Showing results by narrator "Daniel York Loh" in All Categories

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture.

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment and torture.

Imagine the universe as a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, stealth is survival – any civilisation that reveals its location is prey. Earth has. Now the predators are coming. Crossing light years, the Trisolarians will reach Earth in four centuries' time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional agents and saboteurs, are already here. Only the individual human mind remains immune to their influence.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of people with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes listeners into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. 

When a Navy vessel comes across a yacht in distress in the middle of the vast Indian Ocean, Captain Danial Tengku orders his ship to rush to its aid. On board the yacht is a British couple: a horribly injured man, Jake, and his traumatized wife, Virginie, who breathlessly confesses, “It’s all my fault. I killed them.” Trembling with fear, she reveals their shocking story to Danial. 

China: AD 1200 Guo Jing and Lotus have escaped Qiu Qianren’s stronghold, but at a steep price: Lotus has been mortally wounded. The only one who could save her life is Duan, King of the South, a man skilled and renowned for his healing. But little do they know that danger awaits, including a plan to tear them apart.

China in the 19th century: a proud and ancient empire forbidden to foreigners. The West desires Chinese tea above all other things but lacks the silver to buy it. Instead, Western adventurers resort to smuggling opium in exchange. The Qing Emperor will not allow his people to sink into addiction. Viceroy Lin is sent to the epicentre of the opium trade, Canton, to stop it. The Opium Wars begin - heralding a period of bloody military defeats, reparations, and one-sided treaties which will become known as the Century of Humiliation.  

Penang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner. Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such friendship comes at a terrible price.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

The Song Empire has been invaded by its warlike Jurchen neighbours from the north. Half its territory and its historic capital lie in enemy hands; the peasants toil under the burden of the annual tribute demanded by the victors. Meanwhile, on the Mongolian steppe, a disparate nation of great warriors is about to be united by a warlord whose name will endure for eternity: Genghis Khan. Guo Jing, son of a murdered Song patriot, grew up with Genghis Khan's army.

Through decades of direct experience of the People’s Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People’s Trilogy offers a riveting account of China’s rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that vaulted the nation from 126t ­largest economy in the world to second ­largest. 

In the Jin capital of Zhongdu, Guo Jing learns the truth of his father’s death and finds he is now betrothed, against his will, to two women. Neither of them is his sweetheart Lotus Huang. Torn between following his heart and fulfilling his filial duty, Guo Jing journeys through the country of his parents with Lotus, encountering mysterious martial heroes and becoming drawn into the struggle for the supreme martial text, the Nine Yin Manual. But his past is catching up with him.

Award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.

Guo Jing has confronted Apothecary Huang, his sweetheart Lotus Huang's father, on Peach Blossom Island, and bested the villainous Gallant Ouyang in the three trials to win the hand of his beloved. But now, along with his two friends and shifus, Zhou Botong of the Quanzhen Sect, and Count Seven Hong, Chief of the Beggar Clan, he has walked into another trap. Tricked into boarding an unseaworthy barge by Apothecary Huang, the three friends will surely drown unless Lotus - who has overheard her father's plans - can find a way to save them.

In the fourth and final volume of Legends of the Condor Heroes, the first novel in the Condor Trilogy, Guo Jing is at last forced to make a choice between loyalty to the land of his birth and keeping faith with Genghis Khan, who has been like a father to him. As the Mongol armies descend on China, Jin Yong brings this most beloved of his books to a thrilling conclusion, complete with vast battles, stirring heroism, heartbreak, triumph and loss.

Following the events of Artifact Space, the galaxy continues to change and expand. Frontiers are challenged and what was once a safe space becomes contested, hostile, and unpredictable. From normal people caught up in the unstoppable machinations of politics and war, to spies faced with making the ultimate sacrifice for their nations, these stories follow the DHC as it faces a challenge to everything it holds dear - human rights, fairness and equality. When a rogue system questions their values and power, how can they stay true to their beliefs and protect their citizens?

After his father, a Song patriot, was murdered, Guo Jing and his mother fled to the plains and joined Ghengis Khan and his people. Loyal, humble, and driven, he learned all he could from the warlord and his army in hopes of one day joining them in their cause. But what Guo Jing doesn’t know is that he’s destined to battle an opponent that will challenge him in every way imaginable and with a connection to his past that no one envisioned.   

The power, anger and fluency of Liang Qichao's writings make him one of the towering figures in modern Chinese literature. He saw his great, almost unmanageable task as an attempt to write China into the new era - to provide an ancient country, devastated by civil war and foreign predators, with the intellectual equipment to renew itself. This selection of pieces shows Liang's extraordinary range and the burning sense of mission which drove him on, attempting to galvanize and refresh an entire nation.

An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas attack on a rush-hour metro, but what links him to a jazz buff in downtown Tokyo? Or to a Mongolian gangster, a woman on a holy mountain who talks to a tree and a late night New York DJ? Set at the fugitive edges of Asia and Europe, Ghostwritten weaves together a host of characters, their interconnected destinies determined by the inescapable forces of cause and effect.

The leading lights of the tech revolution – Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk – have been hailed as savants and saviours of the modern age. And yet they are at the forefront of wealth inequality not seen since the heyday of the robber barons in the late 19th century, part of the slide to the First World War. Today, rampant inequality is inciting social unrest and undermining faith in the institutions of the democratic state. Citizens have been left at the mercy of unfettered capitalism – mere data subjects, endlessly surveilled, marshalled and increasingly angry and polarised.