Books by Clarissa Wei
“It makes the case for appreciating Taiwanese food as something that can’t be thought of as a subset or distillation of Chinese food. It is a cuisine in which some dishes are heavily influenced by versions that existed in China, but for centuries Taiwan has had a separate historical trajectory, which has sometimes been tightly connected and sometimes at most only loosely connected to the Chinese mainland. It has been influenced by indigenous traditions and by other parts of the world, especially Japan, and includes versions of ingredients that aren’t found on the mainland…Wei clearly has an interest in thinking about this as a story not only about food, but also as a gateway into thinking differently about Taiwan – not thinking of it as a place temporarily separated from China, but as a place with its own history going back for centuries and which has also been a self-ruled country since the late 1940s.” Read more...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian
Interviews where books by Clarissa Wei were recommended
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1
Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future
by Ian Johnson -
2
Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution
by Tania Branigan -
3
Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food
by Fuchsia Dunlop -
4
Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation
by Clarissa Wei -
5
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
by Tahir Hamut Izgil and translated by Joshua Freeman
The Best China Books of 2023, recommended by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The Best China Books of 2023, recommended by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The rise of China has led to an ever broader range of books about the country becoming available in English. There’s also a greater focus on its diversity, which the country’s Communist leadership likes to downplay. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of Chinese history at UC Irvine, talks us through his favourite books of 2023, from painful historical episodes to the harsh policies targeting a largely Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang today—by way of two lighter books that focus on food and cooking.
