Books (in the order that I read them):

I read River Town by Peter Hessler shortly after I decided to move to China in 2006.  It’s an entertaining memoir of his experiences as a Peace Corps English teacher in a small city in central China called Fuling.  Here’s a review from when it first came out.

I also read Foreign Babes in Beijing by Rachel DeWoskin that same summer.  She starred as an American ‘bad girl’ on a Chinese prime-time soap opera in the mid-90s, and the book casts her real-life experiences in terms of the show.  My housemates giggled when they saw it lying on my bed.   I also enjoyed her newer novel, Repeat After Me, about an American teacher who falls in love with her Chinese student.

My first year in China I read Chinese Lessons,  by John Pomfret.  Pomfret studied at Nanjing University in 1981 and shared a room with a bunch of Chinese classmates.  His books follows his classmates’ lives, as China grew into a modern state.  Big-picture issues like the one-child policy come into personal focus in his stories.

Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang begins with these words:

When you met a girl from another factory, you quickly took her measure. “What year are you?” you asked each other, as if speaking not of human beings but of the makes of cars. “How much a month? Including room and board? How much for overtime?” Then you might ask what province she was from. You never asked her name.

Chang, who previously wrote for the Wall Street Journal, introduces these girls in an unflinching and compassionate way, explaining how individual dreams intersect with large-scale production in Dongguan.  I remember reading that this was the best-selling China book of 2008, with good reason.  Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Economy’s The River Runs Black, which came out in 2004, gives a detailed overview of the uniquely Chinese factors that have contributed to its environmental degradation.  I especially liked the parts about environmental attitudes in Chinese mythology and authoritative structures governing land use.

Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, by Pietra Rivoli, follows a t-shirt all over the world.  From a corn plantation in Texas, to a factory in Shanghai, to a print shop in the United States, to a used clothing market in Africa, she introduces us to the people involved in each stage of the process.  I like that it explains complex economic concepts in a concrete way.

Articles (in reverse chronological order… a small selection):

William Moss. Obama, The Great Wall, and Nixon’s Ghost. Foreign Policy.  Compares Chinese and American media perspectives on the symbolism of Obama’s first visit (20 Nov 2009.)

Christina Larson. The Great Paradox of China: Green Energy and Black Skies. Yale e360.  Succinct, sharp status update on the contradictions of China’s environment (17 Aug 2009.)

Shaun Rein. Should You Look for Work in China? Forbes.  A balanced and realistic perspective about working in China.  (13 Aug 2009.)

James Fallows. How the West Was Wired. The Atlantic Monthly.  Story of two Taiwanese businessmen and their multifaceted plans to bring opportunity to Gansu Province in Western China.  (Oct 2008, included in his excellent book Postcards from Tomorrow Square)

Kaiser Kuo. Forbidden Cliches: A Guide For Visiting Journalists. Oglivy China Digital Watch.  Funny post about how not to write about the Olympics (31 Jul 2008.)