8 Alternative Books on China You Haven't Heard Of

Approach the 'China' section of a bookshop and immediately you are struck by the overall redness of the area. It seems there are no books about China that aren't crimson and adorned with a dragon and/or Chinese flag. Maybe a picture of Mao for good measure. They all have titles like The Dragon Wakes, China Shakes the World or The China Boom. There is no Wild Swans or The Last Emperor here. 

But lets look past "China" to the individuals that make up this vast kingdom; where are the books about current subcultures, trends, phenomenons affecting everyday life? Where are the stories about and by the common people of China: what they like, desire, fear, experience and do to stay afloat in the shifting sands of this rapidly changing country?

I've picked out 8 books; some I have read, some I have been to talks by the author, and some I have listened to reviews on podcasts, and some are just on my reading list. But all cover aspects of life in modern China that economic and international relations books would skim over but are by far the most interesting part of studying China and Chinese (to me at least).

1. Little Emperors and Material Girls: Youth and Sex in Modern China by Jemimah Steinfeld - A look at young people's sex lives, family ties, material desires and strangely enough, patriotism through anecdotal stories and observations.
2. Notes from Beijing Coffeeshop by Jon Geldart - Geldart has spent over five years in Beijing conversing with Chinese business leaders, opinion formers and ordinary Chinese mainly in coffee shops and tea houses. His observations, stories and profiles are a gateway to seeing how people are really do business and living in the new China.
3. Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China by Leslie T. Chang - Through the lives of two young women, Chang vividly portrays the struggles of millions of migrant workers who leave their rural towns to find jobs in the cities, driving China’s economic boom. 
4. I Am China by Xiaolu Guo - Guo is a director and author censored and monitored in her homeland for her more subversive works, and I Am China is no different, telling the fictional tale of two lovers, separated by distance and an oppressive political regime, desperate to find their way back to each other. 
5. Verse Going Viral: China's New Media Scenes by Heather Inwood - Verse Going Viral examines what happens when poetry, a central pillar of traditional Chinese culture, encounters an era of digital media and unabashed consumerism in the early twenty-first century. 
6. Buying Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery in China by Hua Wen - Hua explores how turbulent economic, sociocultural, and political changes in China since the 1980s have produced immense anxiety that is experienced both mentally and corporeally. Cosmetic surgery in China has grown rapidly in recent years of dramatic social transition. Facing fierce competition in all spheres of daily life, more and more women consider cosmetic surgery as an investment to gain "beauty capital" to increase opportunities for social and career success. 
7. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos - Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that unfold on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. 
8. Modern China: All That Matters by Jonathan Clements - I know I said I was going for personal stories, but Modern China: All That Matters covers key issues of national reconstruction that shape Chinese people; the Cold War, the Cultural Revolution, and the dizzying spectacle of China's economic reform. Clements offers a Chinese perspective on such events as the Handover of Hong Kong, and chronicles the historical events that continue to resonate today in Chinese politics, economics, culture and quality of life.

If you have any more recommendations, please comment below!

The Artist 艺术家

The Artist 艺术家

一个红卫兵打死了
我的叔公
在四十二年
以前的
昨夜。

A Red Guard shot
my great-uncle
last night,
forty-years
ago. 

这发生在
太阳刚开始向
层层叠叠又
沙沙作响的春天的树丛
诉说纹理时。 

It happened as
the sun started to
speak veins into
the spring thicket
whistling through, layer by layer. 

红卫兵开枪了
两次射向他的病榻
一次在腿上
有一次
在他的腹部

The Red Guard opened fire
twice toward his sickbed,
once in the leg,
and again
in the stomach. 

他 开了腔的腹部
涌出挑衅
在地上
一巴掌煽出的
深红， 仅仅 

His opened stomach
poured forth defiance
onto the ground
slapping out
dark crimson, only 

凝结又被掩埋
在阴暗
泥泞的土地，
红卫兵抽了只烟，
扔了牌， 离开。 

To congeal and be covered
in the shade
on some muddy ground.
The guards smoked a few,
played cards, and left.  

妹妹用膝盖
将自己
搜出橱柜
她呆立了
许久  才能去拾捡 

His sister used her knees
to pull herself
out from the cupboard
she stood transfixed
for a long time
only then able to gather

他所写的诗句
被红卫兵撕碎的
小说稿本
和他
用偷来的一撮鬓毛 

The verses he had written,
ripped up by the guard
the outlines of stories
and his
stolen tufts of paint brushes 

绘成的四美人图，
红卫兵说这是大毒草
毒害人民群众
于是那在烈焰中燃着的诗文，笔墨，
字画，烧断了这民族
的脊梁。

He used to paint the Four Beauties of China
the Red Guard said they were poisonous weeds,
corrupting the people,
among the raging flames burned his poetry, brush, ink,
paintings, consuming the nation's
backbone.

This poem was from an anthology of modern Chinese poetry sitting in a Coffee shop in Qingdao. It just so happened to be the fourth of June, anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Reading the poem "The Artist", it reminded me of the healing powers of art.

I was well aware of the world's spotlight gazing on China over the anniversary date, most international news sites carried some historical summary and a report on the vigil held in Hong Kong. But the majority Chinese themselves didn't notice. The day passes like any other. It's almost as if the Tiananmen massacre has come to mean more to the outside world than it does to China, where there is only a vacuum of information about the event.

Words thrown into the vacuum this year included 'big yellow duck' (after the famous image of tankman was altered so he faced down three giant yellow ducks), 'black shirt' (as mainland Chinese marking the date surreptitiously wear black) and '6 4'(short for June 4th).

History, no matter how ugly, leaves an indelible mark upon the face of a nation. The CCP have put a plaster over the top of Tiananmen and hope that everyone will forget it was put there. I hope one day it will be possible to fill this void with poetry, film and art. Art can help people reconcile with the Tiananmen massacre on their own terms and begin the healing process as a nation. One day Tiananmen might be looked upon as a lesson never to be repeated, rather than an unsightly stain to be swept under the carpet.