China Stories

On a wintry day in 1784, a schooner docked in New York set sail for Guangzhou. This journey halfway around the globe would take half...

When a rapid spread of COVID-19 engulfed Beijing and caused severe delays in package delivery, an army of couriers from other cities were relocated to...

China is the largest trading partner to Australia and New Zealand, and that’s clearly top of mind for the leaders of both countries, despite pressure...

It’s hard to know exactly what happened at the Battle of Red Cliffs some 1,800 years ago. But what is agreed upon is that this...

On February 11, 1958, the People’s Republic of China introduced a new system for rendering the Chinese language, using not characters but the Latin alphabet...

Two months after President Tsai Ing-wen’s resignation as chairperson, what do we know about the future of Taiwan’s ruling party? Click here to read the...

Beyond the suffering inflicted on tens of thousands of people, the Hu Weiyong purge fundamentally reshaped Ming government, concentrating power in the person of the...

China has had its fair share of severe earthquakes over the centuries, most recently in Sichuan in 2008 and Tangshan in 1976. But the largest...

Subways have become a dime a dozen in 21st century Chinese cities, another box the country can tick off on its list of modernizations. But...

The translator of a recently published collection of Lu Xun’s work makes observations about the man behind China’s literary titan. Click here to read the...

On December 11, 1936, divisions in the Nationalist camp boiled over. Their brief mutiny against Chiang Kai-shek had momentous consequences for Chinese history, forcing Chiang...

In the wake of widespread protests across China last month, the successes of Taiwan’s democratic protests in 1979 provide an interesting parallel. Click here to...

The death on Wednesday of China’s former leader Jiang Zemin has prompted an outpouring of nostalgia on the internet, with many tributes from young Chinese...

The Taiwanese party that favors closer ties to Beijing just won 13 of the 21 contested city mayor and county chief seats in Taiwan. The...

The Army-Navy game is one of the most honored traditions in college football. It’s usually played in Philadelphia…but not always. Click here to read the...

For the last four decades, the Chinese government has measured its performance almost religiously with one metric: GDP growth. But the GDP God is falling...

A compassionate monk arrived at an abandoned temple near Hangzhou with the task of making the area safe from tiger attacks. His tactics weren’t groundbreaking...

After “U.S. high schoolers” and “shopping in Los Angeles,” pretending to be on an autumnal American farm is the latest “Americore” aesthetic to take over...

John Hu arrived to France in 1722, accompanied by a Jesuit priest and tasked with cataloging and translating a library. He had a knack for...

In November 1928, students marched through the streets of Harbin. When they began forcing their way through police lines, things turned violent. Click here to...

In this excerpt from Destination Peking, abridged and lightly edited for The China Project, author Paul French introduces us to Lev Karakhan, a Bolshevik whose work...

The Empress Dowager Cixi was only 26 when she took over as China’s ruler. She remained on top for the next half-century. How did she...

Porta potties, blue fences, and angry old men: What does community lockdown in Beijing look like? Click here to read the article by Anthony Tao...

At 3, the endangered feline became an internet sensation and a star attraction at a zoo that was struggling to make ends meet. Click here...

With the world watching, 400-some Chinese soldiers defended the Sihang Warehouse in Shanghai against hundreds of thousands of Japanese invaders. What’s the real story behind...