Paul French studied history, economics, and Mandarin at university and has an MPhil in economics from the University of Glasgow. He is the author of a number of books, including the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning Midnight in Peking, Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand, and Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao.
Many words have been written about Chairman Mao, but the one we're choosing for the Ultimate China Bookshelf is a short biography, at just 188 pages, by none other than the premier Sinologist of his generation.
While Jack Belden wasn't the only Western journalist to write about the rise of Mao, he was the rare correspondent on the frontlines as the "agrarian revolution" unfolded, and his observations, recorded in "China Shakes the World," have stood the test of time.
James Kynge wrote about China’s economic rise in the early-2000s and predicted its impact on the world. What was not necessarily apparent to readers back then was, in large part, made so by this book.
Wang Shuo wrote "hooligan literature," a label meant as a compliment among international critics. The Beijing he depicted was one of vernacular, rebellion, and play, with antiheroes full of swagger and cool.
Greg Girard documents, via photography, the street-by-street, lilong-by-lilong, shikumen-by-shikumen loss of Old Shanghai.
Japanese critics regarded Riichi Yokomitsu as the best of his generation. His novel "Shanghai," published in 1928, depicts a melting pot where cultures mixed and ideas were exchanged — including, yes, between the Chinese and Japanese.
Mao Dun's classic about 1930s Shanghai depicts a city built on violence and corruption, with great wealth sitting alongside low wages, awful conditions, and exploitation. This is Shanghai as a powder keg about to explode.
To understand China’s “outrage” and subsequent negotiating stances in trade disputes, we all need to understand the original — and nastiest — trade dispute of them all: the Opium Wars.
A cop caught between Shanghai's capitalistic transition and traditional values: Qiu Xiaolong’s "Death of a Red Heroine" marked the first in a series of crime novels that defined a city and an era.