Your questions, answered. In-depth interviews with the minds and makers shaping today’s China.

Q & A

q-&-a

The Historian Rewriting China’s Understanding of the World

Qian Chengdan is one of China’s best-known historians. In a new book, he and his team attempt to produce a comprehensive Marxist history of the world.

Wu Haiyun

Witches and ‘Poisonous Cats’: A Scholar’s Search for Society’s Scapegoats

Wang Mingke has spent his life studying marginalized communities in China’s far west. That work has helped him better understand everything from anti-Asian hate to social media polarization.

Peter Hessler’s World of Words

The acclaimed author on generations, his approach to writing, and how China has changed since the 1990s.

Xue Yongle

What Makes a Myth?

The head of the China Mythology Society on the “Creation of the Gods” trilogy and the low status of mythological studies in China.

What Was China’s First Museum?

According to historian Xu Jian, the answer is more complicated — and more controversial — than you might think.

The Making of Yunnan

Historian Yang Bin shares his thoughts on Yunnanese history, his unique approach to the region, and how border areas shape a state.

What’s Love to a Feminist?

The feminist cultural critic Dai Jinhua shares her thoughts on intersectionality, love, and the shrinking space for alternative lifestyles in contemporary China.

A Key Plank of China’s Planned Economy Is Making a Comeback. Why?

The revival of grassroots supply and marketing cooperatives has raised fears of a backslide. But the real reason for their return has gone largely ignored.

Cai Yineng

A Woman of No Significance

When historian Luo Xin began experimenting with “microhistory,” his colleagues were dismissive. Then his biography of a fifth century palace maid became one of the biggest books of 2022.

Digging Into the Shang Dynasty’s Empire of Bones

For centuries, the rulers of China’s first dynasty practiced a brutal form of human sacrifice. What did it mean? And more importantly, why did they stop?