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..

Why should young people from China read this today, more than one generation later?

In 1973, the People’s Republic of China is slowly starting to open up to „imperialists“ from the West. US-President Nixon and his aide Henry Kissinger have been warmly received, and now a select..

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 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..

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..

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 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..

Was this dude the most educated of all 19th-century explorers?

Albert von Le Coq is a German archaeologist and explorer who ventures into Central Asia, much like Sven Hedin or Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky before him, in order to..

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..

If Fleming is a more gifted writer, then why is this Maillart’s book better than his?

I am going to rate this one slightly higher than Fleming’s account, even though he is clearly the superior..

Is this one of the great adventure stories of our time or rather just a huge editing fail?

Yu Chunshun is a regular dude from Shanghai. In 1988 he says goodbye to his family and starts walking all over China. The reason for this endeavor: it has come to his knowledge that an Englishman has announced the same plan. And Yu Chunshun, being a good patriot, wants..

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..

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..

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..

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..

What does 1930s China look like through the eyes of a European socialist?

It is the year 1932, we are reaching the bitter end of the Weimar Republic, and Egon Erwin Kisch is a German-writing journalist from Prague who embarked on a fact-finding mission to China. He is widely known in Germany for being a..

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..

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..

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..

Can a seasoned diplomat really be this naive, or is he just cleverly conning his readership?

Henry Kissinger, a diplomat working for the Nixon administration, gets dispatched to the People’s Republic of China in order to prepare for a rapprochement of the United States and the PRC. Over the next few decades, he..

Why is Polly Greeks‘ book so much better than that of Nathan Hoturoa Gray?

In 2001, Polly Greeks is working as a journalist in New Zealand. She does and interview with Nathan Hoturoa Gray (who at the time is trying to walk the length of the Great Wall), falls in love with him and..

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..

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..

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..

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..

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..