Chinese Literature

Improve your Chinese skills and grow your vocabulary with these 10 entertaining Chinese short stories!

The Last King of Shang is a retelling, in modern Chinese, of the classic novel Investiture of the Gods. It is a gripping story set in ancient China, weaving together mythology, magic, and heroism. It is a story of the rise and fall of powerful gods and mortals amidst a backdrop of political intrigue and celestial conflict. Seduced by Daji, his beautiful fox demon concubine, the Shang king brings his kingdom to the brink of ruin through cruelty and neglect.

光绪宣统年间的古城子，传统道德的堤坝轰然垮塌。贪官索要万民伞，村愚把落草为寇当成乐子。甲午之衰，光绪奇灾，俄人筑路，两次跑毛子，宣统鼠疫浩劫…… 光緒宣統年間的古城子，傳統道德的堤壩轟然垮塌。貪官索要萬民傘，村愚把落草為寇當成樂子。甲午之衰，光緒奇災，俄人築路，兩次跑毛子，宣統鼠疫浩劫……

One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China’s internment camps for Muslim minorities.

The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family’s controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.

Li Ye (Marry Lennox) grew up without the love and affection of her parents. After an epidemic leaves her an orphan, Li Ye is sent off to live with her reclusive uncle in his sprawling estate in Nanjing. She learns of a secret garden where no one has set food in 10 years. Li Ye finds the garden and slowly discovers the secrets of the manor. With the help of new friends, she brings the garden back to life and learns the healing power of friendship and love.

From the menacing vision of a red umbrella, to the ominous atmosphere of the Laughing Mountain; from the waking dream of virtual working to the sinister games of the locked room . . . this is a fascinating insight into the spine-chilling voices working within China today-a long way from the traditional expectations of hopping vampires and hanging ghosts.

Young Wang has received plenty of wisdom from his beloved uncle: don’t take life too seriously, get out on the road when you can, and everyone gets just seven great loves in their life—so don’t blow it. This last one sticks with Young as he is an obsessive cataloger of his life: movies watched, favorite albums . . . all filtered through Chinese numerology and superstition. He finds meaning in almost everything, for which his two best friends endlessly tease him. But then, at the end of 1995, when Young is at New York University, he meets Erena.

Pedro is excited to celebrate Chinese New Year with his friend Katie Woo and her family. They attend a colorful parade filled with dragons and drums. But when Katie goes missing, Pedro is worried. How will he find his friend among all the bright colors and big sounds? Thankfully Pedro is ready to come to the rescue in this early chapter book.

A puzzling publishing murder attracts the eye of Ellery Queen. Mandarin Press is a premier publishing house for foreign literature, but to those at the top of this enterprise, there is little more beautiful than a rare stamp. As Donald Kirk, publisher and philatelist, prepares his office for a banquet, an unfamiliar man comes to call. No one recognizes him, but Kirk’s staff is used to strange characters visiting their boss, so Kirk’s secretary asks him to wait in the anteroom.

安徒生是丹麦著名童话作家，世界文学童话创始人。《安徒生童话》中闪耀着的人性光辉，超越了国家、种族与文化的界线，是世界各地一代又一代读者的挚爱。…… 安徒生是丹麥著名童話作家，世界文學童話創始人。《安徒生童話》中閃耀著的人性光輝，超越了國家、種族與文化的界線，是世界各地一代又一代讀者的摯愛。

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the more she explores the residential lanes and courtyards behind Shanghai’s busy shopping streets, the less she wants to return to the country as a dutiful wife. As Fu Ping wavers over her future, she learns the city through the stories of the nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors of postwar Shanghai....

《名人传》是有关贝多芬，米开朗基罗和列夫·托尔斯泰的传记。三位传主都是人类历史上极富天才的人物……《名人傳》是有關貝多芬，米開朗基羅和列夫·托爾斯泰的傳記。三位傳主都是人類歷史上極富天才的人物……

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx–the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother—to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville. At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee.

Lalu Nathoy's father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his "thousand pieces of gold," yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. This biographical novel is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for independence and dignity in the American West.

Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith. The diary is that of a man who acknowledges that he is not a "Somebody"—Charles Pooter of 'The Laurels', Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, a clerk in the city of London—and it chronicles in hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle class during the Great Victorian age.

From one of China’s most famous contemporary writers, here is a stunning collection of stories, selected from the best of Yu Hua’s early work, that shows his far-reaching influence on a pivotal period in Chinese literature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yu Hua and other young Chinese writers began to reimagine their national literature. Departing from conventional realism in favor of a more surreal and subjective approach inspired by Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, the boundary-pushing fiction of this period reflected the cultural changes sweeping the world’s most populous nation.

Tanis Lyle was one of those passionate women who always get their own way. Her cousin Laura hated her. Most women did. But men found her irresistible and she used them mercilessly. So when Tanis was found murdered there seemed to be any number of suspects on hand. But Miss Silver had her own suspicions…

王阳明，本名王守仁，自号阳明子，学者称之为“阳明先生”，后世亦多以“王阳明”称之，他是明代著名的思想家、文学家、哲学家、军事家……王陽明，本名王守仁，自號陽明子，學者稱之為「陽明先生」，後世亦多以「王陽明」稱之，他是明代著名的思想家、文學家、哲學家、軍事家……

战国时期，在清溪鬼谷山上隐居着一位被尊称为鬼谷子的老人，他不和人来往，过着与世隔绝的生活……戰國時期，在清溪鬼谷山上隱居著一位被尊稱為鬼谷子的老人，他不和人來往，過著與世隔絕的生活……