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Recommended Further Reading and Viewing for China Seminar Students

Robert Daly
June 24, 2002

Books

Sweep of History

1. Patricia Buckley Ebrey. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. A highly readable, lavishly illustrated book by a top American sinologist who is as interested in everyday life as in the Dynastic Cycle. Ebrey provides a good foundation for all subsequent reading. If you want to go deeper, it's time for-
2. Jacques Gernet. A History of Chinese Civilization, which is superb, but dry.

Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping

1. Barbara Tuchman. Stillwell and the American Experience in China. (Out of print in the U.S., but available in most libraries.) Tuchman paints a vivid portrait of an archetypal American, explores a neglected strain in the history of WWII, and offers insights on a supporting cast that includes FDR, Claire Chennault, Joseph Alsop, and George Marshall. This remains the book on the difficulties Chinese and Americans encounter in working together.
2. Sterling Seagrave. The Soong Dynasty. This history-as-soap-opera tells the story of the three sisters who married Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and the finance minister of the KMT. It covers some of the same territory as Tuchman's book, but goes into more detail on the cloak-and-dagger aspects of KMT politics. Seagrave's work was pooh-poohed by academic historians and denounced by Taiwanese leaders, but his theses have not been refuted.
3. Li Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Banned in China, Li's book comes as close as any to revealing Mao's mind, the motives behind his murderous political campaigns, and the political maneuvering that preceded his death. This is the best character sketch of Mao as a mature leader.
4. Philip Short. Mao: A Life. Short spends too much time with Mao in the Jiangxi years, but he provides useful insights into Mao's adolescence and early years in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). If you can read only one of these two books, read Li's.
5. Jasper Becker. Hungry Ghosts, Mao's Secret Famine. Becker, just fired as the South China Morning Post's Beijing Bureau Chief, assembled all the data available on the Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine that killed 30-50 million people. Many of the political dynamics that led to the famine are still in place.
6. Harrison Salisbury. The New Emperors. Salisbury interviewed secretaries, cooks, and bodyguards to get the inside scoop on Mao and Deng. Like The Soong Dynasty, this book is a bit trashy and has been reviled, but not refuted. It is banned in China, but no longer controversial. The attitude toward such revelations in China today is "It's probably true. So what?"

Chinese Governance

1. Kenneth Lieberthal. Governing China, from Revolution Through Reform. Lieberthal, who served in Clinton's National Security Council, provides a valuable look at how power is conceived, attained, and exercised by the CCP. A second edition of this 1995 work will be published soon.
2. Li Cheng. China's Leaders: The New Generation. Li's study of Hu Jintao and his generation should be read by anyone who wants to follow the political transition that will begin with the 16th party congress this fall.

U.S.-China Relations

1. James Mann. About Face. The former LA Times Beijing Bureau Chief offers a succinct, controversial, narrative history of a complex relationship, focusing on the ways in which misperceptions and domestic politics in the U.S. and China have effected policy. Mann's book was written in 1995. For U.S.-China relations through 2000, pick up-
2. David M. Lampton. Same Bed, Different Dreams. You know Mike, so I'll skip the blurb.

Chinese Thought

1. Joseph Needham and Colin A. Ronan (Editor) The Shorter Science and Civilization in China, Volume 1. If there were a Pulitzer Prize for abridgement, Ronan would win for his crystallization of the encyclopedic work conceived at Cambridge by Joseph Needham and his collaborators. The first volume of the abridgement offers a thumbnail intellectual history of China, notes on the Chinese language, and fascinating material on the transmission of technology between China and the West.
2. Simon Leys. The Analects of Confucius. This is easily the best English translation of China's greatest book. The Analects is short and makes good bedside reading. Leys' introductory essays and notes are masterful.
3. Simon Leys. The Burning Forest. This collection of essays, now out of print, includes an excellent piece on Chinese aesthetics, amusing critiques of "China experts" and Edward Said, and some of the most scathing moral critiques of the Mao regime written by a western Sinologist. A fine prose stylist, Leys is worth reading, and re-reading, even if you have little interest in China.
4. Lin Yutang. The Importance of Living. Lin focuses on what is best in traditional Chinese attitudes toward nature, personality, family, food, and friendship. This joyous book is the best one-volume explication of the worldview of ancient China.
5. Lu Xun (Hsun). Selected Essays and Stories of Lu Xun. Lu Xun was the greatest Chinese writer and cultural critic of the 20th Century. We're still waiting for the definitive translation of his work. The most readily-available version-Gladys Yang's-is inelegant, but worthwhile.

Memoir

1. Jung Chang. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. There have been many good memoirs written by Chinese intellectuals who survived the Maoist terrors: Harry Wu's Bitter Wind, Wu Ningkun's A Single Tear, Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai. Jung Chang's memoir is the best. It's a good first book for people who have never read about China.

Fiction

1. George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman and the Dragon. Reading the Flashman series is the most enjoyable way to study the 19th Century British Empire. This installment, set during the Second Anglo-Chinese War, takes Harry Flashman into the old Summer Palace as the kept man of the concubine who will later become the Empress Dowager Ci Xi.
2. Barry Hughart. Bridge of Birds. A brilliant intertwining of dozens of Chinese legends, Bridge of Birds tells the story of a drunken Confucian scholar and a credulous peasant named Number Ten Ox who set out to cure the children of Ox's village and end up doing battle with the greatest villain in Chinese history.
3. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. Nominally a series of dialogues between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, Calvino's book is really about wonder, how to look, and how to travel.
4. Meindert De Jong. The House of Sixty Fathers. A children's novel based on the real adventures of a Chinese boy and his pig during the Japanese invasion. Separated from his parents, the boy wanders through the famine-ravaged Hunan countryside, falls in with guerillas, and is eventually adopted by a barracks of American flyers. The book makes a good gift for readers 8 to 12 years old. Illustrated by Maurice (Where The Wild Things Are) Sendak.

VHS/DVD

1. Sue Williams. China: A Century of Revolution. In her six-hour documentary, Sue Williams lets Chinese tell their own stories of life from the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. A Century of Revolution is far superior to the more widely-available documentary, China Rising.
2. Zhang Yimou. Red Sorghum. Zhang's first feature film, a nostalgic look at peasant life in northern China before and during the Japanese invasion, introduced leading lady Gong Li, established Jiang Wen as China's premier male actor, popularized northern folk songs, and made international critics pay attention to Chinese film for the first time.
3. Zhang Yimou. To Live. Zhang's richest, warmest film depicts a family's struggle to survive the Chinese civil war and Mao's political violence.
4. Zhang Yimou. Qiu Ju. Using a spare narrative line reminiscent of Chekhov, Zhang traces the efforts of ordinary peasant woman to find justice through the local, county, and provincial courts.
5. Zhang Yang. Shower. This family comedy set in contemporary Beijing was made by a young director who learned a lot from Zhang Yimou but rejected Zhang's interest in lush costume drama. Shower will show you how life in contemporary Beijing feels to ordinary citizens.
6. Wong Kar-wai. Chungking Express. Arguably the best Hong Kong film of the past decade. Superb acting and cinematography. Chungking Express makes me happy for two days every time I watch it.