – Rachel DeWoskin.
DeWoskin, the daughter of a renowned Sinologist, moved to Beijing in late 1989 to work as a PR consultant and improve her Mandarin. Shortly after arriving those plans went somewhat awry when she met a television producer at a party and was cast as the lead in the wildly popular soap opera “Foreign Babes in Beijing”. For the next few years, with an audience of more than 600 million, she was known as Jeixi; an American woman who falls in love with a married Chinese man. This is an exceptionally successful memoir, weaving the author’s understanding of Chinese history and traditional culture with astute observations about the changes taking place in contemporary China during the years immediately after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Most appealing though are DeWoskin’s amusing and unique insights as she struggles to understand her role of a ‘typical western woman’ as created by Chinese script writers, while trying to adapt to her real life in Beijing.
River Town (Two Years on the Yangtze) – Peter Hessler.
In the late 1990’s Peter Hessler volunteered for the Peace Corps and was sent to the remote and overcrowded town of Fuling on the Yangtze River. He and another young man, Adam Meir stayed for two years to teach English to the college students who mostly came from very poor villages around the town. This book recounts their very real challenges of settling into the town, of the reactions to events such as the Hong Kong handover and the death of Deng Xiaoping; who had ruled for more than a decade. This is simply one of the best books ever written about China - about a foreigner trying to understand the country and about Chinese themselves. Fuling is one of the towns affected by the rising waters of the Yangtze Three Gorges Dam Project. In River Town Hessler brings the town and its people to life; his writing is perceptive, honest, amusing and very memorable.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie (author and film director).
This is the nostalgic tale of two teenage friends who were ‘sent to the countryside’ during the Cultural Revolution as punishment against their intellectual parents, of the difficulties of their new life and their struggle for the love of one girl. Set in a village on the steep banks of the Yangtze, the film is filled with stunning cinematography of the region.
Red China Blues. My march from Mao to now - Jan Wong.
The remarkable autobiography of a Canadian teenager chosen to study at Beijing University at the height of Chairman Mao’s rule – her surprising life from her early, idealistic young days in Beijing and northern China, to her position as a journalist covering the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. Wong’s impressions of China are a political journey as well as a personal one
Life and Death in Shanghai - Nien Cheng.
You will remember this book long after you finish reading it. Life and Death in Shanghai is the extraordinary autobiography of a mother imprisoned in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. The inspiration of Cheng’s story is drawn not only from her courage, but also her ability to overcome her punishment to provide an insightful study of how the political hysteria changed the Chinese people and their nation forever. If you have ever wondered just what the Cultural Revolution entailed, of how a government system could possibly change the way people regarded their own lives and relationships, then this book is essential reading.
Riding the Iron Rooster - Paul Theroux.
Theroux is a renowned travel writer today, and this is one of the books that brought him fame. As entertaining and informing as when it was written over twenty years ago; the author travels from one end of China to the other by train during a time when the Chinese didn’t really expect him to be there! Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers around.
The River’s Tale -Edward A. Gargan.
Gargan decides to leave his job as a correspondent and travel the rough way from the source of the Mekong River in Tibet, through the mighty landscapes of southern China, to the mouth of this mighty waterway in Vietnam. This is a fascinating view of the history, surviving traditions and the lives of the countless peoples along the entire length of the river. This is essential reading for those visiting Tibet, China’s Yunnan Province and Vietnam.
In Search of Old Shanghai - Pan Ling.
From a village’s humble beginnings, to the infamous concession era with tales of gangsters, ruthless businessmen and lifestyles of excess, and the massive boom which has transformed and restored one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world. This is one of the most informative and easy to read histories of this incredible city and her captivating history.
China Inc. – Ted C. Fishman
Calling China's huge population "arguably the greatest natural resource on the planet," Fishman details how hundreds of millions of peasants have migrated from rural to urban areas to find jobs, providing an enormous and low-wage workforce to power China's economy. This has affected both the culture of China and global business and investment significantly. Fishman manages to present a flood of facts, figures, and economic predictions alongside the touching stories of several workers who have moved their families across the nation.
Mao’s Last Dancer - Li Cunxin.
This autobiography was one of the most acclaimed releases in 2003. It is the true story of Li Cunxin, who grew up in the countryside of Qingdao County, outside Beijing. At eleven he was placed at Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy and commenced on a journey to the stages of the world, and joined the Houston Ballet in the USA. This is a moving story of the hardships his family encountered, the physical and mental pressure placed on him to perform well and his private struggle with his defection to the West; to a culture so different to his own.
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices - Xinran Xue.
In 1988, Xinran was selected to work at the Nanjing radio station, where she began broadcasting "Words on the Night Breeze". The show featured letters and calls from ordinary women discussing their problems, and was hugely successful and revelatory, as women had little opportunity, public or private, to talk about their lives, which were frequently grim and often harrowing. Eventually Xinran persuaded her superiors to let her share some of these letters on the air. The show lasted seven years and had a profound effect on her listeners, airing issues that might surprise a western reader; one woman wondered "why her heart beat faster when she accidentally bumped into a man on the bus." Another teenager considers suicide after a neighbour sees her boyfriend kiss her on the forehead.
Wild Swans (Three Daughters of China) – Jung Chang.
An epic story spanning three generations of women who lived, endured and survived the upheaval of China during the last century.
From Rice to Riches (A Personal Journey through a changing China) - Jane Hutcheon.
The author was Australia’s ABC China correspondent during the 1990’s and this is her tale of the complexities facing today’s China. From Rice to Riches examines the many issues we have heard about, such as the Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze, the massive shift of population to new ‘economic zones’, the social ramifications of the one-child policy, to name a few. Hutcheon writes clearly, with humour and with insight gained from years of trying to explain China’s complexities to the audience back home.
Tibet (Odyssey Illustrated Guides, 2nd edition) – Elizabeth Booz.
Another wonderful guidebook from Odyssey; well researched and presented.
Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land - Patrick French.
This is an outstanding and realistic examination of the Tibet’s past, present and future. When Patrick French was a teenager, the Dalai Lama visited his school in northern England. Fascinated by this exotic apparition, French began what was to become a lifelong quest to understand Tibet, the myth and the fact. He would immerse himself in the history, travel as the guest of ordinary Tibetans - nuns, nomads, and exiles - and organize Free Tibet activists from an office in London. This is part memoir, part travel book and part history but never a cliché. French retains his youthful awe but shares his immense learning and a clear but compassionate eye. Tibet, Tibet offers a sober new understanding of a culture's senseless catastrophe and allows us to see what realistically can, and cannot be done to alleviate it.
The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk – Palden Gyatso
Like so many other boys in Tibet, Gyatso entered the monastery at the age of 10 to study under his uncle, also a monk. By his mid-20s, when he should have been preparing for a higher degree, he instead found himself behind the bars of a Chinese communist prison. For the next 30 years, he would endure interrogations, deprivation, starvation, beatings, and psychological torture. When he was finally released in 1992, he fled the country, managing to smuggle out not only the names of his fellow prisoners but Chinese instruments of torture to show the world.
This is one of many, but nonetheless one of the best books about the issues of repression facing Tibetans and their religion today.
Seven Years in Tibet – Heinrich Harrer
Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the theocratic nation. The author's vivid descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion in 1950, which prompted Harrer's departure.
On Top of the World: Five Women Explorers in Tibet – Luree Miller.
In the late 1800's, when women were bound by both cumbersome clothing and strict Victorian morals, a small band of astonishing women explorers burst forth to claim the adventurous life. Esabella Bird Bishop, who seemed always ‘sickly’ while at home, was always robust on her adventures; she was nearly 60 when she went to Tibet. Fanny Bullock Workman ploughed her way up Himalaya and Karakoram mountains, saying that any woman could do so. Alexandra David-Neel, at 56, trekked for eight months through tropical lowlands and snow-covered passes with only a backpack and a begging bowl. Even by today's standards these women's accomplishments are remarkable; their stories make for an inspiring read and a wonderful introduction to this land.
Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman's Trek Across the Rooftop of the World – Sorrel Wilby.
Wilby is today one of the most recognised travel journalists in Australia, with a reputation for photographing writing about remote and culturally diverse destinations. At the age of twenty-five, after having already cycled solo through Japan, China and Korea, she decided on another challenge: to walk solo across Tibet. For three months she trekked through the land, with travel permits miraculously provided by the Chinese authorities so that she was the first foreigner ever seen in most places she visited. However, the lack of civilisation meant Wilby was entirely dependent on the help of Tibetan nomads, whose unfailing generosity and kindness amazed and sustained her. Journey Across Tibet is the best kind of travel memoir; recounting a journey of tough challenges, fears, self-discovery and personal revelation.
The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 - Tsering Shakya.
Acknowledged as the definitive account of Tibetan modern history, covering the last fifty years of Chinese involvement in Tibet. The information is extremely well researched and Tsering Shakya delivers an objective analysis of the facts, which is still a rarity in books dealing with this controversial period of Tibetan, Chinese and Indian history. Highly detailed but written in a clear style that should attract travellers who would like to learn more before they visit Tibet.
The Silk Road (Odyssey Illustrated Guides, 6th edition) – Bonavia, Lindesay and Qi.
This is the authoritative guide book for travellers of the former Silk Road in China, from Xian to Kashgar. Here is a retelling of the trade route’s impact on the rest of the world, stories to bring the desert oases to life; it traces the path of the great caravans, merchants, legendary figures, camels and horses that travelled over some of the most inhospitable territory on earth. The stories from history and explanations of contemporary life along the former Silk Road will bring the wide scope of your journey into perspective. Well presented and beautifully photographed.
The Great Game (on secret service in Asia) - Peter Hopkirk.
The title refers to a century long battle between Czarist Russia and Victorian Britain, to control the vast tracts of land in Central Asia and western China – a game played with every spy trick in the book. Hopkirk is a master of this history, relating the rivalry through the stories of the men who risked everything to explore or conquer a land they knew absolutely nothing about.
Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang – Christian Tyler.
Once the centre of the world’s trade; where the Silk Road converged and brought the exchange of products, ideas, religions and technologies, Xinjiang has been closed to the world this century. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Zone, as it is officially called, is formed by the regions of far western China and was home to the nomadic Uyghur, Kazakh and Kirgiz tribes for centuries. The Chinese regard the far west as a barbarian land. Only in the 1760s did they subdue it, and even then their rule was repeatedly broken. Compared with the Russians' conquest of Siberia, or the Americans' trek west, China's colonization of Xinjiang has been late and difficult. This is the story of a subjugated people and the vast challenges facing the Chinese government as well as the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang.
News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir – Peter Fleming.
This is an evocative and fascinating travel memoir, written in the 1930’s by Fleming, brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming. Kini Maillart, a young Swiss journalist and Fleming travelled along the Silk Road, through Xinjiang (then called Sinkiang) Province and south west through the Himalayas to Kashmir. It was one of the most difficult trips possible in the world at that time and both travellers lives were endangered several times; yet Fleming writes with wit, a sense of adventure and brilliant colour. This has become a classic of travel writing; the portrait of two inimitable characters as well as the archetypal description of the cultures they encountered which have since disappeared.
Foreign Devils on the Silk Road - Peter Hopkirk.
Peter Hopkirk applies his considerable study again to this history of the early 1900’s era of archaeology. In an atmosphere of colonial ‘treasure hunting’ infamous explorers converged on the former Silk Road to excavate and remove unbelievable amounts of priceless art and religious artefacts. It is testament to Hopkirk’s writing that he is able to explain the cultural damage done during the era, the contemporary debate of these ‘thefts’, while still portraying the bravery and accomplishment of those who undertook overland archaeological expeditions.
Extremes Along the Silk Road – Nick Middleton.
Nick Middleton recounts his travels of endurance in the footsteps of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great (and many modern compatriots) on the great overland trade route between China and Istanbul. As a geography lecturer at Oxford University and author of six other travelogues, Nick writes with literary ease, sharing the history of the area mingled with his day to day encounters.
In Xanadu – William Dalrymple.
In the summer of 1986 two Cambridge history undergraduates set out on Marco Polo's famous journey across Central Asia to the former capital of Genghis Khan, Xanadu. They travelled through a war-torn Middle East, the Ayatollah’s Iran and across the thousands of kilometres of the Silk Road. As one of the first people ever to closely follow most of Marco Polo's overland route, Dalrymple makes several discoveries and connections along the way; fortunately he is adept at explaining not just what he sees and hears but why it is significant. In Xanadu is travel writing in the grandly eccentric British tradition: a horrid climate and high adventure, laced throughout with dry wit.