China

Behind the Wall, by Colin Thubron (2004). Thubron takes readers on an adventure from urban centers like Shanghai, to lesser-known cities like the canal city of Suzhou, to the many other quiet hillside villages of China. His tale is complete with ritual-performing monks, tribal nomads, and an art school where only Ming Dynasty painting is taught. Thubron breaks cultural barriers with his fluent Mandarin and paints an intimate picture of modern Chinese culture.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power, by Rob Gifford (2007). China's Route 312 is the Route 66 of the East, spanning from crowded Shanghai, touching the Silk Road, and ending in Kazakhstan. As NPR's China correspondent for over six years, Gifford is drawn to the people that make up this burgeoning superpower—from businessmen to peasants—in an attempt to understand modern China.

The Drink and Dream Teahouse, by Justin Hill (2001). This first novel by a former English teacher in China traces how three generations in the small town of Shaoyang are affected by the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and its political aftermath. The cast of affectionately drawn rural eccentrics includes the neighbor lady who sings Chinese opera every morning and a prostitute at a teahouse who doesn't know that her ex-lover (and father of her child) has returned to their small town from the big city a rich man.

Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, Polly Evans (2005). Renowned British travel writer Polly Evans makes her way across China by bus, train, plane, boat, bike, mule, and car, exploring the simultaneously humorous, human, and concerning conundrums that define modern China—from the botched embalming of Chairman Mao to the rushed rebuilding of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

The Garlic Ballads, by Mo Yan (1995). Mo Yan (Red Sorghum) writes with aching, even shocking lyricism about a garlic farmer's plight when his lover dies and he is wrongfully imprisoned by a corrupt government. This gritty epic set in 1980s rural China was banned by the Chinese government after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck (1931). This 1932 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Chinese peasant farmer Wang Lung and his family. Buck, who was the daughter of missionaries, grew up in China. The book depicts Chinese culture and customs (it begins with Wang Lung's wedding day) and the social upheavals of early 20th-century China.

The Heart of the World, by Ian Baker (2004). Ian Baker travels to the bottom of the world's deepest and most forbidding canyon, the Tsangpo Gorge, in search of Tibet's fabled "hidden-lands of Pemako." Baker is a Buddhist scholar as well as an explorer, and the rigor of his spiritual journey matches the physical challenges of the expedition, echoing the book's introductory words, written by the Dalai Lama: "From a Buddhist perspective, sacred environments such as Pemako are not places to escape the world, but to enter it more deeply."

Here be Yaks, by Manosi Lahiri (2006). "Any and every place in the world has a past," Lahiri begins her quest. "This is even truer of Tibet than most other places." Mourning the recent loss of her husband, Lahiri travels from Lhasa up the Tasam Highway to circumambulate Mount Kailash, an ancient focus of Tibetan pilgrimage. On her journey of self-discovery, and with the use of an old map, Lahiri finds the true source of the Sutlej river, a controversial geographical dilemma that has plagued geographers for centuries. Includes a foreword by the Dalai Lama.

The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan (1995). The story's narrator, Olivia, is born to a Chinese father and an American mother. Shortly after her father's death, Olivia meets her Chinese half-sister, Kwan Li. Olivia, who is a photographer, and her estranged husband, a writer, travel to China with Kwan as their interpreter. While Olivia tells her story, Kwan tells historical tales about Manchu China.

*Iron and Silk, by Mark Salzman (1986). American martial arts expert Salzman spent his days teaching English in Changsha, China, but devoted his mind to the study of contemporary Chinese society. His unpretentious and probing manner paves the way for genuine friendships with local Chinese.

The Noodle Maker, by Ma Jian (2005). In this political satire, Chinese dissident Ma Jian offers a glimpse into life in post-Tiananmen China. Two men—one a professional blood donor, the other a writer of political propaganda—meet for dinner each week. One night, the writer tells the stories he would write if he had the courage.

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, by Peter Hessler (2006). Hessler reveals modern China through the narratives of everyday people. After ten years of living in China, Hessler's many adventures take him to an underground city in Anyang, Falun Gong demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and anti-American protests in Nanjing.

Peony in Love, by Lisa See (2007) In her fifth novel, See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) immerses us in 17th-century China where 15-year-old Peony Chen is set to enter an arranged marriage she doesn't want. Events, as they tend to do, turn tragic. Mirroring Tang Xianzu's famous opera The Peony Pavilion (1598), and based on real diaries, See's book delves into the lives of women in the Qing and Ming dynasties, and is rich with scenes of festivals and rituals of 17th-century high-society China.

Red Dust: A Path Through China, by Ma Jian (2001). In the 1980s, writer and photographer Ma Jian quit his job and set out to explore sparsely traveled parts of China, Tibet, and Myanmar (Burma). His three-year journey, documented here, starts in Beijing and takes him to the Yellow River of Inner Mongolia, China's western desert, the jungles of Yunnan, the mountains of the Golden Triangle, and beyond.

*The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time, by Simon Winchester (1996). Historian Winchester seems to know everything, but he's such an engaging raconteur you can hardly begrudge him his smarts. Here he travels the 3,434-mile (5,526-kilometer)Yangtze River, reflecting on the historic importance of the river and the social straits in which the Chinese now find themselves.

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler (2001). One of two foreigners to visit Fuling in over 50 years, Hessler travels to China's Sichuan province to teach English at the local university. He soon becomes the student—learning about the complexities of life in a small, rural, Chinese river town.

*Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer (1953). In 1943, German mountain climber Heinrich Harrer—no, not Brad Pitt, as in the film—escaped captivity in India and headed across Himalayan passes to the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet, where he became friends with the 14-year-old Dalai Lama. This book truly captures mystical pre-Chinese-invasion Tibet.

Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land, by Patrick French (2003). French first encountered the Dalai Lama when French was a young boy, and has had a fascination with Tibet ever since. French visited Tibet in 1999 and interviews Tibetans about life in the far reaches of the Himalayas. He combines travel narrative, history, and reporting in this cultural and political overview of China's forgotten land.

Waiting, by Ha Jin (1999). Winner of a National Book Award in fiction, Ha Jin's second novel tells the story of Lin Kong, a Chinese military doctor in an arranged marriage. The doctor falls in love with a nurse at the hospital where he works, but—under the Communist government's rules—has to wait 18 years before he is free to marry again. This love story paints a portrait of daily life in provincial China.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang (1991). In order to understand complex 21st-century China, one must understand the people who survived 20th-century communist rule. Through three generations of women—her grandmother a concubine, and her mother a prominent member of the Communist Party—Chang takes readers on an intimate tour of China through the rise and fall of Mao's regime.

Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong (2004). In this semi-autobiographical novel, protagonist Chen Zhen moves to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia from the city in the mid-1960s, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. There he quickly becomes fascinated with the wolf, at once the adversary and the totem of the local Mongolian people. The wolf becomes a key for Chen to unlock the intricate riches of grasslands life. This long and dense book is a literary triumph, but even more impressively, it is a triumph of cross-cultural connection and understanding.