Globe Corner Blogs

Lonely Planet China

When you come into the store, it is impossible not to notice all the books about China. They come in every shade of red possible, in all sizes and weights – including the hefty new edition of the Lonely Planet China. Saying that they are everywhere would be a slight exaggeration, but they have taken over four shelves of one of our bookcases. They have very intriguing titles. (Don’t you want to know how to cook a dragon, or what on earth The Corpse Walker is about?) After looking at all those books for a while your resistance is eventually undermined – your curiosity is piqued – and this is when you give in and pick one up.

I still can’t tell exactly why I picked up China High. Maybe it was just the right shade of red. Or maybe because the author is easy to relate to and gives a very good look at China – a place that is not so easy to understand. This book turned out to be about his own astonishing personal changes following his experiences in China.

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Globe Corner Bookstore’s Shortlist of Chinese Literature

This list contains literature by both Chinese authors and by Westerners living in China. Its mix of history, modernity, humor, and gravity reflects the contradictions in present-day Chinese life that so many of these books explore.

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Beijing Coma
by Ma Jian
Ma Jian’s new novel is a powerful allegory of a rising China and is racked by contradictions. It’s also a seminal examination of the Tiananmen Square protests.

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River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
by Peter Hessler
Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the ways of the town–and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling.

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Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
by Peter Hessler
Today China has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time–the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country–is brilliantly illuminated by Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China’s transformation.

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I Love Dollars and Other Stories China
by Zhu Wen
I Love Dollars is a hilarious send-up of China’s love affair with capitalism by one of its most gifted new writers. Here, gleefully exposed, are the inanities of everyday life in contemporary China.

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Last Days of Old Beijing
by Michael Meyer
Weaving historical vignettes of Beijing and China over a thousand years through his narrative, Meyer captures the city’s deep past as he illuminates its present. The Last Days of Old Beijing brings this moment and the ebb and flow of daily lives on the other side of the planet into shining focus.

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Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China
by Jen Lin-Liu
Lin-Liu gives a memorable and mouthwatering cook’s tour of today’s China as she progresses from cooking student to noodle-stall and dumpling-house apprentice to intern at a chic Shanghai restaurant.

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Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
by Jennifer 8 Lee
In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food.

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China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power
by Rob Gifford
An acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses crucial questions that all of us are asking about China.

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Empress Orchid
by Anchee Min
From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the splendid heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young Chinese concubine who becomes China’s last empress.

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The Last Empress
by Anchee Min
In this volume concluding Empress Orchid, Min gives us a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly and sacrificed all to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die.

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