Movie 3 - APR 24, 2025 - THU
THE WILD GOOSE LAKE
Directed by Diao Yinan
Released in 2019, it´s a neo-noir neon-lit film that descents into Wuhan´s criminal underworld. Zhou Zenong, the protagonist, is a low-level gangster who accidentally kills a police officer and finds himself on the run with a price on his head.
As he goes into hiding, he runs across Liu Aiai, a mysterious young woman who becomes his unlikely accomplice. Their intriguing encounters are marked by tension, ambiguity, and a sense that time is running out.
One thing that makes the film stand out is its photography, marked by lurid colors, shadows, rain most of the time, and choreographic violence. It´s also a critique of contemporary China’s social divide, where the marginalized cling to survival amid rapid urbanization. The ending theme song is a cover of the Mandarin version of the Indonesian song Bengawan Solo.
Book 96 - MAR 24, 2025 - MON
BEIJING, BEIJING
by Feng Tang
Published in 2007 and set in Beijing during the 1990s, it features a medical student, Qiu Shui, and his colleagues, from drinking binges and all-night video game playing, to military training, homework, and sexual awakening. Their ambition has more to do with getting out of the country than with becoming doctors, as they experience a clash between personal freedom and social norms in a puzzlingly transforming society.
Shui´s internal monologues create an intimate yet universal narrative about the struggles of coming of age in a city that fully embodies tradition and change. They also offer a glimpse into the psyche of modern China.
Beijing is portrayed as a romantic and brutal city, full of possibilities and heartbreaks, where youth is fleeting, and dreams are often crushed by reality. As the years pass and friends, family, and lovers move on, Shui confronts the loneliness and confusion that defined his generation.
Book 88 - MAR 16, 2025 - SUN
by Xu Xiaobin
Set in China’s turbulent 1980s and 1990s, it´s about Yang Tianyi, who at 30 is considered a “leftover woman” (single women in their late 20s or older under pressure to find a husband).
She is attractive and intelligent, but ends up in a disastrous marriage to an abusive husband, Wang Lian. So she finds solace in literature as a writer, while the man she loves, Hua Zheng, is arrested and condemned in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square disturbances.
Crystal Wedding explores the complexities of marriage and maternity in a male-centric familial structure, China´s deeply-entrenched gender inequality, the social expectations placed upon wives, and the human enduring quest for individual autonomy. More than just a personal narrative, it´s a critique of the norms that dictate women’s lives, shedding light on the silent suffering of many and the courage it takes to break free.
Book 80 - MAR 08, 2025 - SAT
by He Jiahong
It´s a fast-paced detective thriller set in contemporary Beijing. When a young trader at a state-owned securities company is indicted for fraud, lawyer Hong Jun takes on the case at the request of the trader´s father. But as the trial date looms, Hong Jun spots a web of crimes related to the case involving high-ranking bureaucrats.
In a system where justice is often a matter of influence, can Hong Jun prevail without being swallowed by the corruption he uncovered?
Drawing from the author´s background as a law professor and expert in criminal investigation, this novel offers a portrayal of China’s legal system and a reflection on morality, power, and the struggle for integrity in a society where justice is not always blind.
Book 72 - FEB 28, 2025 - FRI
DEADLY QUIET CITY: TRUE STORIES FROM WUHAN
It´s a first hand account of life in Wuhan in the early days of COVID-19. Through the voices of doctors, volunteers, and residents, it exposes the chaos of an overwhelmed healthcare system, the brutality of enforced isolation, the official downplay of medical concerns, and the defiance of those who sought to help others despite the risks.
Murong Xuecun, a famous Chinese writer who risked his life to document these stories and fled China after completing the book, reveals the government's tight control over information, the silencing of whistleblowers, and the suffering caused by both the virus and the repressive response to it.
Deadly Quiet City is a blend of investigative journalism with literary storytelling, offering an unfiltered look at the reality behind the official narratives.
Book 64 - FEB 20, 2025 - THU
MORE THAN ONE CHILD: MEMOIRS OF AN ILLEGAL DAUGHTER
by Shen Yang
Published in 2021, when China’s One Child Policy had already ended (2015), Shen Yang´s story begins in 1986 at her birth, as her parents hid her from the government (she was their second daughter), sending her to live with her grandparents and later on with an abusive aunt. Receiving a false ID card, Yang's life was destined to remain a secret: "I broke a law simply by being born".
More than One Child is part of the untold story of the vast and invisible community in China of excess-birth children. Despite the prohibition, many families had more than one child, hoping for a boy. Due to preference for sons, the One Child Policy led to demographic imbalances in China, which has 30 to 35 million more males than females with difficulties for some men to marry, an aging population, and fewer young workers.
In an inspiring memoir, Shen Yang provides a vivid account of the family planning era in China, as she chronicles her journey towards overcoming the confined boundaries of her childhood and forging a new identity.
Book 56 - FEB 12, 2025 - WED
by Zhou Daxin
It´s a fictional biography of a former governor of Qinghe Province, Ouyang Wantong, dead at 66. It´s narrated by relatives, friends, colleagues, and employees. Some of them liked and admired him, while others resented and even wished him dead.
Having grown up in poverty in China´s Mao-era and made a successful career in government during the period of reform and opening up, Wantong is now an elderly man facing the end.
Zhou Daxin´s novel is a meditation on aging and the quiet, yet profound, struggles of human existence. What remains after our prime years? It´s also a tale of love, leadership, betrayal, corruption, lust, greed, and the nature of power in contemporary China.
Book 48 - FEB 04, 2025 - tue
THE IMPOSSIBLE CITY: A HONG KONG MEMOIR
by Karen Cheung
Published in 2022, The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir documents Karen Cheung growing up in Hong Kong, the beginning of her interest in politics during the protesting Umbrella Movement of 2014, when she was 21, and finally the Hong Kong National Security Law imposed in 2020.
It´s an insider´s view on the city at pivotal moments and an intimate account of a young woman torn between two Hong Kongs: its cosmopolitan middle class and the conservative, traditional Chinese community.
Cheung´s book is a blend of memoir and reportage, as it draws from her experience writing on the politics and culture of her hometown, as well as interviews with musicians, protesters, and writers who have witnessed Hong Kong´s broken future.
Book 40 - Jan 27, 2025 - MON
WILD SWANS: THREE DAUGHTERS OF CHINA
by Jung Chang
Published in 1991, Wild Swans is the biography of Jung Chang´s grandmother, mother, and her own in China during the 20th century. It blends the intimacy of memoir with eyewitness of history, capturing the drama that engulfed her family and millions of others amid uncontrollable events
Her grandmother married very young as the concubine of a high-status warlord. Chang's mother built a career as a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chang supported the Cultural Revolution and became a Red Guard at the age of fourteen. But eventually her father fell prey to the regime and was tortured, while she was sent to the countryside for thought reform. Later she relocated to England.
Book 32 - Jan 19, 2025 - SUN
A SHORT HISTORY OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY
by Fung Yu-Lan
Fung Yu-lan (4 Dec 1895 – 26 Nov 1990) studied philosophy from 1912 to 1918, first in China Public School in Shanghai, then at Chunghua University, and finally at Peking University, where he studied Western philosophy and logic as well as Chinese philosophy.
Upon his graduation in 1918, he traveled to the US, where he studied at Columbia University and gained his PhD in 1923 with a thesis titled "A Comparative Study of Life Ideals". He returned to China to teach. While at Tsinghua University in Beijing, in 1934, he published what was to be his most influential book, History of Chinese Philosophy.
In it he presented Chinese philosophy from a viewpoint influenced by the Western philosophical fashions prevalent at the time, which resulted in what Peter J. King of Oxford describes as a distinctly positivist influence. Nevertheless, the book became the standard work in its field and had a huge effect in reigniting an interest in Chinese thought.
Book 24 - Jan 11, 2025 - Sat
by Yan Ge
Set in a fictional town in West China, it´s the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of a lucrative chilli bean paste factory, as their matriarch 80th birthday approaches.
Her middle-aged offspring, who has been separeted from each other for a long time, decides to get together to celebrate. But as the party approaches, past family grudges, bittersweet memories, and olds secrets surface like bombs exploding all at once.
The narrator is a granddaughter whose focus is her father, Duan Shengqiang, the current director of the factory, as he struggles unsuccessfully to deal with the demands of his wife and his mistress. Funny and spicy, past and present are intertwined seamlessly in Yan Ge´s prose like a vivid folk painting of a Chinese small town.
BOOK 19 - JAN 06, 2025 - MON
by Chan Ho-kei
It´s a collection of crime stories. Exploring six cases that span detective Kwan Chun-dok's fifty-year career, it takes readers on a journey through history of Hong Kong. From the Leftist Riot in 1967 to the 1977 conflict between the police and the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and encompassing pivotal moments such as the Handover in 1997, each story serves as a contemplation of a historical episode.
The last story takes place in 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve the murder of a local billionaire. Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a population caught in the shifting balance of political power.
If you’re looking for a crime novel that drops you right in the middle of Hong Kong, look no further.
BOOK 14 - JAN 01, 2025 - WED
by Lau Yee-Wa
Set against the backdrop of Hong Kong's shifting political and social landscape, it follows two secondary school Chinese teachers, Wai and Ling, as they struggle to adapt to an enforced transition from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin.
Each one approaches the challenge in her own way. Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning, only to fail the qualification exam, lose her job, become mentally ill, and kill herself. Ling, polished and socially savvy, tries to use office politics to sidestep the pressures of the new mandate. But things around her slowly run out of control, and her colleagues begin to shun her too. How to survive in a ruthless environment where rules are ever-changing?
Lau Yee-Wa´s Tongueless captures the current tensions in Hong Kong, particularly the erosion of the city's unique cultural identity. It dissect the intersection of language, identity, and power, offering an insight into the personal drama of cultural assimilation.
BOOK 9 - DEC 27, 2024 - Fri
by Su Wei
It´s a story about how human affection can be shaped in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is deviant; about the relationship between people and nature; and about the divine.
Lu Beiping is one of the 20 million young adults the Chinese government uprooted and sent far from their homes for agricultural re-education. He ends up immersed in a forbidden religious tradition and married to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to work up on Mudkettle Mountain.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch and one of her lovers. They are woodcutters and practice their own faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities suspect of Lu’s involvement with the forest people, a hurricane rips through the valley.
BOOK 4 - DEC 22, 2024 - Sun
by Yu Hua
China in Ten Words is a courageous and sharp narrative on the country's recent meteoric economic and social transformations wiitten by an author living in China today.
Organized by ten common phrases in the Chinese vernacular - people, leader, reading, writing, Lu Xun (one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century), disparity, revolution, grassroots, copycat, and bamboozle, the book explains important events and key aspects of an often misunderstood nation.
In Disparity, for example, he illustrates the economic gaps that separate Chinese citizens. In Copycat, he depicts counterfeiting as a creative form of revolutionary action. And in Bamboozle, he describes the practices of trickery and fraud that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society.