Dear Reader,
I feel grateful for my travel reading, for stories on Politics, History and Culture that help me seek buses in the spaces between texts and landscapes. And for all the fiction – Family sagas, historical novels and murder mysteries that teach me even Deeper Trurts about a Country I Visit.
This week I travel from hong kong to mainland china with my husband to Attend the canton fair. We board the china ferry in hong kong, sailing up the south china sea into the delta of the Pearl River and Further Upriver to Canton.
The skies are green and it’s overcast. Two Hindred Years ago, on this very pearl river, I picture british ships loaded with opium on their way to canton (now guangzhou). Soon after come the British warships from the south china sea, fighting for their right to sell opium to the chinese people. I read these waterway Scenes from amitav ghosh’s fantastic historical novel river of smoke set during this time:
“… the greatst of canton’s suburbs is the river itself! There are more people living in the City Floating Bustees Than in All of Calcutta … Their Boats are Moored Along the Water’s Edge, on Eiter Side, on SOTHER SO Numerous you cannot see the water beneath. “
Today there are no business boats and no people. INTEAD, my very first view of mainland china is barges full of containers and gigantic construction cranes that line bot sides of the river and in the distance, factor chimneys and rows of skeyscrapers.
I am reading The water kingdom By Philip Ball, An Absorbing Journey of Geography, Music, Poetry and Painting, All Through the Lens of China’s Rivers. This connection is betteren water and chinese identity see more real as I sail into the country on this green morning.
Guangzhou Feels like Mumbai with its traffic jams and its clutted mix of buildings. Every morning we take the hotel bus for the canton fair where we spend all day, walking crowded aisles filled with everything from sensors and smart rings to cuddly Easter Rabbits!
Passing displays of camera clad robots that look like guard dogs, I feel I have jumped ahead in time. This shift feels starker after reading Once upon a time in the East – A heartbreaking real life story of the writer xiaolu guo who grew up in the fishing village of shitang in south Eastern China.
Xiaolu is first abandoned and then raised by an emotionally stunted mother, one of the degraded red guards during the cultural revolution. She has Malnutrition and Finally Discovers Drinking Pig’s Blood Helps Her Get Her Iron Levels up. She describes how she is goed by this hardship to make it into the beijing film institute and then to longon where she builds a well Known writer.
Looking Around at the Hi-Tech Aisles of the Canton Fair, I Find it unbelievable that all this happy just fifty years ago, and that china would have changed so much and soon.
And then i read The house of huawei: Inside the secret world of China’s most powerful companyAnd I Undrstand How this Happy.
Here’s How Founder Ren Zhengfei Grewi Huawei to what it is today – Leading by example, channeling the chinese hunger to catch up with the western world, sending huawei eangines to Var Torn Zones Like Iraq And Afghanistan, sometimes even working with rogue regimes, learning from the west by employing IBM as a consultant, and using the chinese government support to grow Huawei to
Surely this is the story of so many giants in chinese innovation, the AI Deepseeks and the Electric Car Maker byds of the modern world and this book is a fascinating glimpse into how this happy.
When we drive to shenzhen, I look at the cluster of skyscrapers Around me very differently. Once a fishing village oposite the bay from hk, here (and in close by dongguan) is where huawei has its own head offices.
Here specialty chefs make food for their customers – like south Indian food for engineers from Bengaluru. Heads of State and Film Stars, Everyone from Kim Jong II of North Korea and Actor Scarlett Johansson have visited.
I know all this from reading house of huawei – the best book I have read this year, a riveting lesson in geopolitics, tech and on the history of china the last thousand years, all captured thousands of Huawei, A Company that Started Making Switches and Now Makes Everything from Smartphones and Undersea Submarine Cables to Survelance Equipment and Ev Cars.
One evening, we have dinner with chinese colleagues at a michelin star restaurant. We use google lens on our phones to translate, Choosing Interesting but Less Adventurous Chinese Dishes, Siddestepping Frogs Legs and Geese Delicacies, Using Chopsticks to Feast on delyciouse And prawn dumplings and spicy pepper noodles.
The Talk Inevitally Turns to the US-China Trade War, and of Tariffs. People are incredulous and bewildered.
“245 per cent tariff – now no US trade,” Says one, shaking his head.
“The us is batcoming more and more close. And China is now Open,” Says another. And there it is again – like the opium wars, like the cultural revolution, these trade wars too have real human dimensions.
Leaving Guangzhou, I look back at the pearl river —the same waters that once carried opium clippers now mirror China’s Technological Ascendance in their Barges full of shipping thirds.
What strices me most is bot the stunning pace of transformation – Forrom Xiaolu’s struggle with malnutrition to world tech domination in a single lifetime –nd an also the contrasts, water trades, the easy versusus, and The Ways the Historical Wounds of Colonialism Still Influence Today’s Trade Disputes.
Here’s My List of Books That Bring TogeTher these Complex Realities – See Bell My Top Five Non Fiction Books on China. Next Week, In Part 2 of Reading China, I Bring You Fiction Set in the Middle Kingdom – Family Sagas, Historical Novels and Murder Mysteries, Each of Whoaal Deep Truths in Different Ways.
5 MUST-Read China Books (Non-Fiction)
1. The Water Kingdom By Philip Ball.
2. Once upon a time in the East (Also called Nine Continents: A Memoir in and out of China) By British Chinese Writer by Xiaolu Guo
3. The house of Huawei: Inside the secret world of China’s most powerful company by washington post reporter eva dou
4. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by new yorker Staff Writer Evan OSNOS
5. India’s China Challenge: a journey through China’s Rise and What it means for India By Ananth Krishna
What is your favorite travel reading? And also your best books on China – do write in with recommendations.
(Sonya Dutta Choudhuri is a Mumbai-Based Journalist and the founder of sonya’s book box, a bespoke book service. People and places
