Running wild

Soft burial

Soft Burial is one of the most remarkable—and most controversial—recent works of Chinese literature. Part mystery, part historical fiction, and part social exposé, the novel intercuts different generations, regions, and time periods.

Taipei people

With an intensity of vision comparable to James Joyce’s Dubliners, it follows the individual struggles of the people of Taipei.

The backstreets

The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. Perhat Tursun follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the capital of Xinjiang. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and r...

The best china

This anthology of essays from Hong Kong and the diaspora, ranging across the past hundred and seventy years, presents the Chinese tradition of free-thinking discursive prose. It records the intellectual ferment that has characterized the city since its founding, buoyed by an all-pervasive and ind...

The book of swindles

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late Ming China. Each story comes with commentary by the author, who expounds a moral lesson whil...

The classic of poetry

Edward L. Shaughnessy presents a complete English translation of the 305 discrete poems from the Classic of Poetry.

The columbia anthology of chinese folk and popular literature

In The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, two of the world's leading sinologists, Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender, capture the breadth of China's oral-based literary heritage. This collection presents works drawn from the large body of oral literature of many of China's rec...

The columbia anthology of traditional chinese literature

The columbia sourcebook of literary taiwan

Contains more than 160 documents and writings that reflect the development of Taiwanese literature from the early modern period to the twenty-first century

The crossing of the boars

Set in a forgotten theater of World War II, The Crossing of the Boars is a gripping magical-realist tale of a multiethnic village fighting for survival.

The dragon daughter and other lin lan fairy tales

A delightful collection of modern Chinese talesThe Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales brings together forty-two magical Chinese tales, most appearing for the first time in English. These stories have been carefully selected from more than a thousand originally published in the early tw...

The drunkard

The Drunkard is one of the first full-length stream-of-consciousness novels written in Chinese. As the unnamed narrator, a writer at odds with a philistine world, sinks to his drunken nadir, his plight can be seen to represent that of a whole intelligentsia, a whole culture, degraded by the bruta...

The fragrant companions

The Fragrant Companions is the most significant work of literature that portrays female same-sex love in the entire premodern Chinese tradition. It is at once an unconventional romantic comedy, a barbed satire, and a sympathetic portrayal of love between women.

The lost garden

The Lost Garden is an eloquent portrait of the losses incurred as we struggle to hold on to our passions. The novel begins with the family of Zhu Yinghong, whose father, Zhu Zuyan, was imprisoned in the early days of Chiang Kai-shek's rule. Zhu Zuyan spends his days luxuriating in his Lotus Garde...

The matchmaker, the apprentice, and the football fan

The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan moves between anarchic campuses, maddening communist factories, and the victims of China's economic miracle to showcase the absurdity, injustice, and socialist Gothic of everyday Chinese life. In "The Football Fan," readers fall in with an intr...

The mingjia and related texts

The Mingjia (School of Names) is a notional grouping of philosophers living between the sixth and third centuries BCE whose identifying feature was a concern with linguistic issues particularly involving the correct use of names. This is a comprehensive work on this school of thought.

The monkey chronicles

A Chronicle of Xi Xi's experience with the primate kingdom both real and imagined.

The orphan of zhao and other yuan plays

The zaju in this volume explore the consequences of loyalty and betrayal, ambition and enlightenment, and piety and drunkenness.

The principal's graduation

Joseph Sung, the seventh vice-chancellor and president of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, discusses higher education and social responsibility, pathways and choices our youths make, the visions he had and the challenges he faced, and the values he wishes his students could take seriously.

The red wind howls

A remarkable novel by one of Tibet’s foremost authors, The Red Wind Howls is a courageous and gripping portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao’s regime.

The reincarnated giant

A new wave of Chinese science fiction is here. This anthology showcases the best of contemporary science fiction from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China in fifteen short stories and novel excerpts. The Reincarnated Giant is an essential read for anyone interested in the future ...

The resurrected skeleton

The first book in English to trace the resurrected skeleton, this text translates major adaptations while drawing parallels to Jesus’s encounter with a skull and the European tradition of the Dance of Death.

The running flame

Fang Fang’s explosive short novel inspired widespread social debate in China upon its publication in 2001. In exploring the difficulties of one woman shackled by patriarchal tradition against the backdrop of radical social change, The Running Flame bears witness to widespread experiences of gende...

The songs of chu

Sources show Qu Yuan (?340–278 BCE) was the first person in China to become famous for his poetry, so famous in fact that the Chinese celebrate his life with a national holiday called Poet's Day, or the Dragon Boat Festival. His work, which forms the core of the The Songs of Chu, the second oldes...

The teddy bear chronicles

For several decades Xi Xi has been widely known for her award-winning poetry and fiction. In this book, she writes about the teddy bears she began making in 2005, after treatment for cancer, in order to improve the mobility of her right hand.

Top graduate zhang xie

Top Graduate Zhang Xie is the first extant play in the Chinese southern dramatic tradition and a milestone in the history of Chinese literature. Dating from the early fifteenth century, but possibly composed earlier, it relates the story of a talented scholar who sets off for the capital to take ...

Trees without wind

Unfolding in the tense years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Trees Without Wind takes place in a remote Shanxi village in which a rare affliction has left the residents physically stunted. Director Liu, an older revolutionary and local commune head, becomes embroiled in a power struggle w...

Wittgenstein, a one-way ticket, and other unforeseen benefits of studying chinese

This is a collection of essays by some of the world’s most renowned China experts, who share recollections of their time in China and reflect on what learning Chinese has meant to them. They share how Chinese has removed barriers, built rapport, opened doors, and led them down entirely unexpected...

Zhuangzi

The earliest and most influential commentary on the Zhuangzi is that of Guo Xiang (265–312). Richard John Lynn’s translation of the Zhuangzi is the first to follow Guo’s commentary in its interpretive choices. Its guiding principle is how Guo read the text, which allows for the full integration o...