Alec Ash

China After Mao by Frank Dikötter Dikötter’s “People’s Trilogy” (Mao’s Great Famine, The Tragedy of Liberation, The Cultural Revolution) records in agonizing detail some of the most harrowing moments of the Mao era. It was always going to be interesting to see how he handled economic rejuvenation under Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平, and diplomatic triumphs under Jiāng Zémín 江泽民 and Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛, from the return of Hong Kong in 1997 to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Tom Pellman: I lived in China from 2005 until the end of 2016. And most of those years, the last eight, were in Beijing. I started on the book in 2011, and worked on it off and on until 2016. The book is about Beijing, the way that I think about the city. It follows the lives of a handful of characters who come from different parts of society, and how their lives come together through a central Ferrari car crash.

My tactic for getting away with this was very simple: I lived in Dali, Yunnan, and hadn’t left my mountain village since January 2020. While a tourist town, new arrivals were tested at the airport or train station, and no tests (or even a green code or mask) were required to move around inside the valley. There was a limited lockdown in February 2020, lifted in March, and none since then.