There are many modern writers who have written about China from the distance of exile.  The best of these include Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress; Anchee Min’s Red Azelea; and Ma Jian’s excellent book about his travels through 1980s China – Red Dust.  Writers who write in China are more difficult to find, but Wellsweep Press produced an excellent range of translations of both modern and classical Chinese literature.  (Modern volumes include The Lost Boat, Henry Zhao; Abandoned Wine, foreword by Gary Snyder; Under Sky Under Ground foreword by Jonathon Spence; and also Picador’s Book of Contemporary Chinese Fiction edited by Carolyn Choa and David Su Li-Qun.)  Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum is an excellent view of pre-liberation China.  Wang Shuo’s is one of China’s most contemporary voices.  His novels such as Please Don’t Call Me Human and Playing for Thrills are very much in the style of Murakami. 

One of the most fascinating books is you could see is The Chinese Century, by Jonathon Spence and Annping Chin.  With photographs ranging from the Qing Dynasty to the One Child Policy – it is an excellent way to sum up China’s recent past.  (My favourites include the peasant with a wind powered wheel barrow and the old man who saves his coffin from the floods.)  Chinese erotic art has obviously attracted many avid fans through the years, with Mao Tse Dong being the most famous modern collector.  Beautiful examples of these pillow books can be found in Dreams of Spring, Erotic Art in China, from the Bertholet Collection. 

Finally: one of the best ways to visit China, without actually boarding a plane, is by sampling some of the superb cinema that has come out of China in recent years.  Directors such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou are now famous world-wide for their stunning visual cinema, and compared to literature, there is a wealth of modern material here.