See last week’s post for methodology.
As with India, China is a big place, so I’m looking at the top eight books which are often tagged with the word “china” by users of Goodreads and LibraryThing.
| Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
| The Joy Luck Club | Amy Tan | 683,230 | 17,574 |
| 孫子兵法 / The Art of War | Sun Tzu | 488,945 | 23,043 |
| Snow Flower and the Secret Fan | Lisa See | 372,515 | 11,252 |
| The Good Earth | Pearl S. Buck | 249,732 | 13,848 |
| 道德經 / Tao Te Ching | Lao Tzu | 157,647 | 18,474 |
| 三体 / The Three-Body Problem | Liu Cixin | 333,543 | 8,595 |
| The Bonesetter’s Daughter | Amy Tan | 128,983 | 7,891 |
| Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China | Jung Chang | 113,005 | 8,318 |
I’m a little uneasy about giving The Joy Luck Club the top spot. The framing narrative is set in San Francisco, and the author has never actually lived in China; but on the other hand it’s clear that the majority of the action of the book is set in China, so I guess I’ll allow it. The Bonesetter’s Daughter has a similar structure of setting.
The Art of War and Tao Te Ching are great Chinese texts, but the principles are universal, and I don’t think there is a single place name mentioned at any point in either, so I’m putting them in italics as not really set in China for my purposes.
Both Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Good Earth are entirely set in China but written by American writers; having said which, Kisa See identifies as Chinese, and Pearl S. Buck grew up in China and lived there for much of her life.
The top books on GR/LT which are mostly set in China and are by authors who were actually born and grew up in China are The Three-Body Problem, followed by Wild Swans. (Though I’ll admit that The Three Body Problem has a dramatic passage set in the Panama Canal, and Jung Chang left China in 1978 when she was 26.)
Not sure how long I will keep this up, but next is the USA.