Lee is a bestselling novelist in modern China. She and her contemporaries draw from a long history of Chinese women's writing. Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (2000), edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy, includes a chronological selection of poetry and criticism from 222 to the early twentieth century, as well as helpful notes on the texts and biographical information on the authors.

Richard Gunde's Culture and Customs of China (2002) examines what life is like for people in modern-day China. The book includes sections on every major aspect of Chinese life, including thought and religion; literature and art; food and clothing; architecture and housing; and family and gender.

C. T. Hsia's A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1999) provides a good introduction to Chinese fiction written from 1917 to the late 1990s. The book also covers many...