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China’s qiqong fever

Chasing the Falun Gong beat in Beijing and around China

Winning the Pulitzer

Recommended Readings:

David Ownby, 1996, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China, Standford Universit

Ian Johnson, 2004, Wild Grass, Pantheon

David A. Palmer, 2007, Qigong Fever, Columbia University Press

David Ownby, 2008, Falun Gong and the Future of China, Oxford University Press

Ian Johnson, 2017, Souls of China, Knopf Doubleday

Ian Johnson, 2023, Sparks, Oxford University Press

About us

The Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu’s research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.

We also have a Chinese-language Substack. We hope to publish more conversations like this one, so stay tuned!

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Christmas Special 2025 - Q and A