Introduction On a sizzling summer day in 2019, I arrived at a Guangzhou city park for an appointment with Mama Wu.[1] “Come meet me around…

First encounters In January 2016, Mr Zhou tagged me in a WeChat group. I had met the 67-year-old two years before, during my fieldwork among…

With 13 chapters featuring 15 illustrations (excerpts from books, film dialogues, interviews, etc., translated from Tibetan or Chinese), the book focuses on three events marking…

This book rethinks the relationship between the political and the aesthetic in contemporary Chinese art, against the dominant narratives that render non-Western art eligible through…

Using Chinese sources, some of which have never been published before, Liu Xiaoyuan (University of Iowa) explores a decisive decade extending from the foundation of…

With more than 81 million members, the Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) is the largest youth political organisation in the world.[1] The Chinese Communist Youth…

Without yellow leaves, there can be no autumn. Ruins are the yellow leaves of a building. People say that the purpose of yellow leaves is…

The 1952 painting Happy Marriage (Xingfu hunyin 幸福婚姻, Figure 1)[1] depicts a scene of unambiguous jubilance. Walking behind their healthy ox through a throng of…

Chinese labour is the object of a wide-ranging literature that covers the topic from many angles. Most of it deals with the new working class…

Rivers of Iron examines China’s role in the development of railroad connectivity between China and Southeast Asia (SEA) via the Pan-Asia Railway Network (PARN). The…