Chinese Characters
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Chinese Characters
Series of essays exploring Chinese history through the life stories of key personalities.
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Deng Xiaoping: Black Cat, Yellow Cat
He was nicknamed "the steel mill" for his capacity to just keep going on and on. He was Mao's lieutenant who was purged twice and rose three times, th...
Bruce Lee: Screen Warrior
He may still be the most famous non-western film star in the world. Yet he made only a handful of films in the early 1970s, none of which are artistic...
Mao Zedong: The Man Who Made Modern China
In the early 1920s, he was just a library assistant at Peking University. Yet by the end of his life, he would rule a fifth of all humanity, turn Chin...
Factory Girls: Modern Girls, Modern Dreams
They came out of the countryside and helped to build China's industrial revolution. In the late 19th century, textile factories started to appear in t...
Cixi: Ambivalent Empress
She rose to power behind the scenes in China's late 19th century imperial court, and became one of the most powerful women ever to exercise authority...
Hong Xiuquan v Zeng Guofan: The Duellists
This was the duel that shaped China. Hong Xiuquan was a poor boy who went into a trance and became convinced he was Jesus's younger brother, with a mi...
Wang Jingwei: Revolutionary Renegade
He is condemned as China's worst traitor. What made him do it? In 1938, as China was plunged into war, Wang Jingwei defected to the enemy, Japan. Yet...
Lu Xun: Compassionate Cynic
To create one character who says something profound about the society you live in might be a stroke of luck. To create three suggests you really do ha...
Robert Hart: Chinese Customs
He was a servant of the Chinese empire, respected in Beijing and London alike. Yet he was no son of Shanghai, but of Ulster. Robert Hart grew up in Po...
Zheng He: The Admiral Goes to Africa
China rarely had an image as a great maritime power. But for a brief time in the mid-15th century, that all changed under the Ming dynasty and its adm...
River Elegy: River and Ocean
In 1988, one of the most important television programmes in history was shown. Titled River Elegy, it was watched by perhaps 100 million Chinese viewe...
Li Qingzhao: Patriotic Poet
Li Qingzhao, who lived (1084-1151) during the late Song dynasty, is recognised as one of China's greatest poets. She grew up within China's culture of...
Confucius: Becoming the Sage
If there were a competition for most famous Chinese in history, Confucius (551-479 BCE) would surely come out on top. He was the philosopher and ethic...
Kublai Khan: Cosmopolitan Conqueror
He was the man with the pleasure dome, according to Coleridge, but in reality Kublai Khan didn't have so much time for pleasure. He was too busy runni...
Sima Qian: Grand Historian
He wasn't quite the man who invented history in China, but he certainly shaped it for thousands of years. Author of the Shi Ji (Records of the Grand H...
Ding Ling: Sophie, Sensation and Sex
In 1927, China's literary scene was struck by a sensational new character. Her name was Sophie, and she was tormented by sexual longing, unashamedly s...
Matteo Ricci: Jesuit and Geometrist
Better living through geometry. That was one of the lessons shared with the Chinese emperor by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci. He was part of an enter...
Kumarajiva: Translator Monk
Millions of Chinese speak the words of Kumarajiva (334-413) every day. Far fewer have any idea of who he is. He was perhaps China's most influential t...
Chiang Kai-Shek and Soong Meiling: Asian Power Couple
Rana Mitter argues that we can think about Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Meiling (Madame Chiang) as Asia's first power...
Wu Zetian: The Female Emperor
Rana Mitter tells the story of Wu Zetian, the only woman ever to rule as China's emperor in her own right, in two thousand years of dynastic history....