Are you planning your first trip to China? Have you just started learning Mandarin? Or are you just very interested in discovering more about one of the most complex cultures in the world and don't know where to start?
Here you'll find a selection of five books - all fiction, memoirs or non-fiction, but no history books or long essays - to introduce yourself to China and understand its functioning. History, traditions, everyday life, contradictions, struggles, political turmoil, and resilience are among the topics touched by these books. Being so different from each other, you can make sure to find the one that is just right for you to get started!
In this article:
China for Beginners: Five Books to Get to Know the Country
1. CHINA'S CULTURAL MAINSTAYS EXPLAINED
Title: China in Ten Words 十个词汇里的中国
Author: Yu Hua 余华 (b. 1960)
Number of Pages: 240
Year: 2010
Genre: Non-fiction
Check It On: Goodreads
Buy It On: Blackwell's
Rating: 5/5
About the Book
China in Ten Words is a book first written in 2010 by Yu Hua, who is considered one of the most influential Chinese writers of this century.
The book is composed of ten sections, each of which is dedicated to one Chinese character and its corresponding word. Through these words, Yu Hua narrates and explains ten veritable mainstays of modern China, drawing on his life experiences and some of the country's momentous events. The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the figure of Mao Zedong, and the Tiananmen Square Protests are only a few of the topics Yu Hua includes in this book, for he manages to encompass all aspects of Chinese society and analyze them through an always objective and disillusioned lens.
Why is This Book on This List
China in Ten Words tells us pretty much everything we need to know about China, which is why it is one of the first books I'd recommend to beginners! Yu Hua is an author with a deep understanding of his country, and one who can see through the mist of propaganda and educational background and reveal what actually lies behind the curtain. At the same time, his writing and mind are so perfectly Chinese that everything feels more reliable and authentic.
With China in Ten Words I've found myself reminiscing on my own memories of China and realizing Yu Hua was able to put every sensation, feeling, and idea you experience in the country into words. A good way to mentally prepare yourself for the complex melting pot that is China today and be able to identify the most original elements of the society.
2. CHINESE PEOPLE'S LIFE IN AND OUTSIDE CHINA
Title: Land of Big Numbers
Author: Te-Ping Chen (b. 1985)
Number of Pages: 233
Year: 2021
Genre: Short Stories, Fiction
Check It On: Goodreads
Buy It On: Blackwell's
Rating: 3.5/5
About the Book
Land of Big Numbers is a book published in 2021 by Te-Ping Chen, an American journalist with Chinese origins and ancestry. She lived in Beijing for several years, working as a correspondent.
In Land of Big Numbers and its collection of short stories, Te-Ping Chen brings us around China or lets us journey through everyday life hand in hand with Chinese immigrants (mostly in the U.S.). In ten short stories, we enter the everyday struggles and glories of ten different protagonists, whose lives narrate what it means to be Chinese and today's China with its contradictions and cultural complexities.
Why is This Book on This List
Te-Ping Chen is not Chinese but has Chinese origins, and it shows. You perceive the external eye, the sometimes detached view of China, and the ability to explore the mind and the feelings of Chinese immigrants. Yet, her understanding of China is palpable and there's much one can learn from this short and engagingly-written book.
Honestly, I did not like all the short stories and I've found some of them to have gone too far into fantasy or to be just out of touch with Land of Big Number's main purpose - that of depicting modern China. "Lulu", "Field Notes on a Marriage", "Shanghai Murmur" and "Land of Big Numbers" are, for me, the ones that got the point better than the others. They alone are a good reason to choose this book to introduce yourself to China.
3. BIG CITY VS. COUNTRY LIFE IN CHINA
Title: Soul Mountain 灵山
Author: Gao Xingjian 高行健 (b. 1940)
Number of Pages: 528
Year: 1990
Genre: Fiction
Check It On: Goodreads
Buy It On: Blackwell's
Rating: 4/5
About the Book
Soul Mountain is a book first published in 1990 by Gao Xingjian, a Chinese author, painter, playwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature. His work is recognized as one of the most avant-gardists in China. Today a French citizen, he chose to force his way out of his homeland to escape censorship.
Soul Mountain is a partially autobiographic narration of a man who, in 1983, is wrongly diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and for a few weeks faces imminent death before discovering it was all a mistake. This experience led him to reject the numb life in the booming Chinese cities of the 1980s and to escape back into nature in search of his own soul mountain - língshān 靈山 - reviving a remotely old Chinese tradition of visiting sacred mountains to ask for Heaven's blessing and purify the soul.
Why is This Book on This List
Gao Xingjian is renowned for his original writing style, and in Soul Mountain characters don't have names and personal pronouns are often mixed, so the reader doesn't always realize who is speaking and at what point the narration is. It takes a while to get used to it. Besides that, Xingjian gifts us with the quintessential Chinese mindset and lets us explore the tormented psychology of a man brought up by the harsh Cultural Revolution, then thrown into a modern world, and now trying to (uselessly) escape it.
Through Soul Mountain one can have a glimpse of booming China and its difficult transition to modernity with heavy luggage of traditions, customs, and beliefs that one could find up in the mountains far from the big cities when the book was written, and that today still lingers in the customs and cultural heritage of the people.
4. CHINA THROUGH FOREIGN EYES: GEOPOLITICS
Title: On China
Author: Henry Kissinger (1923-2023)
Number of Pages: 608
Year: 2011
Genre: Non-fiction
Check It On: Goodreads
Buy It On: Blackwell's
Rating: 4/5
About the Book
On China is a report written by German-born, naturalized American diplomat and political scientist Henry Kissinger in 2011. He spent years of his diplomatic career focusing on Chinese-American relations and played a crucial role in shaping the new path these would take in the second half of the 20th century.
On China is a compendium of what Kissinger learned about China and its society during his years spent working closely with Chinese authorities and visiting China as a diplomat and National Security Advisor of the United States (1960s-1970s). In the book, written for a non-Chinese audience, he tries to navigate the mysteries (for the Westeners' eyes) of China, its history, and its political and economic goals, and to foresee the future of the relations between the country, the United States, and the world.
Why is This Book on This List
I know, not everyone likes Henry Kissinger. He was a son of his century, and we know well that the 1900s are not exactly famous for producing the most upright offspring. I myself have some reservations when it comes to him and his deeds but, frankly, he has been a pivotal figure in diplomacy and foreign relations, one whose works cannot simply be ignored.
On China is probably the first book one should read if wishing to understand China from a political perspective and how it is seen and perceived from the outside. Kissinger was there when the very basis of political relationships between modern China and the world (especially the West) were laid, and reading this book can cast a substantial light on what is still unfolding today in geopolitics, and perhaps give us some clues on what will happen next.
5. CHINA THROUGH FOREIGN EYES: TRAVEL MEMOIR
Title: River Town
Author: Peter Hessler (b. 1969)
Number of Pages: 416
Year: 2001
Genre: Travel Memoir
Check It On: Goodreads
Buy It On: Blackwell's
Rating: 5/5
About the Book
River Town is a memoir written by American writer Peter Hessler, who has lived in China for several years and served as a correspondent in Beijing in the early 2000s.
In River Town, Hessler recounts his two-year experience living in Sichuan as a teacher in the 1990s. It's a portrait of China, its culture and contradictions, seen while immersed in a still rural context, surrounded by a population on the verge of being modernized and having their life changed forever.
Why is This Book on This List
River Town remains one of the best books about China I've read so far. Hessler is humble and kind in describing an evolving country, he is inquisitive but never arrogant, and his Sichuan years let us step effortlessly into '90s China while sharing dozens of insights that remain fully relatable to this day.
A well-written book with a fluent style, River Town stays in between fiction and non-fiction in the way it unfolds, and this makes it probably the most enjoyable book on this list. Of course, what we get here is a foreigner's perception of China, but one of the best I've stumbled upon so far - I read it right before leaving for China, and when there I recognized many aspects Hessler had introduced me to in his book. A perfect starting point for beginners.
➊ READ NEXT: Book Review of River Town by Peter Hessler
Have you read any of these books? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, let me know in the comments down below!