This book is not a narrative history of China. Readers looking for a primer on Chinese history will not find it here. Instead what we…
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Tag: History of China
Beautiful book – Grand Canal, Great River: The Travel Diary of a Twelfth-century Chinese Poet
This is a very interesting diary of a journey undertaken between July to Dec 1170. The famous poet Lu You was assigned to take up…
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Great book – The Crippled Tree
The Crippled Tree is the first volume of Han Su Yin’s autobiography. Published in 1965, it covers the years 1885 to 1928, beginning with her…
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Excellent – A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552-1610
This is a 2012 book and the first critical biography of Ricci to use all relevant sources, both Chinese and Western. This is a very…
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A gem – The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and its Aftermath
The World of a Tiny Insect is a wonderful memoir of a childhood spent in the violence of the Taiping Rebellion. The author was 7…
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A sad tragedy – China’s Civil War (New Approaches to Asian History)
This book is a tour de force. In a mere 280 pages, Lary has packed quotes, writings, and data that conveyed well the tragedy that…
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Scholarly book – The Boxers, China, and the World
This book is a compilation of 10 of the papers presented for a conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2001, to…
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Behind the headline – The Fall of Hong Kong: China’s Triumph and Britain’s Betrayal
An excellent and gripping account of the negotiations which led to the return of HK to China. From this book, we know the men and…
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A gripping story – The Qing Empire and the Opium War: The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty
Mao has written an interesting book based on Chinese and Japanese sources, but it does not deserve 5 stars { not the fault of Mao}…
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Whodunnit – Midnight in Peking: The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China
Inspired by a footnote in a bio of Edgar Snow of Red Star over China fame, French tracked down newspapers from archives in Peking, Shanghai,…
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