ISHAM COOK CHINA
Question everything 切問而近思 – Confucius
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Isham Cook
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Chungking: China’s heart of darkness
A brief history of travel in China and the challenges of inhospitality.
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Out of the squalor and into the light: When the Shanghai wall came down
Glimmers of Shanghai’s modernity in a 19th-century courtesan novel.
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Confucius and opium
An investigation of intoxicants in the time of Confucius.
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The expat and the prostitute: Four classic novels, 1956–62
Reviews of McKenna’s The Sand Pebbles, Mason’s The World of Suzie Wong, Arsan’s Emmanuelle, and Reynolds’ A Woman from Bangkok.
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Updating the great Chinese socialist realist novel
Satirical review of the latest addition to Chinese socialist realist fiction.
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Living the Taiping
Historical novel set during Taiping Rebellion cultivates a richly textured English, while another captures Sir Robert Hart’s love for a Chinese woman.
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The literature of paralysis: The China PC scene and the expat mag crowd
What happens to writing when it’s fed through the political correctness machine.
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Macau and the writer: A photo essay
Photo essay of old Macau with nudes and choice literary quotations.
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The question of breeding (why foreign men get the “ugly” Chinese girls)
Tongue-in-cheek explanation (with more than a grain of truth) of why it’s so hard to land a Chinese beauty.
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At the Teahouse Café: Essays from the Middle Kingdom
What decades of living in China have taught this American expat.
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The many faces of Chinese “face”
Chinese “face” and Chinese “apathy” reconsidered in dynamic relationship.
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Honesty, diligence, obedience: Why I support China’s Great Firewall
An openminded appreciation of the Great Firewall of China.
