How do you really get to know a country as vast and multi-layered as China? It takes looking past the daily headlines and stepping directly into individual lives, neighbourhood trade networks, deep historical currents, and bold artistic visions.
China can be explored through many different lenses: the way people understand themselves, the everyday spaces where communities come together, the maritime networks that connected China with the wider world, and the artists who have shaped its modern cultural image. These five books approach China from very different directions.
Portraits of the Chinese《中国人的自画像》
How have Chinese people understood the self, and what does it mean to speak or write about ‘I’ in Chinese culture? German sinologist Wolfgang Bauer explores these questions through more than 1,500 autobiographical and self-expressive works, spanning from the pre-Qin period to modern times. Essays, poems, letters, diaries, autobiographies and biographies bring nearly 400 writers, thinkers, historians, politicians, poets and artists into the conversation.
Rather than simply tracing the history of Chinese autobiography, Bauer examines the changing idea of the Chinese self. He explores why Chinese thought has often placed greater emphasis on ‘Who should I become?’ than ‘Who am I?’, and how individuals have been understood through their relationships with society, nature, history and fate. Written over three decades, this ambitious study brings literature, philosophy and intellectual history together to examine changing ideas of identity and individuality in China.
The One Who Turns the Soil 《翻土的人》
In 2023, Li Qian became an unexpected ‘outsider’ in a small-town Gymnasium in Germany, finding herself among 1,100 students, 85 teachers and 44 classes. Moving between classrooms, staff meetings, corridors and playgrounds, she observes the everyday workings of German education: teachers coping with demanding schedules, students navigating linguistic and cultural differences, and a school system balancing academic learning with cooperation, independence and personal choice.
Her account is grounded in the details of school life. Li writes about inclusion, refugees, students with autism, classroom experiments, homework, artificial intelligence and the complicated dynamics between teachers and students. Drawing on her first-hand experience, the book looks at both the possibilities and limitations of the German education system, while asking a larger question about what schools should ultimately help young people become.
Chinese Wet Markets 《中国菜市场》
In Chinese Wet Markets, anthropologist Zhong Shuru draws on ten years of fieldwork across more than 200 markets in over 50 cities, from fish markets in Hainan to bazaars in Xinjiang. Her subject is not simply what is sold at these markets, but the people who run them, the supply chains behind everyday food, changing consumer habits, and the history and management of urban markets.
Wet markets are also social spaces, bringing together food, work, neighbourhood life and local culture. Zhong examines how they have responded to supermarkets, e-commerce, urban redevelopment and changing patterns of consumption, while considering what makes them resilient in an era of rapid urban change. Through one of the most familiar spaces in Chinese daily life, the book offers an intimate look at how Chinese cities function and how communities are changing.
Spanning the Oceans 《梯航四海》
Long before the great European voyages of the early modern period, Chinese and foreign merchant ships crossed the waters between the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Spanning the Oceans traces the expansion of maritime trade during the Song and Yuan dynasties, following silk and porcelain westward and spices, precious stones and other goods into China. From major ports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou to routes reaching the east coast of Africa, the book reconstructs a maritime world built around ships, merchants, ports and long-distance exchange.
This landmark study explores much more than what people bought and sold. It examines the institutions that regulated overseas trade, advances in shipbuilding and navigation, the growth of major ports, and the economic and social impact of maritime commerce. It also follows the movement of people, ideas and cultures across the sea, showing how trade connected China with Korea, Southeast Asia, South Asia and beyond. Rich in historical detail, Spanning the Oceans offers a vivid account of China’s place in the maritime world before the age of European oceanic expansion.
Ke Feng 《可疯》
Christopher Doyle‘s Ke Feng is an intensely personal account of a career behind some of the most distinctive images in Chinese-language cinema. Part memoir and part collection of film and art writing, it brings together more than 100 new essays, rare photographs and photo collages, tracing Doyle’s childhood and early experiences as well as his collaborations with filmmakers including Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Edward Yang and Sylvia Chang.
For film lovers, the book offers an unusual glimpse behind films such as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, Hero and The Grandmaster. Doyle reflects on collaboration, artistic instinct, memory, cities and cultural encounters, while his photographs and collages reveal the visual sensibility behind his work. The title itself is a pun on Doyle’s Chinese name: ‘Ke Feng’ is his Chinese name (杜可风), while 可疯 can also suggest ‘can go crazy’ — an apt signature for an artist whose restless and unconventional approach has defined his work.
Written by Estelle Tang, illustrated by Yuma Zhao.
If you liked this article, why not read: July Picks: Reading China Through Different Voices
