A group blog about Chinese tech, media and design
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
FSG Originals, 256 pp.
Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
Princeton University Press, 288 pp.
It’s really hard to get an on-the-ground view of…
Continue readingLooking at China and Seeing Ourselves: Two Ethnographies of Tech in China
Invisible Planets
edited & translated by Ken Liu
Tor Books, 383 pp.
未来镜像 Touchable Unreality
edited by 姚海军 & Neil Clarke
China Machine Press, 398 pp.
Science fiction in China is finally enjoying its moment in the spotlight again, more than three decades after it…
Continue readingSci-fi Short Stories with Chinese Characteristics
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of hardware
By WIRED Video, 68 minutes, $0.00
Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City
Edited by Mary Ann O’Donnell, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach
University of Chicago Press, 283 pp., $35.00
I…
Continue readingFantasies of Shenzhen
The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen is a niche travel guide to the famed electronics market/complex – often referred to as SEG or Huaqiangbei – in Futian, Shenzhen. The guide draws on the author Bunnie Huang’s many years of experience as an engineer, entrepreneur and foreigner in Shenzhen. In a way, this guide is the physical, book version of…
In China Airborne, Fallows skillfully uses the rise and uncertain future of the aviation industry in China as a parable for the development in China. An avid political-economic analyst and storyteller, Fallows’ account is surprisingly easy to read, given the complexity of his argument that China is “contradictory” yet exciting.
Fallows is a charismatic writer with a…
Continue readingBook Review: China Airborne by James Fallows
The fourth volume of “Understanding China Through Comics” takes us through the final six centuries of imperial rule in China. In it, we find the final emperors of China attempting various reforms in the face of foreign invasion, occupation and, ultimately, humiliation.
Liu continues his formidable task of tackling the entirety of Chinese history, with an increasing focus on policy…
My First Trip to China houses a collection of accounts from early, foreign visitors to China about their first impressions of the country as it was slowly opening up in the 70s and 80s. Each account is separate from one another, though the writers are predominantly North American and academic in some shape or fashion.
Because each account…
The third volume of “Understanding China through Comics” continues Liu’s epic quest to chronicle all of ancient Chinese history in comic form. As with the first two volumes, the book zips through Chinese history, in this case 907 to 1368 AD, with text and illustrations.
Liu spends more of the third volume explaining Chinese cultural ideology and geopolitical context than…
“Factory Towns of South China: An Illustrated Guidebook” is, despite its title, more social science research than it is a real guidebook. But within the realm of social science and urban planning, it compiles an incredible wealth of information – from the history and sociology of factory towns under communist rule to a peek at a day in the…
Continue readingBook review: Factory Towns of South China
This is a follow up of our review of Volume 1.
Understanding China through Comics, Volume 2 picks up where its predecessor left of – on a hyperspeed journey through Chinese history starting with the Three Kingdoms era. As before, Liu employs illustrations and diagrams to explain events and lighten the…
Continue readingBook review: Understanding China through Comics (Vol 2)