Reading Through China: Then and Now

In 2012, I travelled through China carrying more books than was practical. Because of course I did.

They took up valuable space in my backpack. They made train journeys heavier. They competed with notebooks, guidebooks, and the inevitable accumulation of tickets and receipts. Yet they travelled with me from city to city anyway.

Looking back, the books I carried reveal as much about the journey as the photographs. Some helped me understand what I was seeing. Others simply kept me company on long train rides between destinations. Together they became another way of reading China.

More than a decade later, I find myself thinking not only about the books that travelled with me, but also the books I wish had been available to me then, or the ones that I simply hadn’t discovered yet.

The Books I Read While Travelling Through China

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop

Food was one of the most immediate ways I experienced China. Every city seemed to have its own flavours, habits, and traditions. Meals often arrived with dishes I had never encountered before and couldn’t always identify.

Dunlop’s memoir offered context without diminishing the sense of discovery. Her writing moves between personal experience, regional cuisine, language, and history, creating a portrait of China that feels grounded in everyday life.

I remember reading sections of it in cafés and returning to it after meals. It was the kind of book that made me pay closer attention to what appeared on the table.

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang

I spent several afternoons wandering through Shanghai’s Former French Concession with Eileen Chang in my backpack.

Although the Shanghai of Chang’s fiction belongs to another era, her work still feels intertwined with the city. The streets, apartment buildings, and rhythms of urban life seem to echo across decades.

What I admire most about Chang is her attention to atmosphere. She allows a city to emerge through observation rather than explanation. Reading her while travelling felt less like researching a destination and more like learning how to notice it.

Even now, when I think about Shanghai, I often think about her writing alongside the city itself.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee

This was the book that expanded my understanding of Chinese culture beyond China’s borders.

Lee’s exploration of Chinese food culture begins with a seemingly simple question but quickly branches into stories of migration, identity, adaptation, and community.

While Dunlop’s memoir helped me understand the food I was encountering during the journey, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles reminded me that Chinese culture extends far beyond any national boundary.

It was a useful companion for a traveller, encouraging curiosity not just about where a culture begins, but also about where it travels.

The Books I’d Pack If I Travelled Through China Today

The books in my backpack in 2012 reflected what I knew then. More than a decade later, the landscape of translated Chinese literature feels much richer. If I were making the same journey today, these are the books I would pack.

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi

There are few cities as literary as Shanghai, and few novels as closely associated with the city as The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.

Following the life of Wang Qiyao across several decades, the novel captures both personal and urban transformation. It is the book I most wish I had read before spending time in Shanghai.

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Travel often involves misunderstandings, translation, and the slow process of learning how to communicate. Guo’s novel explores those experiences through language itself. It feels like a natural book to carry while navigating unfamiliar places and cultures.

The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian

One of the limitations of travel is that visitors often follow the same routes through the same major cities.

Chi Zijian’s novel offers a perspective far removed from the urban centres most travellers experience. It explores landscape, memory, and cultural change through the story of the Evenki people in northeastern China.

It is the kind of book that expands a reader’s sense of place.

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge

Not every journey needs a realist companion. Yan Ge’s novel blends folklore, fantasy, and contemporary life into something strange and memorable. It represents the breadth of contemporary Chinese literature now available in translation and feels worlds away from the books I knew in 2012.

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

Li’s novels often explore memory, distance, belonging, and the stories people tell about themselves. The Book of Goose follows an intense friendship between two girls in post-war rural France, yet its themes feel surprisingly suited to travel. It is a novel about observation, reinvention, and the ways place shapes identity.

This is exactly the kind of book I would slip into my bag today; one that invites reflection rather than explanation, and that leaves plenty of space for the landscape outside the train window.

A Reading List Separated by Time

The books I carried through China in 2012 belonged to one version of my reading life. The books I would pack today belong to another.

Between them sits more than a decade of reading, travelling, and returning to places through memory. Some journeys end when the train arrives at its destination. Others continue quietly on bookshelves for years afterwards.

I still have books from that trip. Train tickets remain tucked between chapters. Receipts mark unfinished pages. Open them now and entire cities return, not exactly as they were, but close enough to hear the sound of a station announcement or glimpse a familiar street beyond a café window.