China Books Podcast

Over the last quarter century, the countryside of southwest China has been transformed. The author of two memoirs reflects on what is lost, and what is gained. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The Hong Kong-born novelist and journalist talks us through his new novel "City on Fire," a whodunnit thriller set against the 2019 protests. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The Legalists and Confucians still run the show in today’s China, argues a scholar of classical Chinese thought — but the Mohists and Daoists still have a voice in the debate. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

Misogyny and patriarchy are a later misreading of The Analects, argues the author of a new translation of the Confucian classic. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The bilingual comedian talks us through the traditional “xiangsheng” form of Chinese comic repartee, and explains whether Beijing can take a joke. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

Islam has been part of China’s religious and cultural fabric for over a millennium, yet often it is seen as a foreign element. The author of a new study explains just how wrong that is. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

Horror writing has an unsavory reputation in China, but comes with a long history and is full of biting social commentary. The translator of a recent collection explains what lurks beneath. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.c...

Tales of trickery were popular in the late Ming dynasty. The translators of a new collection explain how they still resonate today. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

Colonized by the Dutch, Qing China and Japan, the island of Taiwan has a complicated past and a tense present. We invited the author of a new primer to lay it out for us. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

Tibetans inside China have found various ways to push back against Beijing and voice their dissatisfaction. A lesser-known form of subtle resistance is the art of “zurza,” or satirical repartee. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksrev...

From Covid as a bioweapon to Chinese soldiers infiltrating America, Alexander Boyd discusses the right-wing conspiracy theories that lead our ranking of bestselling China books. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The author and former media mogul explains why he chose fiction as the best way to capture Shanghai’s go-go years in his new novel. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The New Yorker writer discusses his new history of the Chinese in America, and immigrant identity from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Trump. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

We talked to the translator of a novel that helped launch #MeToo in Taiwan, about why both the movement and the book are having a second wind. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The writer and China watcher talks us through her microhistory of Mao’s last decade in power, and its relevance to Trump’s MAGA movement. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The author of "The Six" tells us about the Chinese survivors of the Titanic, and how they were met with racist scorn on arrival in America after the disaster. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

The memoirist and novelist talks us through her grandmother and mother’s stories, as well as her own, and discusses how the status of women has changed in China through the decades. The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review , a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to info@chinabooksreview.com.

We talked to the author of "Tongueless" about how Cantonese is disappearing from Hong Kong schools, and what literature can do to raise awareness. Our guest this month is Lau Yee-Wa, one of Hong Kong's most exciting emerging fiction writers, whose debut novel Tongueless (The Feminist Press, 2024) came out in English last summer, translated by Jennifer Feeley. Lau studied literature...

As 2025 gets into gear, all eyes are on the year ahead, with a degree of trepidation (or excitement, depending on whom you ask) for the early impacts of the incoming Trump administration on U.S.-China relations, and global politics at large. From the Ukraine war to possibility of conflict across the Taiwan Strait, not to mention economic and diplomatic conflict across the Pacific, it’s a fresh era...

The American socialite Wallis Simpson is best known as the wife of former British king Edward VIII. When they announced their intention to marry, her status as a divorcée (and an American) caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication in 1936. But long before that, Simpson's adventures had led her to spend a year in interwar China, from 1924-25, while fleeing her abusive...

In this episode, we’re pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean former diplomat who was Singapore’s representative to the UN in the 1980s and 1990s, and later Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore. Mahbubani is the author of ten books on Asia and the world, most recently Living the Asian Century (2024). Though th...

Our guest this month is renowned writer Peter Hessler, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of five books about China, most recently Other Rivers: A Chinese Education , published earlier this year by Penguin Press. In the book, Hessler details his most recent stint living in China, teaching writing at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. Hessler talked to us about how the new ge...

China’s edgy contemporary art exploded into global view over decades of China’s meteoric economic growth. Gone were the days of Mao Zedong insisting that art had to “serve the people", by which he meant, the Communist Party, with socialist realist propaganda. Freed from those contraints with Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, successive generations of contemporar...

Beijing is many things to many people, sometimes all at once – a mecca for migrants and artists, a tech hub, a proving ground for young graduates, a capital of politics and power, a smoggy, traffic-choked dystopia, a charming collection of lakes, leafy parks, narrow lanes and courtyard houses, an enduring city with 800 years of history and lore, and millions of stories to tell.  Ten such stories a...

Who are the winners and losers in U.S.-China trade over recent decades, and what's a better way forward? Laying out a compelling argument in this episode is Peter Goodman, a former correspondent in China, current global economics correspondent at The New York Times , and author of How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain. He takes the supply chain snarls at the peak...