Arthur Meursault is the author of the dark comedy Party Members (due out in August). Set in the fictional Chinese city of Huaishi, it follows the exploits of Yang Wei, a mid-level government official led astray by greed and corruption. Meursault left his native England as a teenager, throwing himself into [...]
To get a closer, more insightful look at modern China than you do from reading Wish Lanterns, you would probably need to learn Mandarin, marry a Chinese woman, move to China, and live with your in-laws. Wish Lanterns follows the lives of six young Chinese born between 1985 and 1990. [...]
One bottle too many into a late-night session and sometimes my thoughts turn sour at living in such an adventureless age. The time when there were still blanks on the map – a mere two generations ago, almost within reach, damn it – is as distant as the days of [...]
The 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade – a tragic accident to the White House, a deliberate and barbaric act of aggression according to the Chinese Communist Party – caused the deaths of three Chinese journalists, and sparked outrage in China. Tens of thousands of protestors demonstrated [...]
Vincent Stoia is the author of two horror novels set in China, Jin Village and Dark Blossom. Dark Blossom tells the story of a courtesan caught up in a struggle involving various gods, ghouls and the imperial court. Jin Village describes an archaeological dig in a remote mountainous corner of the country; the archaeologists [...]
Patrick Wayland is the author of three novels: The Jade Lady (2012), Deadman Bay (2015), and The Nialhaus Proxy (2016). He was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, graduated from The University of Texas at San Antonio, worked in Silicon Valley in the high-tech industry, and later studied Asian languages in Hong [...]
When it was first completed in 1578, the Bencao Gangmu (The Compendium of Materia Medica) was arguably the world’s greatest medical text. Drawing on hundreds of existing works and incorporating new scholarship, in almost two million characters it described the entire body of knowledge of Chinese medicine. Among the many [...]
With The Jade Lady, Taiwan resident Patrick Wayland brings us a spy thriller, which will give a novice a quick primer on the China-Taiwan relationship, written from a strongly pro-Taiwan perspective. And despite an unpromising title, referring to a valuable sculpture that is tangential to the main story, it’s not [...]
Old Taiwan Hand Richard Saunders has done more to get his fellow expats exploring the island than any other person or organization. He is the founder of the group Taipei Hikers, and regularly leads day and weekend hikes around Taipei, and longer treks to Taiwan’s 3,000-meter-plus mountains. He has written hundreds [...]
Alec Ash is an English writer and journalist living in Beijing. He is the founder of a writer's colony called the Anthill, and the author of Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China. Wish Lanterns, which follows the lives of six young Chinese, is a fascinating close-up look at China's millennials. What was the [...]