500 words from Harvey Thomlinson

500 words from is an occasional series in which authors talk about their newly-published books. The Strike.
Here, Harvey Thomlinson talks about his new experimental novel,

Harvey is best known as a translator of novels by rebellious Chinese writers like Murong Xuecun and Chen Xiwo. His own innovative writing has attracted attention for its adventurous writing style, particularly sentence structures. Harvey also runs Make-Do Publishing, a press which specializes in fiction from Asia.

The Strike vividly explores a crisis in the lives of Old Yu and Little Xu, two outsiders in a frozen Chinese border town hit by a traumatic strike. Caught up in the upheaval, guilt-ridden Old Yu embarks on a reckless journey to find the rebellious woman he betrayed. Meanwhile, young drifter Little Xu enters into a dangerous relationship with a stranger on the run.

So, over to Harvey…

Student bookshelf by Aurelia Paul: Patriarchs on Paper

Aurelia Paul is a senior year student at Boston University, studying comparative literature and Chinese, in her new fortnightly column Student bookshelf, she shares responses to texts she's reading in her classes.

Here she discusses Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature by Alan Cole, in particular how it  draws parallels between the malleability of Chan / Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China, and in modern times.

Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Medieval Chan Literature raises many thought-provoking points. In the introduction, Alan Cole introduces two fundamental concepts. Firstly, that the lineages of Chan patriarchs are not unquestionable genealogies, as many Chan sects present them to be, but rather were edited and reconstructed during the Tang period. Alan Cole's second point is that the popular Western conception of Chan / Zen Buddhism, based on an influential book published in the 30's, is totally distorted. It is this idea that I am going to explore in greater detail.

Backlist books: The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin and Gao E

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post is about The Story of the Stone (aka The Dream of the Red Chamber), a sprawling work about a boy born into a wealthy household only to witnesses its gradual decline as he grows into a young man.

Written in the mid-1700s, this classic Chinese novel (one of the Four Classic Chinese Novels, in fact) was circulated as an incomplete manuscript before its publication in 1792, when forty additional chapters were added to the original eighty.

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read The Story of the Stone, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

500 Words from Alice Poon

500 words from is an occasional series in which novelists talk about their newly-published novels.

Alice Poon, author of The Green Phoenix, a novel of Old China, currently lives in Canada but she was born and educated in Hong Kong.  She grew up devouring Jin Yong’s martial arts and chivalry novels, all set in China’s distant past. That sparked her ambition to write historical novels of her own.

The Green Phoenix tells the story of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, born a Mongolian princess, who became a consort in the Manchu court and then the Qing Dynasty’s first matriarch. She lived through harrowing threats, endless political crises, personal heartaches and painful losses to lead a shaky empire out of a dead end. The story is set against a turbulent canvas as the Chinese Ming Dynasty is replaced by the Qing. Xiaozhuang guides her husband, her lover, her son and her grandson  to success against the odds, and to the creation of an empire that lasted for 250 years.

So, over to Alice…

Guest post: Nicky Harman on translating Happy Dreams, by Jia Pingwa

Although few of his novels are currently translated into English, Jia Pingwa is one of China’s most popular novelists. UK-based Nicky Harman translates from Chinese into English, and spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to the general English-language reader.

Nicky’s translation of Jia Pingwa’s
高兴, Happy Dreams, has just been published.

Happy Dreams concerns Hawa 'Happy' Liu’s search for a life that lives up to his self-given name. He travels from his rural home to the city of Xi’an, taking with him only an eternally positive attitude, his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women’s shoes he hopes to slip onto the feet of the yet to be found love of his life.

In Xi’an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the city's dumps. But Happy refuses to be crushed by circumstance: in his eyes, life is what you make of it. His optimism seems justified when he meets a beautiful girl: surely she is the one to fill the shoes? But when harsh conditions and the crush of societal inequalities take the life of his friend, Happy needs more than just optimism to hold on to the belief that something better is possible.

Here, Nicky discusses translating 高兴

New book announcement: Bloody Saturday, by Paul French

Marking 80 Years since Shanghai’s darkest day, Penguin China are bringing out Bloody Saturday, a new Penguin Special by Paul French.

Indie spotlight: Travis Lee

Indie spotlight is our monthly column on self-publishing. This month our regular columnist, Tim Gurung, chats to Travis Lee about his new book Expat Jimmy, in which he draws on his own experiences of teaching English in China. The novel concerns a young American teacher, who arrives in Wuhan looking for a year-long vacation, paid for by teaching English as a second language. Waiting for him is Adam, a jaded laowai (foreigner / expat) determined to crush his preconceptions of China, and to introduce him to the dark side of expat life.

Backlist books: The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Backlist books is a column by Lucy Day Werts that focuses on enduring, important works from or about Asia.

This post, the first in the series, is about The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This 2,500-year-old text, less than 11,000 words in total, is broken into thirteen themed sections, each of which contains a list of numbered principles only a sentence or two long. The message, in essence, is "Fight intelligently so you'll always win."

See below to find out what you need to know to decide whether you should read it, or what you should know about it even if you never do!

500 words from Kaitlin Solimine

500 words from is an occasional series in which writers talk about their newly-published books.

San Francisco-based Kaitlin Solimine has been a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Creative Fellow in China. She has received several scholarships, awards, and residencies for her writing, which has appeared in a range of publications from the Wall Street Journal, to China Daily. She here talks about her debut novel, Empire of Glass - the Center for Fiction, a New York-based organization devoted to promoting fiction, has longlisted it for their 2017 first novel prize.

Empire of Glass explores recent changes in China through the lens of one family's experiences. In the mid-1990s, an American teenager, named Lao K in Chinese, must decide whether to help her Chinese homestay mother, Li-Ming, who is dying of cancer, in ending her life. Twenty years later, Lao K receives a book written by Li-Ming called Empire of Glass; it chronicles the lives of Li-Ming and her husband, Wang, in pre- and post-revolutionary China over the second half of the twentieth century. Lao K begins translating Empire of Glass. But, as translator, how can she separate fact from fiction, and what will be her own role be in the book?

So, over to Kaitlin…

Liu Xiaobo

Amongst many other retrospects, tributes and obituaries, click here for the response from The New York Review of Books.

500 words from John Holliday

500 words from is an occasional column in which authors talk about their newly-published books.

John Holliday, an Australia-based, British-born writer, has just published Mission to China: How an Englishman Brought the West to the Orient. The book, part adventure story and part social history, examines the life of one of John’s ancestors, Walter Medhurst, a 19th century Christian missionary to Chinese communities throughout Asia, and to China itself.

John had long been aware of having an ancestor who was a famous missionary, but it was not until 2008 that he discovered an orphanage founded by this ancestor in Jakarta was still functioning. A visit to the city, and a commitment to build a library for the orphanage, prompted him to undertake research into Walter Medhurst’s life, and, ultimately, to write his biography.

On a Chinese Screen / guest post by My Maugham Collection

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a prolific British playwright, novelist and short story writer, who, in his day, was among the most popular writers in the English-speaking world. He was most productive during the first half of the last century, and was said to be the highest-paid author in London during the 1930s. He travelled extensively in Asia, and wrote about his experiences in books such as On a Chinese Screen, and The Gentleman in the Parlour, an account of his travels in Burma and Vietnam.  He wrote a series of short stories set in colonial Singapore and Malaya.

My Maugham Collection is a blog focussing specifically on the blogger’s collection of first editions of Maugham’s books, and, more generally, on all things Maugham-related.  Here, the blogger discusses On a Chinese Screen. The book is mostly composed of a collection of quick sketches of Westerners who are out of their depth in China.  It casts a sharp eye over, amongst others, colonial administrators, missionaries, businessmen, and overbearing women.

So, over to My Maugham Collection...

500 words from Tim Symonds

500 Words From is a series of guest posts from writers, in which they talk about their latest books. UK-based Tim Symonds writes Sherlock Holmes novels. He has just published Sherlock Holmes and the Nine-Dragon Sigil, which takes Holmes and Watson to the Forbidden City in Beijing - at the time in the West still called Peking - during the turbulent last days of the Qing dynasty. If you’ve never heard of a sigil, it’s an occult symbol. In Tim’s novel, a menacing nine-dragon sigil is embroidered on the back of a gown the Empress-Dowager Cixi gives her son. 

So: over to Tim...

Q & A: Choo Waihong

Choo Waihong has just brought out The Kingdom of Women: Life, Love and Death in China’s Hidden Mountains, an account of the Mosuo tribe, who worship the female spirit, and are the last surviving matrilineal and matriarchal society in the world. The book raises questions about gender roles in modern, urbanised society, and provides a glimpse into a hidden way of life teetering on the edge of extinction in today’s China.

A Singaporean, Choo Waihong was a corporate lawyer with top law firms in Singapore and California. She dealt in fund management law, not women’s rights, but, separately, she was involved with AWARE, a women’s rights group in Singapore; she acted as its vice-president for two terms.

In 2006, she took early retirement, and left behind the fifteen hour days of corporate life to travel in China. From the moment she stepped into the Kingdom of Women, Waihong was captivated. She became the first outsider to move into the heart of the tribe, where she stayed for six years. She now spends half the year with them in Lugu Lake, Yunnan. The rest of the time she continues to live in Singapore, while also travelling to Europe and America to spend time with her family.

Newly published: The Kingdom of Women by Choo Waihong

The Mosuo tribe is the last surviving matrilineal and matriarchal society in the world. Choo Waihong brings their story to light in The Kingdom of Women: Life, Love and Death in China’s Hidden Mountains.

Touring China with a shady Frenchman, by William L. Gibson

In the Land of Pagodas: A forgotten tour through late Qing China with a fugitive Frenchman by Alfred Raquez edited and translated by William L. Gibson and Paul Bruthiaux is a book of travel history, with an intriguing history of its own.

It is the first English translation of Raquez’s long out-of-print account of a tour he took through China at the end of the 19^th Century.

Here William L. Gibson, an American writer and translator based in Jakarta, explains how and why the In the Land of Pagodas has now been made available to new readers, everywhere.

John Grant Ross debunks myths about China

At a time when so much attention is focused on alternative facts, You Don’t Know China by John Grant Ross, author of Formosan Odyssey, reminds us that the Trump administration doesn’t have a monopoly on bending the truth – either deliberately, or through carelessness.

You Don’t Know China amusingly debunks twenty-two enduring myths about China, ranging from history and economics to language and food. Does Chinese medicine work? Did Marco Polo really go to China? Is the fortune cookie Chinese? What's the truth about Feng Shui?  It is occasionally controversial, exploring, for instance, Chinese isolationism, myths about Nixon in China, and cherished beliefs about the Opium Wars. 

John Grant Ross here offers a glimpse into his book, by explaining the Great Wall is neither a single wall, nor particularly ancient, by taking a wrecking ball to some commonly held ideas about acupuncture, and by asking if it's really true that Mandarin will soon become a world language.

Published Today: Intruder In Mao’s Realm by Richard Kirkby

Intruder In Mao’s Realm, by British academic Richard Kirkby, provides an insider’s view of China in the final throes of the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath.  

Questions & answers: Alexandra Curry

About Alexandra Curry: Alexandra is a Canadian-born author of Austrian and British parentage. She has lived in Asia, including in Singapore and Taiwan, in Europe, and in Canada. Her current home is in the United States. She says: “No doubt about it, my background has been shaped by several cultures, and the way I see the world is very much informed by the way these cultures have blended together for me.” She has worked as a teacher, model, banker and accountant.  The Courtesan is her first novel.

500 words from Graham Sage

500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Polyglot Graham Sage divides his time between London, China and France. His previous books include an English-language primer for use in China, and the French-language novel Les tribulations de J. Alfred Prufrock au pays des moas géants. In November, he will publish The Phoenix and the Crow, his first novel in English.

The Phoenix and the Crow is a tale of morality and corruption in present-day small-town China. Wang Bin a young teacher and ornithologist from Beijing travels to Pingyang, a small town nestled in the mountains between Sichuan and Hunan. His aim is to photograph the mountain phoenix, a rare bird with a blaze of rich colours that has never before been captured on film.

Wang Bin soon crosses paths with Pingyang’s, chief of police, a cruel man who rules with an iron fist. The chief of police tries to drive Wang Bin permanently out of town. But Wang Bin is falling in love with Xiao Zhou, a pretty receptionist at the seedy hotel where he’s been staying. Wang Bin, Xiao Zhou and other townsfolk concoct a plan to rid Pingyang of its dreadful chief of police – a plan so far-fetched all agree it might just work.

So, Over to Graham…