We celebrate our birthday, and ten best posts of the last year
Three years ago – on Lu Xun’s birthday, in the spirit of his iconoclasm – we launched the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel to fill in the white space of China coverage. Three years later, we are still going strong, publishing reviews, essays, dispatches and podcasts, with a focus on culture and history rather than the news cycle. We want to take this moment to thank you, our readers, for following and supporting us, and making this possible. In these uncertain economic times nothing lasts forever, but we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last three years. Below are ten of our favorite posts from 2020, and do consider donating on Patreon to fund our new translations. Cheers! – The Editors
They Shut Down the City
A dispatch from quarantined Wuhan during the coronavirus epidemic – Xiaoyu Lu, trans. Allen Young
Fantasy and the Forbidden City
China’s most popular costume drama tells more about the present than it does about the Qing dynasty – Tobie Meyer-Fong
Tracing the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway
Looking back down the tracks at French Indochina’s legacy in southeast Yunnan – Thomas Bird
Mr. Lovecraft Goes to China
Nick Stember on H.P. Lovecraft’s legacy, and a new Chinese collection inspired by it
A Song for Hong Kong
A history of Hong Kong’s protests, in three songs – Alec Ash
Tarim, My Uyghur Friend
On an interned intellectual in Xinjiang, by Tang Danhong – trans. Anne Henochowicz
Taiwan Too
How the suicide of a female author sparked Taiwan’s Me Too movement – Jessie Tu
10 Bad China Takes
A tongue-in-cheek list of imperfect China articles
