Reading List As I promised during the tour, here's a reading list so you can all learn more about China when you get home. It should keep you busy for a while! 1. Wild Swans by Jung Chang: The gripping story of how three generations of women in one family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents. (ISBN:0743246985). 2. China Wakes by Nic Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn: The husband-and-wife team of and , whose reporting of the Tiananmen Square massacre for the New York Times earned them a Pulitzer prize, range from Beijing to the Tibetan highlands in their illuminating look at the changes and contradictions unfolding within Chinese society. (ISBN: 1857881583). 3. Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux: Theroux's penchant for train travel is well known; on this jaunt he takes almost a year to crisscross China. For Theroux, traveling is both about people, their thoughts, customs, and peculiarities. We learn as much about his own quirks and fancies as we do about the intriguing world of contemporary China (ISBN: 0517030322). 4. Falling Leaves by Yen Mah: Notable for its portrait of the domestic affairs of an immensely wealthy, Westernized Chinese family in Shanghai as the city evolved under the harsh strictures of Mao and Deng. In recounting this painful tale, Yen Mah's unadorned prose is powerful, her insights keen and her portrait of her family devastating (ISBN: 0767903579). 5. Red China Blues by: This superb memoir is like no other account of life in China under both Mao and Deng. Wong is a Canadian ethnic Chinese who, in 1972, at the height of the cultural revolution, was one of the first undergraduate foreigners permitted to study at Beijing University. Her description of the events at Tiananmen Square, which occurred on her watch, is, like the rest of the book, unique, powerful and moving. (ISBN: 0385665660). 6. Mao Zedong: Man Not God by Quan Yanchi: The title could have been written by Mao himself. Instead, it was dictated by the revealing, intimate, never-before-published recollections of Li Yinqiao, Mao's bodyguard, and brought to light by the author Quan Yanchi. The recollections, only now made public in English, provide the reader with a refreshingly different perspective from any of the many other works about Mao. (ISBN: 7119014455). 7. River Town by Peter Hessler: In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. Hessler tells of his experience with the citizens of Fuling, the political and historical climate, and the feel of the city itself. (ISBN: 0060855029).