An old saying suggests that those who have been in China for a day, write a book; those who stayed for a month,  write a page, while those who stayed longer find it all too complex to explain. Due to this complexity, no single book can provide the definitive guide to China. The good news, however, is that some 'Old China Hands' have defied the conventional wisdom and wrote a book reflecting their personal experiences and views.

In my view, China may best be approached like the infamous five blind men approached the elephant - everyone explored a part and together they obtain a reasonable image. Thus, I recommend to read around the topic - read history and autobiographies, economic studies and novels, especially by local authors. Here are a few books that I enjoyed in recent years (for other books that I have been reading click here):

(Auto-)Biographies: Western Perspectives

Personal experiences are often the richest and most practical avenue to build an understanding, provided they are written with a healthy degree of humility and self-reflection. China is changing so rapidly that some may dismiss the relevance of past decades. Yet, the past informs peoples' views of the world, and their perception of the presence. Older autobiographic stories thus complement recent ones.

In 1937, Joseph Needham fell in love with with a Chinese women, then with the Chinese language and eventually with China itself. He was a distinguished scholar in Cambridge, who even at young age had distinguished himself in the field of embryology. Yet, an encounter with a Chinese colleague changed the path of his scholarly endeavors, and in 1943 he found himself in Chongching in the most unlikely circumstances. The Japanese had occupied most of China, Chongching was the capital of the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-chek, and life was hard for everyone in free China as well as in the occupied territories.

In these circumstances, Needham's scientific ambitions led him on a scholarly travel adventure to some remote corners of the country. His ambition was to prove to the world that for centuries, China had been creating many scientific inventions well before Europeans, let alone Americans. He collected records from historical sources and from Chinese scholars, that became the basis for his epic 24-volume work "Science and Civilisation in China" (Cambridge University Press, 1954-2004). Simon Winchester tells the story of this remarkable man, and through his eyes reports life in China in the middle of the 20th century, and in centuries before. The book is immensely readable and makes the reader think - not just about China's past and future, but about the sometimes surprising pathways of scientific inquiry.

Go Gently through Peking, by Lois Fisher, first published by Souvenir Press, London, 1979. (I read the German translation "Alltag in Peking" published by Fischer TB)

In 1973, few foreigners were allowed into China. As one of the first Western journalists, Gerd Ruge reported for German television from Beijing during Mao's final years. His American wife, Lois Fisher, joined him and had to organize their lives under tight official restrictions and poor general living conditions. Her autobiographic report tells of the joys and frustrations of live in Beijing - from finding a flat to live, to shopping where Westerners had not ventured before. She makes friends with Chinese people and provides insights in their lives that official reports - even journalists - can rarely capture. Her story culminates in the events surrounding Mao's funeral, and the dawn of a new time. Reading this autobiography three decades later, one can only be amazed of the transformation that Beijing has gone through since that time - not only in high profile business and politics, but in everyday lives. For example, bicycles have been replaced but cars - creating traffic jams unimaginable in 1973.

(I am not aware of an English translation)

China nach dem Sturm (China after the Storm), by Klaus Mehnert, published by DVA Stuttgart, 1971.

"Until recently, China was almost as unknown as the moon", Klaus Mehnert writes in his introduction in 1971. Hard to imagine today, China was entirely closed to foreigners during the Cultural Revolution, and Mehnert was one of the first foreigner to receive a visa and the permission to travel across the country. Yet, this was not his first visit to China; he had visited it several times from 1929 to 1957, and spend World War II as university teacher in Shanghai. He was an established scholar of the socialist countries when he took off for a month-long visit in 1971. The account of his journey provides a unique immediacy of experiences, observations and conversations with people with and without power. They are set in the context of the evolution of the socialist regime under Mao Tse-Tung (who was still alive), including the Great Leap Forward, the centrally coordinated push for industrialization, and the Cultural Revolution. 

Business Republic of China: Tales from the Front Line of China's New Revolution, by Jack Leblanc, published by Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong, 2008.

The publisher presents this as a business book, but in my view it is foremost an autobiography - and therein lies its main value. The author has lived in China since the early 1990s, and got involved in a variety of business activities. He writes about his experiences in a series of anecdotes telling the stories ranging from his facilitating business negotiations, advising joint ventures that failed, riding the internet bubble to helping out friends. His perspective is often close to the local partner in the businesses, and thus provides insights on what those 'barbarian' foreigners did wrong in the eyes of their Chinese partners. The book provides rich insights in the practical sites of doing business, including the wining-and-dining aspects of it. The author offers occasional suggestions to those wishing to follow his footsteps, yet for most parts readers can form their own opinion of the lively stories unfolding before them.

(Auto)biographies: Chinese Perspectives

Chinese people recounting their own live provide not only insights the practicalities of live in China in the recent past, but in the Chinese ways of thinking. Often, I found the most interesting biographical stories to be written by Chinese who eventually settled outside China, and thus write in a way that makes their experiences accessible to Western readers.

The Good Women of China and Miss Chopsticks by Xinran, translated by Esther Tyldesley, published in 2002 and 2007 by Random House.

The Good Women of China and Miss Chopsticks are like yin and yang; neither is complete without the other, either one alone would remain unbalanced. The Good Women of China is one of the most depressing books I have ever read; it gives voice to women who could not talk about their lives in a repressed society, until a late-night radio host listened, recorded and collected their stories. Many lives were touched, if not destroyed, by the cultural revolution and its side effects. The short stories are true stories recorded by the author during her work as a journalist.

Miss Chopsticks sets an optimistic tone for a new generation of country girls who succeed in the city life. Woven into the tale of three girls are subtle descriptions of Nanjing and its people. Their story illustrates more than scholarly work ever could how wide the gulf is between city and country in China even today. Pictures and TV provide nice images, yet only a book can convey the differences in hearts and minds.

Also see Xinran's personal homepage, and The Economist's recommendation of her latest book "China Witness" (2008) which is based on interviews with the older generation of Chinese.

As Journalist for the Washington Post in Beijing, Philip Pan recorded stories of people who stood up and suffered under the Chinese communist party. Most of the stories explore periods of Chinese history that are many Chinese still feel uncomfortable discussing, or in fact know little about, including the rightist movement and the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s as well as the events surrounding the Tian-An Men protests of 1989. A central chapter introduces the life of Lin Zhao, a female Peking University student who was imprisoned during the anti-rightist movement in the 1950s and executed in 1965. Pan brings her live alive through the eyes of Hu Jie, a passionate documentary film maker who for five years collected information about her life, traced down and interviewed people who had known her, and gradually pieced together her life, and personality, and eventually distributed his documentary film through informal channels. 

Pan's American-style journalism with sensationalist terminology, and the weaving of interpretations with reports of the people portrayed sometimes confused me whether the book is telling the views of the journalist, or of his interviewees. Yet, this stylistic concern not-withstanding, this book brings to life the lives of people whose history deserves not to be forgotten, even though telling it may still be painful as many of the scares of the violence decades ago have not healed yet. The author has his own website to accompany the book.

A young Chinese American women explores her heritage and her identity through conversations with her grandmother, who grew up in pre revolutionary (i.e. pre-1912) China and only late in live joined her daughter and granddaughter in the USA. This three-generational autobiography provides a unique glimpse especially in the live of the generation who lived and suffered through China's turbulent 20th century.

This book has become a worldwide bestseller, and has its own Wikipedia entry.

Business:

I am not a great fan of 'Doing Business In' books, yet the following books provide rounded insights into business in Asia, and China in particular.

Inside Chinese Business: A Guide for Managers Worldwide, by Ming-Jer Chen, published by Harvard Business School Press.

 This is probably the most insightful book on Chinese businesses that I have read. Ming-Jer Chen aims to explain how Chinese people conduct their business, discussing in particular cultural aspects that are often hard to comprehend for their Western counterparts. He thus outlines his understanding of, for example, family business, guanxi networks, face-saving communications. His main focus is overseas Chinese business groups from Indonesia to Singapore and Taiwan, with less coverage of Mainland China than the title might suggest. Yet, there are important communalities in the culture that make this book worthwhile for business travelers heading for Beijing or Shanghai. The author is a highly regarded US business scholar with roots in Taiwan, but this book is aimed at business persons looking for a not-overly-complex introduction to Chinese business culture and, possibly, insights from Chinese management practice that are relevant beyond Asia.

Asian Firms: History, Institutions and Management, by Frank B Tipton, published by Elgar, 2007.

Frank Tipton, an Australian business historian, describes businesses across Asia in a historical perspective. His review of the evolution of political, economic and business spheres since the 19th century provides a grounded understanding of businesses today, especially the cultural and institutional traditions. The book provides many historical details, yet excels at outlining the the broad long-term trends and setting events in historical context. It also provides insights into the communalities and differences in business history in Japan, Korean, Taiwan, China (Mainland), Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore. Tipton has studied the region for decades, and he introduces readers to multifaceted literatures on Asia. His eclectic and historical approach offers a depth of understanding that goes well beyond the writing many contemporary 'doing business in' authors. His chapters on China are most detailed.

Business Strategies in Transition Economies, by Mike Peng, Sage, 2001.  

Mike Peng applies theoretical concepts and empirical techniques developed in strategic management research in recent decades (mainly in the West) to China and European transition economies. He thus aims to explain corporate behaviour in transition economies that may puzzle scholars familiar only with mature market economies. The present book brings the ideas and empirical results of Peng’s various research projects together. Drawing on both institutional economics in teh tradition of Douglas North and contemporary strategic management theories, he provides a novel perspective on Chinese businesses, incorporating specific features of the Chinese business environment and the strategies that local firms, especially those once in state-ownership, may pursue to grow in a rapidly changing and uncertain institutional environment. (Download full book review)

Fiction

I like to read novels and short stories as complement to more factual sources of information because they can convey much better than an academic study could the atmosphere, and the feeling, anxieties and beliefs of individuals. Some of the books in this section helped me a lot to understand how Chinese people might think and feel about their life.

Distant Star, by Barbara Bickmore, published by Ballentine Books in 1993. (I read the German version "Ein Ferner Stern in China" published by Knaur).

This is a novel, that provides rich inside into the complex of modern Chinese history that is hard to understand for outsiders, or even for Chinese themselves. This novel takes the reader on a tour of China that starts in the Shanghai of the 1920s when the fictitious heroine lands as wife of a journalist. She lives in China for the next decades, encounters ordinary people and writes about her daily life. The novel shows how life in China used to be, and how it has changed under the pressure of historical events. The heroine becomes friends with Madame Sun, wife of Sun Yat-Sen, and interviews many other personalities of historical importance. These encounters happen only in the authors imagination, but they paint a vivid picture of China at the time, describing the atmosphere during the historical events. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though the last chapter can be skipped without loss.

The Bridegroom, by Ha Jin, published by Vintage International, New York in 2000.

This collection of short stories provides lively insights in the lives of ordinary Chinese people in the early years of economic reform. These stories provide fascinating insights in the complex webs of relationships in private life and the work place, embedded in Chinese culture and the pervasive influence of the communist party. My favorite story is "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town", which tells the fast food revolution in provincial China from the perspective of an ordinary worker struggling to believe their luck of earning more than his accomplished father, yet unable to understand how the business works, and why they do what they do. While scholars explore the cultural shock experienced by Western expatriates in China, this vivid story illuminates the culture shock of facing an expatriate in your own company.

Set in Beijing at the turn of the millennium, this novel shows China from the perspective of someone who did part-take in the rapid economic boom and tries to enter through a backdoor: Pretending to be a journalist, he joins banquets where the nouveaux riche aim to impress journalists and other mortals. Yet in this bright new world, he also encounters the trappings of a society with rapidly changing its rules, and sometimes with apparently no rules at all. Others left behind see him as a means to publicize their plight, and thus he travels through various undercurrents of Beijing's diversity society. The novel exposes failings of modern Chinese society, with the novelist's liberty to exaggerate, it may be a bit scary for those not yet familiar with China. It does however introduce readers to the riches of Chinese cuisine, which may delight  some and disturb others.

History and Society

Reading about a country's history is always worthwhile if you aim to understand its people, their aspirations and their mental baggages. In China this is particularly complex as many people are reluctant to talk about the recent past (1950s to 1970s), and my students seem often blissfully unaware of the grandparents life experience. On the other hand, certain much earlier periods are glorified, yet rarely critically reflected in China itself. Thus, Western sources often provide more differentiated perspectives.

(I am not aware of an English translation)

China: Eine Weltmacht kehrt zurück (The Return of a World Power), by Konrad Seitz, published by Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag in 2000.

China's history is long and complex, and it influences modern China in ways subtle ways - both official policies and individual mindsets. Yet, many accounts of Chinese history are partial and, especially if written by local authors, provide a particular ideological twist in interpreting events. Thus, it is useful to read multiple accounts to form an opinion, and to gain an understanding of the undercurrents in Chinese society. The fist half of this 500-pages book provides a careful review of China's history with an emphasis on the 20th century. On this basis, the author then analyses the economic and political reforms of the last three decades, and China's prospects in the global economy.

I had difficulties in classifying this book, and eventually decided to place it in the history category. The author travels through Chinese history and contemporary society using famous proverbs as guide. Many Chinese proverbs synthesize a historical event dating over two thousand years back. This book tells the stories of these events and their historical context underlying these proverbs, and explores how the wisdom embedded in the proverbs influences the ways contemporary Chinese think and act, including the author's personal experiences. 

Adeline Yen Mah is better known for her autobiography 'Falling Leaves' (as in the saying 'falling leaves return to their roots'), which I have not yet read.

(I am not aware of an English translation)

Chan outlines an insider's view society and politics, and of China's its role in the world, informed by eclectic study of China and personal involvement. His writing style often includes sweeping statement and rarely does he provide concise evidence for his assessments (there isn't even a bibliography), thus inviting criticism on many of his specific assertions and conclusions. Yet the author is obviously knowledgeable on many aspects of contemporary China and its recent history, and he outlines, overall, a realistic image of where China stands in the world. Moreover, he has the courage of outlining the role that he expects China to play in the global economy by the middle of the 21st century as a strategic player in world politics. He predicts that China will continue to raise, and a civil society will emerge that offers a high degree of individual liberties yet not democracy in the Western sense of the World. Yet he also predicts major problems of an aging society and environmental damage, and in consequence a role for China on the political world stage that would be constraint by domestic politics. This vision of the future of China is highly uncertain as predictions always are, but it provides a reasonable scenario for those wishing to engage with China in the long term.

I am sure there are plenty of good books out there, which I have not yet had the time to read. I welcome recommendations, and I look forward to some holiday in the future when I will have the leisure of reading more. But, one thing might excite me even more, to travel and to see for myself!