Tickets available via Eventbrite.

Professor Xing Ruan’s Confucius’ Courtyard takes a sideways look at the politics, culture and history of China using the way we live as a metaphor to explore the cultural similarities and differences between what we have come to call the West and the East.

The book examines the Chinese courtyard, a yard surrounded by four buildings (known as ‘siheyuan’ in Chinese) and ponders why they have gone out of modern favour, especially in Western societies. Do they symbolise anything: do they encourage community or represent isolation? Do they convey national “meaning” through their presentation of a divergent way of living compared to the way modern Western societies live today? What might we learn and gain from social lessons from the past?

The book has been described by professor Yi-Fu Tuan at the University of Wisconsin as ‘a truly magnificent work of scholarship for the understanding of China’. Xing suggests that the book is actually a paeon to our shared humanity.

We will be speaking live to Xing in Shanghai. Bookshop Barnies are salon type discussions challenge the author to justify their work in front of an invited audience of specialists and critics. Unlike most book launches where the most challenging task for the author is to sign so many autographs, Bookshop Barnies force them to take a stand for their ideas.

Confucius’ Courtyard: architecture, philosophy and the good life in China is available for pre-order.