Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700 is a treasure chest brimming with the finest jewels scoured from the East Asia Sea. It’s simply impossible for anyone interested in the region to read more than a few chapters without discovering wonderful subject threads begging for [...]
The 55-day siege of the international legations in Peking during the summer of 1900 is a terrific setting for a novel: here we have, during the twilight days of the imperial capital, the mayhem and violence of the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion, the political machinations of the Qing court, and finally the race to [...]
Jade Life: An Englishman’s Love Affair with China’s National Treasure is my favourite kind of China book: a passionate, informed, well-written account of an interesting niche subject. With Jade Life we not only get a depth of knowledge about the subject – and an insider’s look at an unfamiliar world, in [...]
Even for those of us familiar with Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement of 2014, which saw supposedly apathetic Hong Kongers occupying the heart of the city with mass sit-in protests, came as a big surprise. It shouldn’t have. Antony Dapiran’s City of Protest: A recent history of dissent in Hong [...]
At some point back in the mists of time (2009ish), when I was actively learning Taiwanese, my most frequently repeated complaint was the lack of a decent Taiwanese reference grammar (in any language). This lack has now been comprehensively remedied by the release of Philip T. Lin's Taiwanese Grammar: A [...]
Reviewed by Isham Cook. Last century China experienced one of its periodic mid-century blowouts, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong and tens of millions die in senseless slaughter. The Chinese Civil War of 1927-50: 2-8 million dead. The Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45: up to 26 million dead. [...]
Isham Cook’s writing was recommended to me by Arthur Meursault. I’d previously chanced upon Cook’s website but been put off by the pervy content. When I say "pervy," I don’t mean that Cook is the sort of chap you wouldn’t want pet-sitting your llama, or that his bedroom drawers are [...]
Tiziano Terzani was an Italian writer, journalist and adventurer, who spent decades living all across Asia. He was well known in Italy for his deep knowledge of Asian languages and cultures, and for his fascinating travel books. His book on his years in China, Behind the Forbidden Door: Travels in Unknown China (Henry Holt: 1986), [...]
The false certainty of hindsight makes it seem inevitable that the Japanese colony of Taiwan would, after the Second World War, come under Nationalist (Kuomintang or KMT) control; and it was surely logical that Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT would flee to the island in the dying days of the [...]
I vividly remember the day my father announced that we were going to move. I was six, and we were sitting round the dinner table in our house in Dublin. As we finished our food he calmly told us that we would be leaving Ireland, destined for Hong Kong. I [...]
