chinese history

[hvid]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum but I was interested in lists of good documentaries about chinese history and also lists of good historical fiction movies set in china.

I'm a novice to both but eager to learn and experience in cinema all that I can.

I don't know whether you have read Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now by Jan Wong.

The 4 major chinese classics - Romance of Three Kingdoms, Water Margin (Outlaws of the marsh), Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber. They're all fiction with Romance supposedly 30% historical or the other way around, I don't remember.

Isabel Allende's novel Daughter of Fortune involves long stretches in nineteenth-century China; most of the rest of the novel takes place in South America and California. It's an excellent, absorbing read. The "China parts" are some of the best in the book, too.

[jdc115]

Originally Posted by hvid

Sorry if this is the wrong forum but I was interested in lists of good documentaries about chinese history and also lists of good historical fiction movies set in china.

I'm a novice to both but eager to learn and experience in cinema all that I can.

Not about Chinese History, but Up the Yangtze is an interesting look at the development of modern China and the effects it is having on everyday people.

As far as films, City of Life and Death is good which covers the 3 weeks Japanese occupation which is known as Rape of Nanjing.

The James Clavel novels are good reads but center more on Hong Kong and Japan talk a lot about Chinese culture of those times.