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Read China
A recommended reading list about China...
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My Country & My People
By Yutang Lin
Chinese writer, philosopher, translator, and poet, Lin Yutang (1895 - 1976), wrote more than 35 books in English and Chinese, and brought the classics of Chinese literature to western readers.
This book made headlines in America when it came out in the 1930's. For perhaps the first time a Chinese wrote a book in English about China and the Chinese, and the sympathetic reaction of many Americans to China's plight in the struggle against Japan made this book a bestseller.
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The Tibetan Book of Death and Living
By Sogyal Rinpoche
Born in Kham in Eastern Tibet, Sogyal Rinpoche was recognized as the incarnation of Lerab Lingpa Tertýn Sogyal, a teacher to the thirteenth Dalai Lama, by Jamyang Khyentse Chýkyi Lodrý, one of the most outstanding spiritual masters of the twentieth century.
The revered Tibetan Buddhist spiritual teacher Sogyal Rinpoche hopes to "inspire a quiet revolution in the whole way we look at death and care for the dying, and the whole way we look at life and care for the living." This acclaimed spiritual masterpiece is widely regarded as one of the most complete and authoritative presentations of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings ever written. A manual for life and death and a magnificent source of sacred inspiration from the heart of the Tibetan tradition, The Tibetan Book Of Living and Dying provides a lucid and inspiring introduction to the practice of meditation, to the nature of mind, to karma and rebirth, to compassionate love and care for the dying, and to the trials and rewards of the spiritual path. Spiritual insights often cross religious lines, and this book goes beyond its Buddhist roots by teaching universal wisdom.
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The Road to Heaven – Encounters with Chinese Hermits
By Bill Porter
Porter, a Hong Kong-based writer whose previous books were published under the pen name Red Pine (The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma), lived in a Taiwanese monastery for three years in the 1970s and later translated works of some Chinese hermits long admired for their virtue. When travel to China opened up in the late 1980s, Porter began to search for hermits who might have survived under years of communism. His story is unusual, but his "encounters"--actually, brief interviews--produce not subtle observations but statements of gnomic profundity.
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Fortress Besieged
By Qian Zhongshu
As a modern writer and expert on classical Chinese literature, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu, Qian studied foreign languages at Qinghua University. In 1935, he went to Oxford, and in 1937 went on to study French literature at the University of Paris. In 1941, he published a collection of essays entitled Written At The Edge Of Life and in 1946 People Animals Ghosts, a volume of short-stories. In 1947, he published his acclaimed novel Fortress Besieged. After 1949, he concentrated mainly on literary research
