rolling china thread 2011

my focus is late imperial/modern china so i'm sure someone else can recommend better books on deep historical china but i'll throw out three

china's golden age: everyday life in the tang dynasty by charles benn. because the tang is the golden age and you need to read about the grandeur and supreme cultural development of yangzhou and xi'an during the tang.
the confusions of pleasure: commerce and culture in ming china by timothy brook-- absolutely 100% best book on ming china. divided by season, each season covering roughly a century. he charts the movement from agrarian society into advanced government/commercial powerhouse. i think this is a pretty common chinese history 101 book and everyone's read about the brick-- he uses the inscriptions on a brick to trace it back to a certain kiln, explains the system of paying taxes with labour, shows how the canal systems worked. lots of non-elite perspectives, but also talks about the ming tribute system, international relations. and check out the troubled empire by brook, which deals with the mongol invasion of china, the creation of the yuan dynasty, song dynasty loyalists, the cultural influence of the yuan on the song.
if you're going to be reading about the ming, i guess i like return to dragon mountain: memories of a late ming man by jonathan spence, a history of the ming through the eyes of a literatus, lots of poetry and courtesans and bureaucracy.
the imperial capitals of china by arthur cotterell does a good job at overview, by skipping through the various capitals of chinese dynastic regimes, goes from the semi-mythical shang to qing dynasty beijing.

these are all recent, too.

if you only read one: confusions of pleasure

these books sound pretty cool, thanks. i love reading about what everyday life was like through history

chinese ambassador on tv here notes that the graphic of china behind him is incomplete: no taiwan

Quite an interesting piece on the Chinese economy and how it has been changing

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n05/nathan-sperber/the-mayor-economy

it was good. i liked too this nathan sperber piece on macro control: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/02/macro-control-making-sense-of-a-central-concept-in-chinese-economic-policy/.

dylan is hefei worth visiting?