100 books like Beijing Coma

By Ma Jian, Flora Drew (translator),

Here are 100 books that Beijing Coma fans have personally recommended if you like Beijing Coma. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up

Yang Huang Author Of Living Treasures

From my list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in China during the years of the one-child policy. In 1989 I joined millions of people in the pro-democracy protests. Our hope and joy were crushed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. A year later, I left China and came to the States. I wanted to write a story about the students’ fight but create a more meaningful arc. It took me twenty years of soul searching to find my story. At the heart of my novel Living Treasures is a metaphor for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. My heroine continues the fight by doing grassroots work and helping rural women, who are victimized by the one-child policy.

Yang's book list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests

Yang Huang Why did Yang love this book?

The 27 interviews in The Corpse Walker are selected from the 60 interviews in Liao Yiwu’s book, originally titled Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society in Chinese. Liao gives voices to social outcasts: a human trafficker, corpse walkers, a leper, a peasant emperor, an abbot, a mortician, a Tiananmen father, artists and shamans, crooks, even cannibals. Ironically, every one of them speaks more honestly than Chinese official media, which causes the book to be banned in mainland China. These are the stories of unsung heroes and epic tragedies, but to me, most importantly, the work that people performed, the families they raised, many lost to famines, political purges, and massacres, and the persecutors they forgave, the conscience they wrestled with, their past, present, and future—these are the remarkable stories of ordinary Chinese people from 1949 to present in their raw, unvarnished form.

By Liao Yiwu,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Corpse Walker as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Corpse Walker introduces us to regular men and women at the bottom of Chinese society, most of whom have been battered by life but have managed to retain their dignity: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, and a Falung Gong practitioner, among others. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, Liao Yiwu managed to get his subjects to talk openly and sometimes hilariously about their lives, desires, and vulnerabilities, creating a book that is an instance par excellence of what was once upon a time called “The New Journalism.”…


Book cover of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

Yang Huang Author Of Living Treasures

From my list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in China during the years of the one-child policy. In 1989 I joined millions of people in the pro-democracy protests. Our hope and joy were crushed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. A year later, I left China and came to the States. I wanted to write a story about the students’ fight but create a more meaningful arc. It took me twenty years of soul searching to find my story. At the heart of my novel Living Treasures is a metaphor for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. My heroine continues the fight by doing grassroots work and helping rural women, who are victimized by the one-child policy.

Yang's book list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests

Yang Huang Why did Yang love this book?

Mei Fong has spent years documenting and traveling across China to meet the people who live with the consequences of the draconian one-child policy. I was riveted by this slim but expansive book, its searing clarity, deep compassion, and unflinching interrogation only avail to an outsider unhampered by the censorship in China. Mei Fong explores in depth how the one-child policy has changed every facet of social life from cradle to grave: courtship, marriage, women’s work, only children, adoption/baby trafficking, surrogate, IVF, aging, retirement, hospice/death, and much more. Weaving in with the author’s own quest to become a mother, Mei Fong weighs the cost of parenthood and asks the hard question: Why do we have children?

By Mei Fong,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One Child as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Tang Shuxiu and her husband are on an 800-mile train journey from Beijing to Shifang, where they believe their only child has perished in a recent earthquake. Three days after the event, Tang is too dehydrated to cry.

Liu Ting becomes a national hero when he brings his mother to college, a celebration of filial piety in a nation that now legally compels adult children to visit their elderly parents.

Tian Qingeng and his parents are deeply in debt. They have bought an apartment they hope will improve his eligibility in a nation that has 30 million bachelors, or 'bare…


Book cover of Frog

Yang Huang Author Of Living Treasures

From my list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in China during the years of the one-child policy. In 1989 I joined millions of people in the pro-democracy protests. Our hope and joy were crushed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. A year later, I left China and came to the States. I wanted to write a story about the students’ fight but create a more meaningful arc. It took me twenty years of soul searching to find my story. At the heart of my novel Living Treasures is a metaphor for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. My heroine continues the fight by doing grassroots work and helping rural women, who are victimized by the one-child policy.

Yang's book list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests

Yang Huang Why did Yang love this book?

As a writer who works under China’s censorship, Mo Yan spins literary gold in his novel Frog by blending high farce with social commentary. Narrator Tadpole’s aunt Gugu, a feisty woman with extraordinary gifts, evolves from a legendary midwife to a demonic one-child policy enforcer, then becomes an incorrigible go-between for surrogate and intentional parents. Readers see how China and rural Gaomi townships have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. Much of the story is funny, brutal, yet firmly grounded, as people endure, and many perish during a half-century of social and political turmoil.

By Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Frog as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR
WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK

From the Nobel-prize winning author of Red Sorghum and one China's most revered writers, a novel exploring the One-Child Policy

Before the Cultural Revolution, Gugu, narrator Tadpole's feisty aunt, is a respected midwife in her rural community. She combines modern medical knowledge with a healer's touch to save the lives of village women and their babies. Gugu is beautiful, charismatic, and of an unimpeachable political background.

After a disastrous love affair with a defector leaves Gugu reeling, she throws herself zealously into enforcing China's draconian new family…


Book cover of Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989

Yang Huang Author Of Living Treasures

From my list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in China during the years of the one-child policy. In 1989 I joined millions of people in the pro-democracy protests. Our hope and joy were crushed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. A year later, I left China and came to the States. I wanted to write a story about the students’ fight but create a more meaningful arc. It took me twenty years of soul searching to find my story. At the heart of my novel Living Treasures is a metaphor for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. My heroine continues the fight by doing grassroots work and helping rural women, who are victimized by the one-child policy.

Yang's book list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests

Yang Huang Why did Yang love this book?

Philip J. Cunningham joined his Chinese friends from May 3 to June 4 in 1989, as a supporter, journalist, and witness in the Tiananmen Square protests. Tiananmen Moon chronicles the protests, hunger strike, students’ leadership, their internal friction, and Cunningham’s meeting with Chai Ling before the massacre. From an American bystander’s perspective, Cunningham voices his concerns about the peer pressure among students, and a few self-claimed radical leaders using the same rhetoric and tactic as the regime to seize power and escalate conflicts. To this day, the Tiananmen Square protests are obliterated by the propaganda machine in mainland China. Tiananmen Moon is a remarkable testament capturing the plaintive and lyrical beauty of a dream that continues to haunt China today.

By Philip J. Cunningham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiananmen Moon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this book is now available.

This compelling book provides a vivid firsthand account of the student demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Uniquely placed as a Western observer drawn into active participation through Chinese friends in the uprising, Philip J Cunningham offers a remarkable day-by-day account of Beijing students desperately trying to secure the most coveted political real estate in China in the face of ever more daunting government countermoves. Tiananmen Moon takes the reader into the thick of the 1989 protests while also following the parallel response of an unprepared but resourceful…


Book cover of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Burnaby Hawkes Author Of The Haze

From my list on understanding modern Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

Hawkes (MD, BScN, MGA) is a novelist, YouTuber, and former analyst for the NATO Association of Canada. His writings have appeared in Heater, The Raven Chronicles, ArabLit, and many other magazines and publications. His recent espionage novel, The Haze, is set in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Burnaby's book list on understanding modern Asia

Burnaby Hawkes Why did Burnaby love this book?

I first heard about this book when it won the 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction. After reading it, it became clear to me this was one of the best books written about China. Evan Osnos, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has delivered a coup de force that unravels the social dynamics of Chinese society. In recent memory, no serious book has attempted to do the same. You will learn about the clash of individualism vs. plutocracy in present-day China and how that manifests on the street. You will also understand the economic ailments that afflict modern China. It is beautifully written.

By Evan Osnos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Age of Ambition as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction finalist
Winner of the 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction.

As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval.

Age of Ambition provides a vibrant, colorful, and revelatory inner history of China during a moment of profound transformation.

From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy-or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don't see…


Book cover of Women Shall Not Rule: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Han to Liao

Elena Woodacre Author Of Queens and Queenship

From my list on queens and queenship.

Why am I passionate about this?

Queens and queenship is a topic that has fascinated me since childhood when I first read about women like Cleopatra and Eleanor of Aquitaine. They ignited a passion to learn about the lives of royal women which led me from the ancient Mediterranean to medieval Europe, on into the early modern era, and has now gone truly global. I am particularly passionate to draw out the hidden histories of all the women who aren’t as well-known as their more famous counterparts and push for a fully global outlook in both queenship and royal studies in the works I write and the journal and two book series that I edit.

Elena's book list on queens and queenship

Elena Woodacre Why did Elena love this book?

Imperial China provides an incredible case study for queenship and the agency of royal women. Keith McMahon’s two volumes, Women Shall Not Rule and the follow-on Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to Qing are the ideal introductions to the lives and roles of women in Imperial China. You won’t need a background in queenship studies or an understanding of Asian history to enjoy this book and absorb both the anecdotes of the intriguing women featured and the key arguments that McMahon makes on how the position of royal women shifted over individual reigns as well as major dynastic transitions.

By Keith McMahon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Women Shall Not Rule as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chinese emperors guaranteed male successors by taking multiple wives, in some cases hundreds and even thousands. Women Shall Not Rule offers a fascinating history of imperial wives and concubines, especially in light of the greatest challenges to polygamous harmony-rivalry between women and their attempts to engage in politics. Besides ambitious empresses and concubines, these vivid stories of the imperial polygamous family are also populated with prolific emperors, wanton women, libertine men, cunning eunuchs, and bizarre cases of intrigue and scandal among rival wives.

Keith McMahon, a leading expert on the history of gender in China, draws upon decades of research…


Book cover of Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women's Suffrage in China

Mona L. Siegel Author Of Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War

From my list on feminism is a century-old global phenomenon.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was at university in the 1980s, I thought I wanted to become the ambassador to France. Then one of my roommates made me promise to take a women’s studies class—any class—before I graduated. I opted for “The History of Women’s Peace Movements.” Descending into historical archives for the first time, I held in my hands crumbling, 100-year-old letters of World War I-era feminists who audaciously insisted that for a peaceful world to flourish, women must participate in its construction. My life changed course. I became a professor and a historian, and I have been following the trail of feminist, internationalist, social justice pioneers ever since.  

Mona's book list on feminism is a century-old global phenomenon

Mona L. Siegel Why did Mona love this book?

One of the shocking discoveries I made while researching my book was that China was the only Allied power to appoint a female delegate to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Readers of Edwards’s book will be less surprised. While British suffragists of the early twentieth century were busy planting bombs in postboxes, Chinese women were taking up arms to overthrow the Qing dynasty and smashing the windows of the newly opened parliamentary chambers to demand their nation codify citizens’ political rights “regardless of sex.” This book tells their story and puts the lie to the myth that women’s rights only became a priority in China decades later, when Mao Zedong proclaimed that women “hold up half the sky.”

By Louise Edwards,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gender, Politics, and Democracy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first exploration of women's campaigns to gain equal rights to political participation in China. The dynamic and successful struggle for suffrage rights waged by Chinese women activists through the first half of the twentieth century challenged fundamental and centuries-old principles of political power. By demanding a public political voice for women, the activists promoted new conceptions of democratic representation for the entire political structure, not simply for women. Their movement created the space in which gendered codes of virtue would be radically transformed for both men and women.


Book cover of The Lacquer Screen: A Chinese Detective Story

Yun Rou Author Of The Monk of Park Avenue: A Modern Daoist Odyssey

From my list on better understanding and appreciating China.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born to privilege in Manhattan. A seeker from the get-go, I perpetually yearned to see below the surface of the pond and understand what lay beneath and how the world really works. Not connecting with Western philosophy, religion, or culture, I turned to the wisdom of the East at a young age. I stayed the course through decades of training in Chinese martial arts, eventually reached some understanding of them, and realized my spiritual ambitions when I was ordained a Daoist monk in China in an official government ceremony. I write about China then and now and teach meditation and tai chi around the world. 

Yun's book list on better understanding and appreciating China

Yun Rou Why did Yun love this book?

Van Gulik is a giant in the field of historical mysteries, having penned the better part of 20 novels about his favorite protagonist “Judge Dee.” Set in ancient China, the stories typically involve political intrigue, moral quandaries, and settings so evocative it is easy to just close your eyes and see yourself in a pavilion overlooking a swan-filled lake or in a lady’s bed-chamber, a scholar’s library, or an artist’s studio. These novels are mood pieces as well as whodunnits, and the immersive experiences the author offers lead me to recommend not only this title but any and all in the series. Heaven for someone like me who loves what China used to be.

By Robert Van Gulik,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lacquer Screen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Early in his career, Judge Dee visits a senior magistrate who shows him a beautiful lacquer screen on which a scene of lovers has been mysteriously altered to show the man stabbing his lover. The magistrate fears he is losing his mind and will murder his own wife. Meanwhile, a banker has inexplicably killed himself, and a lovely lady has allowed Dee's lieutenant, Chiao Tai, to believe she is a courtesan. Dee and Chiao Tai go incognito among a gang of robbers to solve this mystery, and find the leader of the robbers is more honorable than the magistrate.

"One…


Book cover of Magic and Mystery in Tibet

David Thorpe Author Of Hybrids

From my list on books that changed my life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love books that boggle my mind. Take me away from mundane reality. That’s the kind of book I like to write.

David's book list on books that changed my life

David Thorpe Why did David love this book?

Looking around me as a young man I found a grey world that had been stripped of all its glory and fabulousness by the exploitation and utilitarianism of human beings. 

Alexandra David-Neel was an amazing explorer. She was the first European woman to meet the Dalai Lama and in 1924 became the first to enter the forbidden Tibetan capital, Lhasa. She had already spent a decade travelling through China, living in a cave on the Tibetan border, where she learned about Buddhism from hermits, mystics, and bandits. 

She describes in this book how these people learnt such seemingly impossible skills such as telepathy, defying gravity, running for days without food or drink or sleep, and surviving with hardly any clothes in the subzero Himalayan blizzards. 

This magical world vanished when the Chinese invaded in 1947. 

To think that this miraculous way of life existed in the same century as me…

By Madame Alexandra David-Neel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Magic and Mystery in Tibet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For centuries Tibet has been known as the last home of mystery, the hidden, sealed land, where ancient mysteries still survive that have perished in the rest of the Orient. Many men have written about Tibet and its secret lore, but few have actually penetrated it to learn its ancient wisdom. Among those few was Madame Alexandra David-Neel, a French orientalist. A practicing Buddhist, a profound historian of religion, and linguist, she actually lived in Tibet for more than 14 years. She had the great honor of being received by the Dalai Lama; she studied philosophical Buddhism and Tibetan Tantra…


Book cover of Further News of Defeat: Stories

Rachel Swearingen Author Of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories

From my list on debut story collections to read cover to cover.

Why am I passionate about this?

From childhood on, I’ve been drawn to storytellers, especially those who use their imagination to captivate and question. My favorite stories twist and turn, and throw light on the every day to reveal what is inexplicable, weird, wondrous, and often heartrending. My taste runs wide, and I could list dozens of favorite collections. Having released my own debut book of stories during the pandemic, I learned firsthand how difficult it can be to find readers for story collections, especially when those collections are published by smaller presses. For that reason, I’ve chosen five recent debuts from masterful authors I hope more readers will discover. 

Rachel's book list on debut story collections to read cover to cover

Rachel Swearingen Why did Rachel love this book?

I cannot think of a more perfect title for Michael Wang’s Further News of Defeat. Imminent loss haunts the edges of each story, ready to pounce on Wang’s indelible characters. In America, we’re often uncomfortable with this kind of storytelling. We prefer our characters to be redeemed, to either prevail over calamity or to fail due to their own weaknesses. Wang’s characters are both at the mercy of outside events and circumstances and participants in their own fates. Most of the stories are set in fictional cities and rural villages in China. War, regime and societal changes, poverty, immigration, and identity are running themes. Several of these stories are so gripping I could imagine them as longer works. Further News of Defeat is a beautifully rendered and well-researched book. 

By Michael X. Wang,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Further News of Defeat as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Steeped in a long history of violence and suffering, Michael X. Wang's debut collection of short stories interrogates personal and political events set against the backdrop of China that are both real and perceived, imagined and speculative. Wang plunges us into the fictional Chinese village of Xinchun and beyond to explore themes of tradition, family, modernity, and immigration in a country grappling with its modern identity. Violence enters the pastoral when Chinese villagers are flung down a well by Japanese soldiers and forced to abandon their crops and families to work in the coal mines, a tugboat driver dredges up…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in China, comas, and presidential biography?

China 640 books
Comas 27 books