What Philip J. Stern offers is a reflection on the nature of power—how organisations created to share risks and raise capital for economic activities ended up becoming a dominant force.
Scot Marciel spent most of his time in service focused on one region. In Imperfect Partners, he brings readers through the evolution of US involvement and interest in Southeast Asia from Reagan through Trump.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s novel Dear Chrysanthemums offers a provocative look at the defining events of the past half-century of Chinese history.
Unable to write openly about repression, Uyghur writer Perhat Tursun resorted to symbolism, invoking visceral descriptions in his novel The Backstreets to convey a sense of disconnect and despair.
Esther Yi’s debut novel grapples with social disconnectivity and fanaticism through an esoteric tale of a woman who falls desperately for a K-pop star and goes on a journey to integrate him into her life.
A short story by Katrina Yu.
Baek Sehee writes: “The world tends to focus too much on the very bright or the very dark.” She steers clear of both extremes in her book. For this alone, it merits attention.
More than a conventional detective story, The Soul of Beijing unfolds into a vivid portrayal of the bustling metropolis, filled with colourful characters from all walks of life.
It is impossible to mention Mumbai without alluding to its former name, Bombay. Radhika Oberoi reflects on reading Salman Rushdie’s writing about the city.
‘Tò-uat’ means ‘turn left’ in Taiwanese Hokkien—a signal of political orientation rather than literal direction—and the bookstore’s website describes itself as “Taiwan’s only social movement–focused bookstore”.
Seulki Lee talks to Raphael Rashid about identity, belonging, and the things that people don’t want to acknowledge or discuss in South Korea.
Murong Xuecun fled China after writing his book Deadly Quiet City: Stories from Wuhan, COVID’s Ground Zero. Today, he’s living in exile in Australia. It was never obvious that his life would go on such a trajectory. Kevin Yam chats to him about his writing and his choices.
The neighbourhood around Huaxin Street in Taipei is known as Little Burma. Multiple generations have sunk their roots into this neighbourhood. It’s not a question of assimilation, but a mix of everything to create a new and complex political identity.
While his predecessors chose to downplay China’s power, Xi Jinping has led an overhaul of China’s domestic political landscape and foreign policy. A review of Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World by Joshua Kurlantzick.
What can a government achieve when given maximum access to public data? Josh Chin and Liza Lin of the Wall Street Journal do a deep dive into the impact of China’s panopticon in Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.
In Ajoomma, a Singaporean-South Korean co-production directed by He Shuming, an auntie travels to South Korea to visit the shooting locations of her favourite K-dramas… but gets far more than she’d bargained for.
A poem in commemoration of Bleak House Books, an independent bookshop in Hong Kong, which ceased operations in October 2021. The store is set to reopen in upstate New York in the spring of 2023.
Ducky Tse was an established photographer in Hong Kong when, at the age of fifty, he decided to uproot and relocate to Taiwan. He bought a van and refurbished it, driving it around the country. Through his photographs, he reflects on a new chapter of his life.
The repressive era of Xi Jinping is often contrasted with the 1980s, when the question of what China could become seemed remarkably open. But it is during the fourteen years between 1978 and 1992, delineated in Julian Gewirtz’s Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s, that the foundations for Xi’s rule were laid.
A diary kept by Esther Kim to document her early months in Taipei, and her interactions with people from different backgrounds who have gathered to learn Mandarin.
Twenty-five years after the death of the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, a re-appraisal of a film that has been unjustly neglected.
An Australian activist takes on China
Life in the new Hong Kong
32 years of Hong Kong’s only French language bookshop
The Chinese Communist Party consolidates it’s power
Chinese – and Taiwanese – identity in the New World
The spy novel in the ‘Chinese century’
China’s popular prints beguile and enchant
Cho Nam-joo puts Korean society under the spotlight
A poem from Ivan Stacy
The roadside artist and his subject
Davy Chou’s latest film, Return to Seoul
An anthology of Tang poetry
An interview with author Dung Kai-cheung
The year China discovered social media
China is not just changing institutions in Hong Kong
The enigma remains
Western attitudes towards China are full of contradictions
Charting the miracle on the Han
How coconuts conquered the world