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Learning about the past is a task that an expat living in China ought to undertake. But if the moral imperative shtick just isn't enough to get you to go out and buy some narrated accounts of China's past, then you're in luck—you can also read them for free.

Three of these free, public books happen to be great reads. Entertaining and easy to get through, each one offers the contemporary reader special insight into the cultural reckoning that China has undergone in the years since their publications. Non-history buffs need not worry—these books are antique but they are certainly not antiquated. So download the PDFs, read them on your phone, computer or reader, or better yet, take them to a print shop and take advantage of China's cheap paper. I guarantee, there's something in these pages for every expat.

1) Lafcadio Hearn: Some Chinese Ghosts (1886)
Written by a Greek-American living in New Orleans, Some Chinese Ghosts is a collection of six stories from the Chinese mainland rendered beautifully into English prose. Reflecting the soul of a China that seems a mere apparition in the context of contemporary Chinese culture, here are tales where mores like filial piety and loyalty triumph tragically but transcendently in the lives of ordinary folk. Meticulous readers will appreciate the notes Hearn gives on each story at the end of the volume, detailing from which sources he draws the skeleton legends of these stories and the reasoning supporting his process of giving them flesh.

All told, the stories in this volume are unified by what the author accurately calls his quest for "a weird beauty." Lush and moody, the effect is a quick and absorbing read with deep impact and a takeaway that impresses upon the contemporary reader a sense of the changes that Chinese values and traditions have since undergone.

2) Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City (1911)
The infamous Empress Dowager's reputation is a thing of legend, but few have heard of Princess Der Ling. She is nonetheless one of the most interesting and controversial figures of her time. Her memoir, written in English for a foreign audience, is one of the few first-hand accounts of the last years of the Empress Dowager's court.

The daughter of a remarkable, reform-minded Manchu minister, Der Ling and her sister Roon Ling were educated abroad during their father's foreign appointment in France. Upon summoning their father back to court in 1905, the Empress Dowager was surprised to learn of the existence of these classically educated, multi-lingual, corset-and-velvet clad young Manchu women. Although education for girls was discouraged at the time, the Empress Dowager was impressed and did not hesitate to invite them to live with her as ladies-in-waiting, with Der Ling serving as both a court translator and the empress's private window into the world beyond the walls of the Forbidden City and China's borders.

Refraining from salacious details or preachy sermons, Princess Der Ling's narration of her time spent at court is a memoir in the truest sense. Her account manages to be both breezy and illuminating, with well-remembered details that are as sensually engaging as they are informative. Rich minutiae exhibit the indulgences and pleasures of court life and highlight both the wealth and insularity of the privileged few in a country undergoing great upheaval. Perhaps her memoir's most valuable feature is the image of the Empress Dowager that emerges, which is less a reflection of a tyrannical power-hungry monster than a portrait of an obstinate old woman who knows only this beautifully ossified world of power-play.

While this peek into the life of the Empress Dowager is interesting, it's Princess Der Ling who emerges as an interesting study through the lens of hindsight. Clever, perhaps a little sly, always amusing, she remains passionately on the side of progress but never willing to abandon or denigrate her country, her roots, and even the hated empress who she herself grew to love. She was a person truly amazing for her ability to walk the tight-rope of competing identities with grace, humour and insight. 

3) Bertrand Russell: The Problem of China (1922)
More than a brilliant mathematician, Bertrand Russell was a passionate progressive and a hopeful socialist, both a great thinker and a product of his time. Thus it was from the precipice of the far end of Western expansionism that Russell and his contemporaries looked back on empire and its destructive, tragic culmination and toward a future whose only certitude was uncertainty. While his contemporaries excitedly intellectualised about the future of Russia and its revolution, it was rather toward China-in-anarchy that Russell looked and in whose situation he found the hopeful optimism he craved. However, it came with a precarious outlook, a combination that presents a special problem and one that he sought to apply his mind to in The Problem of China.

Masterfully and lucidly outlining the contending historical and political influences during China's period of anarchy, Russell has a special way of engaging the reader and a clever and often subtly humorous way of poking fun at the arrogance of Western nations that, while self-deprecating, is as depressingly accurate as it is funny.

The humour and the politics of being a Westerner in China aside, The Problem of China's true strength is Russell's presentation of China's possible moves in the context of what was practically an international checkmate. While unable to predict the rise of a young charismatic such as Mao or the degree of influence that the Bolsheviks would ultimately have on urbanites and students into the ‘30s, his forecasts are eerily accurate.

Ultimately, The Problem of China is instructive for any contemporary reader who would seek to understand the forces and factors that eventually culminated in a century of grand experimentation.

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Keywords: free books about China Some Chinese Ghost Hearn Russell The Problem of China read novels about China Princess Der Ling Two Years in the Forbidden City