Viewpoint
02.03.22![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/53711_sm.jpg?itok=UOiV8Igf)
Keeping the Flies Out
from Mekong Review
The first time I rode a public bus in China, in 1985, a young woman came up to me and ran her hand up and down my arm to feel the body hair. Foreigners were like rare animals then: precious, strange, probably dangerous. Surveillance was constant and...
Conversation
07.08.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/docu-sys.jpg?itok=PQkxWXsg)
The Other Tiananmen Papers
In the wake of the lethal use of force by China’s military against demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and citizens of Beijing on June 4, 1989, the United States and other governments were confronted with a series of vexing moral and policy questions...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.21.17China's Path out of Poverty Can Never Be Repeated at Scale by a Country Again
Quartz
Since China began its market reforms in the late 1970s, it has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty, slashing the rate from nearly 90% in 1981 to under 2%, as measured by the World Bank’s latest spending benchmark.
The NYRB China Archive
01.13.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/redguards_peking_1jan67.jpg?itok=Lk5iwxp7)
China’s Hidden Massacres: An Interview with Tan Hecheng
from New York Review of Books
Tan Hecheng might seem an unlikely person to expose one of the most shocking crimes of the Chinese Communist Party. A congenial 67-year-old who spent most of his life in southern Hunan province away from the seats of power, Tan is no dissident. In...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.27.16How George Michael’s Wham! Baffled Communist China and Inspired its Youth
Washington Post
It was a culture shock to rival the best of them: the coiffured hair and exuberant dancing of British pop stars, and the Communist Party’s dour uniformity
Books
12.15.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/scott_savitt_crashing_the_party_hirez.jpg?itok=zKwoyh_g)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/crashing-the-party-cover.jpg)
Crashing the Party
It’s 1983. Scott Savitt, one of the first American exchange students in Beijing, picks up his guitar and begins strumming “Blackbird.” He’s soon surrounded by Chinese students who know every word to every Beatles song he plays. Savitt stays on in Beijing, working as a reporter for Asiaweek Magazine. The city’s first nightclubs open; rock ‘n’ roll promises democracy. Promoted to foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and then United Press International, Savitt finds himself drawn into China’s political heart. His girlfriend is the assistant to Bette Bao Lord, the wife of the U.S. ambassador. He interviews people who will become leaders of the democracy movement.Later, at 25 years old, Savitt is the youngest accredited foreign correspondent in China, with an intimate knowledge of Beijing’s backstreets. But as the seven-week occupation of Tiananmen Square ends in bloodshed on June 4, 1989, his greatest asset is his flame-red 500cc Honda motorcycle—giving Savitt the freedom to witness first-hand what the Chinese government still denies ever took place. After Tiananmen, Savitt founds the first independent English-language newspaper in China, Beijing Scene. He knows that it’s only a matter of time before the authorities move in, and sure enough, in 2000 he’s arrested, flung into solitary confinement and, after a month in jail, deported.Savitt’s extraordinary memoir of his two decades in China manages to take an extremely complex political-historical subject and turn it into an adventure story. —Soft Skull{chop}
Culture
11.04.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/king-of-peking-press-still-1_0.jpg?itok=3UYeouab)
A New Comedy Looks Back at a Bygone Beijing
The forthcoming Mandarin-language comedy King of Peking takes the viewer back to Beijing in 1998. The sooty rooms, the boxy automobiles of just a few makes, models, and colors, and the alleyways crammed with shops hawking cheap home cooking and...
Conversation
08.18.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/zhaoreagan.jpg?itok=0eDBmrFL)
What Would China Look Like Today Had Zhao Ziyang Survived?
Almost 500 previously unpublished documents about Zhao Ziyang, the bold reformer who served as China’s premier (1980-1987) and Communist Party general secretary (1987-1989), were smuggled out of China and published in late July by the Chinese...
Viewpoint
08.18.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/deng_zhao_21oct1987.jpg?itok=YfwufNhA)
Zhao Ziyang’s Legacy
It is difficult to say with any certainty how China would have evolved had Zhao Ziyang not been overthrown in 1989. The ostensible cause of his purge was his refusal to endorse martial law and authorize the use of force to suppress the Tiananmen...
Depth of Field
05.31.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/orphans-find-a-new-life.jpg?itok=XbAzAI2J)
Families, Weddings, and Beekeepers
from Yuanjin Photo
This month’s Depth of Field column brings the stories of Chinese adoption; the marriage ceremony of Hu Mingliang and Sun Wenlin, a gay couple who filed the first civil rights marriage lawsuit to be accepted by a Chinese court (they lost); beekeepers...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.13.15In China, 1980 marked a generational turning point
Pew Global
Members of this generation were born after Mao's death, and when Deng Xiaoping took power and opened up China’s economy for reform.
The NYRB China Archive
10.22.15![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-182630220.jpg?itok=MDcKaZtf)
The Bloodthirsty Deng We Didn’t Know
from New York Review of Books
“Deng was…a bloody dictator who, along with Mao, was responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people, thanks to the terrible social reforms and unprecedented famine of 1958–1962.” This is the conclusion of Alexander Pantsov and Steven...
Postcard
06.03.15![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/01.jpg?itok=bDJw7oDA)
Beijing Autumn
Then even August ended. China was disappearing from the news, as portentous events elsewhere thrust themselves to the forefront.South Africa had started to come out of the dark age of apartheid. Eastern Europe had begun the march to unshackle itself...
Sinica Podcast
05.10.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/3066911.jpg?itok=w1IIP3eJ)
Initial Impressions: Three First Trips to China, 1970s-1990s
from Sinica Podcast
In this show: dating tips for hooking up with your Marxist-Leninist thought instructor, advice on what modern music and seasonal vegetables to smuggle in from Hong Kong, the origins of China’s somewhat unorthodox driving customs, and instructions on...
Sinica Podcast
09.27.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/ct1064_1128715.jpg?itok=VEqERkbT)
Laszlo Montgomery and the China History Podcast
from Sinica Podcast
The broken chopstick fell to our studio floor, its shaft splintered beyond repair where Laszlo had snapped it between his fingers. “Alone we are weak,” he looked Jeremy and Kaiser in the eyes while those of us outside the studio wondered faintly who...
My First Trip
07.09.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/e13-868.jpg?itok=64UyyWCc)
Busman’s Holiday
The train from the old Kowloon station rumbled as it passed the Chinese border fence on its way to Canton and came to a lurching halt. It was a late summer day in 1981; I was thirty-two years old and now, as I reflected with deep satisfaction, no...
My First Trip
09.10.11![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/johnson_1_0.jpg?itok=Lc-XLA0P)
Deng's Heyday
When I began thinking about writing this piece, my first trip to China in 1984 had seemed like a disappointment. Unlike today, this was the China of Great Events: the launch of bold reforms and an era of intellectual ferment unlike any since. Before...
The NYRB China Archive
09.26.91The Anatomy of Collapse
from New York Review of Books
In Moscow, 1991, as in Beijing in 1989, eight hard liners made a last-ditch stand to preserve communism. Yet in both cases, the Communist party was left on the sidelines and no appeal was made for support in the name of Communist doctrine. Politics...