This is my China page, which lists all those books about China that I’ve found handy in the course of writing my short and long fiction. Of course, this is an open-ended list, which I intend to keep updating as I read books.

The blue butterflies ( ) denote books accessible for someone who knows little about the culture, and who doesn’t need more than a smattering of information to give authentic flavour to, say, a secondary-world fantasy.

I’ve tried to include history books as well as literature from the time period–which I always think is very reflective of the mindset. The rating in stars is over five, and reflects mainly how much I’ve found myself turning to the book as I writing or researching for future writing.

Click and here for my list of general historical books, and here for my list of books on Pre-Columbian America.

A brief note before you start out: there are two ways to transcribe Chinese into English: the Wade-Giles system, which is cumbersome but phonetically accurate, and the other one is pinyin, which is officially approved by the Chinese government, and which has gradually displaced the Wade-Giles system. Unless mentioned otherwise, the books I cite use pinyin. See here for a conversion table, which is invaluable to have handy.

 
• General
   
  • Imperial China: the Background to the Modern Age, Michael Loewe, George Allen and Unwin, 1966
    • An interesting overview of the key Chinese concepts, and how they evolved over the course of history. Much of it is arranged in the same manner: Loewe will pick a concept, such as government, and then list the different ways this was envisioned and put into practise, dynasty by dynasty. There’s a surprising amount of information in there, and it’s very interesting to see how the building blocks of Ancient China evolved over time. Invaluable if you want a quick reference to the social, political and religious structures of China in a given dynasty.
  • A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, Wolfram Eberhard, Routledge, 1986
    • This is exactly what it says on the cover: a compendium of the most important Chinese symbols explained in art, mythology and Chinese society in general. It’s very informative and full of fascinating tidbits: I love the fact that it often lists expressions in the Chinese language that use a particular symbol, thus providing an enlightening illustration of both the way the language worked and the way the symbol was perceived. I’m only giving it three stars, though, because of the frustrating lack of index, which makes it near-impossible to search for the Chinese symbol for a concept you might be thinking of, and also because the cross-referencing system is often hazy. Uses the Wade-Giles system.
  • Chinese Creeds and Customs, V.R. Burkhardt, Book World Co., 1958
    • This is a fascinating if somewhat disorderly account of Chinese folklore seen through the eyes of a Westerner: Colonel Burkhardt was posted in China for many years and had the opportunity to mingle with the Chinese. The book is in reality three different books combined, and each book features a series of articles focusing on related customs (such as the Chinese calendar or naming conventions), or to a particular festival (the Dragon Boat Race, for instance). Burkhardt was a meticulous observer of all the different stages of a ceremony, and the book is nicely complemented by hand-drawn illustrations. The subjects covered are suitably diverse and their coverage is nice, if a little dated. But it’s one of the only books to actually cover festivals and religious customs in a wealth of details, and as such is invaluable. Again, this loses points because of the fuzzy index (though there is a later edition from 1982 which might be a better compilation, but I haven’t seen it). Uses the Wade-Giles system, and is also somewhat hard to find as it is currently out of print.
  • The Encyclopedia of World Mythology, by Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, Lorenz Books, 2001
    • A fantastic encyclopedia of mythology, arranged by culture. Has a section on the Far East, which includes Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese mythology.

 

• Daily Life
   
  • China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 (Second Edition), Richard J. Smith, Westview Press, 1994
    • This is a very good overview of the main areas of “Chineness”, or the specificities of Chinese thought and cultures, from painting and calligraphy to Chinese attitude to religion. It does a good job of summing up how widely the Chinese differed from Western viewpoint. It’s accompanied by many diagrams: for instance, it has maps of a traditional Chinese house, of ancestrals shrines, and many pictures taken in the twilight of the Qing dynasty. The index is very comprehensive, as is the norm for a scholarly book. Even if the Qing period isn’t quite what you’re interested in, you still ought to check this one out to give you an idea of what Chinese culture was like.
  • Life Behind the Great Wall, Reader’s Digest (Journeys into the Past), 1996
    • A short but interesting account of daily life under the Qing dynasty. Has nice illustrations and period reconstructions, as well as a reasonably detailed index. It’s a very good introduction to the time period, featuring a number of sidebars detailing the daily life of a particular class of individual (from beggars to cooks to fengshui men). If all you want is a hint of Chineness in your fantasy or SF, this is probably a good book, but you might find it lacking in details to bring your setting to life.
  • China’s Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty, Charles Benn, Oxford University Press, 2002
    • This is also a very good overview of daily life, this time under the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It’s amazingly detailed: it includes a map of the capital at Chang’an to complement the stupendous account of daily life in the city. It’s not heavily illustrated and the text is very dense, but it does find time to discuss the changing fashions in the makeup of the court ladies, and to detail the medicinal prescriptions and the type of menus you might find at a banquet, as well as the various ways of preparing food. It’s more assured on the daily life at court than it is on the lower rungs of the administration, but it’s still an amazing resource. However, unlike the Smith book above, I wouldn’t really recommend this if you’re really interested in writing a historical in another time period, because the accounts are so specific they’re hard to adapt to another dynasty. Uses the Wade-Giles system.

 

• Literature
  • Sources of Chinese Tradition, William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, Columbia University Press, 2000 (Two Volumes)
    • Those are two big, fat books focused on the evolution of Chinese thought. The main focus is on religion and philosophy, and the excerpts are very clearly put into context with a copious amount of footnotes. The translations are impeccable. Obviously, this isn’t a casual read, but it’s a fascinating window into the Chinese psyche, from Taoism to Buddhism and Confucianism.
  • An Anthology of Chinese Literature: beginnings to 1911 , Stephen Owen, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997
    • Also a thick book, sampling Chinese literature from the Classics onwards. The highlight of this is the collection of Tang Poetry, which is beautifully arranged and even includes a sample of bilingual Chinese/English verse (just so you can see how creative translators have to be with an often abstruse language). The other poetry presented is also quite good, but the prose choices are a little more confusing, with a number of Chinese masterpieces such as Dream of Red Mansions, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms being completely set aside.
  • Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection, Feng Menglong, University of Washington Press, 2000
    • Feng Menglong’s collections of short stories in the vernacular (of which this is the first) are a good portrayal of various social classes of Ming society, as well as a nice introduction to Chinese vernacular literature. This is an integral translation which includes both the author’s interlinear notes within the stories (a classic feature of Chinese literature), and the poems. It also has copious notes.
  • Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling, Penguin Classics, 2006
    • The Chinese book of ghost stories, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. All of those are quite short, and form a good overview of the different social classes of Qing China, as well as of the Chinese relation with the supernatural. The translation I listed only collects a fraction of them, complete with illustrations. More complete versions are available online.
  • Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en, Penguin Classics, 1994
    • Journey to the West is a fictionalised account of the monk Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to India to recover the sacred scriptures of Buddhism, together with his companions: the insatiable Pigsy, the dependable Sandy, and the outrageous Sun Wukong the Monkey King. It’s a novel deeply steeped in Chinese folklore, and is widely represented in Asian culture today.
  • Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber), Cao Xuequin, Penguin Classics (5 volumes)
    • Considered by some to be the pinnacle of the Chinese classical novel, Story of the Stone chronicles the life in the household of two large families in the capital, whose fortunes are on the decline. It focuses particularly on Jia Baoyu, the effeminate heir of one of the families, and his friendship with the girls and women of the household–chief among whom is the sickly Lin Daiyu, who believes herself his destined lover. The novel has a huge cast of characters and very nicely depicts the daily life of a large Chinese household.
  • Water Margin (Outlaws of the Marsh), Shi Naian, Foreign Languages Press, 2001
    • Water Margin chronicles the deeds of 108 outlaws: men and women forced to flee into the marshes through the actions of the harsh and corrupt officialdom of the Song Dynasty. This is possibly the source of all wuxia novels and movies: it depicts a parallel society similar to that of the Knights-Errants, where a code of honour replaces the imperial laws. Also features many tropes of Chinese literature, such as the inns that turn their guests into human food.