What happens to a travel story when you get caught up in old books and theories?

Ding Haixiao is a twenty-something Chinese travel writer who embarks on a trip to the Chinese Northwest. He hitches rides most of the way, sometimes alone and sometimes together with different travel companions whom he either already knows or gets to know on the road. He seems to have a strong liking for anthropology and philosophy, and he is..

Is this a coffeetable book or a regular travelogue, and is it worth a read?

At the beginning of the 1980s, during the early years of China’s opening and reform policy, aging English writer Stephen Spender decides to visit the Middle Kingdom. He takes two friends along, one of whom is a painter (co-author David Hockney). They start their tour from Hongkong, and they get to see Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai, Guilin and..

Is there a better book to get to know modern China?

Evan Osnos is an American journalist who, after studying China and the Chinese language in the mid-90s, arrives in Beijing in 2005. He is well educated, and he takes his job seriously. He moves into a Hutong, and over the years gets to know a lot of Chinese people from all walks of life. Some are rich, some are poor, some are..

Does the expat experience really keep people from ever growing old?

Mitch Moxley is a young Canadian who decides to go to China. He seems to make this decision rather spontaneously. Upon arriving in Beijing, he takes on a job at an English-language newspaper, finds an apartment, roams the bar scene, takes on a few..

What’s wrong with the diplomatic approach to writing about a foreign culture?

In the mid-70s, German diplomat Erwin Wickert gets transferred from Romania to China. He has been there before (as a tourist in the 1930s), and he seems excited about it. He stays in Beijing for 4 years, lives through..

Does this book do anything right except exposing Mark Salzman’s attitude towards China?

Aspiring American travel writer Stuart Stevens is a huge fan of Peter Fleming. He sets out to retrace Fleming’s and Ella Maillart’s route from Beijing to the Northwest of China. And he doesn’t..

Why is this book so tragic, and what is the author’s role in the history he helped create?

In 1936, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has just finished its Long March into northern China. Amidst increasing Japanese aggression, the Chinese civil war keeps dragging on, and the blockade policy of the Nationalist government doesn’t permit..

An author trying to get his points across?

Ernst Cordes is a Chinese-born German (apparently the son of an official) who is living in China during the period of the Republic. It remains unclear what exactly he is doing there, but he is fluent in Mandarin, and he keeps quite a few..

What made this „Karate Kid“ type collection of stories turn into one of the 1980s classics on China?

Mark Salzman is an American university graduate who decides to move to the People’s Republic of China for two years. His plan is to teach English and pick up some Wushu skills right at the source. He ends up in Changsha, and, being one of the few..

Is this book more than just a treasure chest for those who are enthusiastic about China?

Matteo Ricci is a Jesuit priest from Italy. He arrives at the Portuguese outpost of Macao in the second half of the 16th century, determined to carry Christianity into China. The Jesuits would very much like to get..

Is being critical a bad thing, or does „loyal advice jars on the ears“ still hold true today?

John Pomfret is a young American student who decides to enroll at Nanjing University in the early 80s. At this point in time, China is still struggling with the early stages of the new policy of „Reform and Opening Up“. John Pomfret stays a while, starts..

Are all defectors automatically liars, and which version of the truth do we choose to believe?

Some time in the 1950s, Li Zhisui gets a job in Beijing as Mao Zedong’s personal physician. Actually, it’s not so much about „getting“ a job, but more like he’s being assigned a position whether he wants it or..

Is this book still banned in China, and if so, can this decision be at all justified?

Liao Yiwu is a Chinese writer and political activist who takes interest in the lives of the less fortunate around him. He meets up with different kinds of people all over the country and interviews them. He talks to those who..

Once we have finished this book, will we then know what being a fan-boy is all about?

Christian Y. Schmidt is a German journalist and satirist who, after having lived in China for two years, decides to embark on a journey: he starts out in Shanghai and follows highway 318 all the way to Katmandu. He is not very fluent in Chinese but..

Can this book be interesting to anyone except China-enthusiasts?

it’s the first year of the 20th century, and Karl Boy-Ed is a lieutenant of the German army in Beijing. He sees a bit of the city and of its surroundings, and he takes part in the defense of the foreign quarters against the..

Will having the correct ideology improve your writing, or is this totally irrelevant?

Otto Braun is a German communist who in 1932 gets dispatched by the Comintern from Moscow to China. He is supposed to help the Chinese communists establish themselves politically and militarily. Otto Braun adopts..

Did this guy just hate China or did he want to satirically show how much can you brown nose a dictator?

Rewi Alley has been a friend of Communist China for some decades, living comfortably (and rather overweight) in a special compound in Beijing, when in 1966 he embarks on several trips through the country. His aim: to document..

Is China absurd, or does absurdity really reside in those who are always looking for the absurd?

Oliver Lutz Radtke is a German Sinologist – a scholar of Chinese culture. He has spent a considerable length of time in China, and now he’s here to tell us about it: Oliver Lutz Radtke on a plane with Chinese travelers, Oliver Lutz Radtke in language class, Oliver Lutz Radtke in a..

If you know China so well, how can you still fail to write a decent book about it?

Graham Earnshaw is a British journalist/entrepreneur who has stayed in China not only for a couple of years, but for a several decades. In 2004, after having read our old friend Edwin John Dingle’s account of his own travels through China 100 years earlier, he decides to..

Why is this book not just a perfect adventure story?

Régis Evariste Huc is a French missionary in China during the first half of the 19th century, during a time when many parts of the country are off-limits to foreigners and tensions between the British Empire and China are just about to..

Why does esotericism often go hand in hand with ignorance, and just how bad can a book be?

5 dudes decide to walk the Great Wall. Their main objective: to be the First Westerners. Okay, so this is about 15 years after William Lindesay, and almost a century after William Edgar Geil, but..

Is this book just about a physical feat, or is there something more meaningful to it?

In the mid-80s, Englishman William Lindesay is primarily a jogger who has a thing for maps. He sets his eye on the Great Wall of China and comes up with a plan to span the entire thing on foot. He would be the first foreigner to ever..

Is this just an epic journey through China in the 1980s, or does this writer also have some mad skills?

In the early 1980s, Vikram Seth is in his late twenties and studies at a university in Nanjing. He takes a school trip to the Northwestern parts of the country, where he miraculously gets..

Is this an exciting adventure, or rather an expedition in coal?

In the mid-19th century, Ferdinand von Richthofen becomes one of the first Westerners to scientifically evaluate larger parts of China. He goes on several journeys through the country, and he seems to be always looking for..

What happens to people and their towns when the water is about to come?

Yan Changjiang is a photographer from the Three Gorges region who lives and works in Guangzhou. He travels back home in 2002 to document the areas that will be flooded by the Three Gorges Dam, and after that, he comes back multiple times until..

Is this an effort in soul searching or rather a classic work about China?

At the turn of the 20th century, Richard Wilhelm moves to China in order to take up a job as a missionary. During the next two and a half decades, he spends most of his time in Qingdao, a harbor city that was at that time..

Is this dude a missionary or rather just a spy?

Just prior to the outbreak of the first Opium War between Great Britain and the Empire of the Qing, German lutheran missionary Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff boards a British ship and goes on a few trips around the shores of the Chinese Sea. Obviously, he intends to..

Are we looking at a career-obsessed explorer or at a blueprint for Indiana Jones?

At the height of the Great Game between the Russian Empire and the British Empire, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin decides to follow in the footsteps of Ferdinand von Richthofen (who coined the term “Silk Road”) and Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky. He thus embarks on an epic journey through those parts of Northwestern China that were unknown or scarcely explored until then

Is this a book about three ladies taking it slow, or is it an epic adventure?

Mildred Cable and two other British ladies working for the China Inland Mission decide to take it upon themselves to spread the gospel in the Western territories of Gansu and Xinjiang. They undertake several journeys by caravan, talk to the locals, and eventually..

Would this book have been any better if he had done with a little less irony?

It is 1935, and China is deeply tangled up in the resistance against the Japanese occupation and the inner conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists. In February, Peter Fleming arrives in Beijing and meets up with..

A must-read for people interested in travel in China?

Whenever I pick up an old book, like something written during the 19th or 18th century, I feel myself hesitating for a moment, suspecting it to be another slow and painful read. But this one was a pleasant..