China has been one of the world's longest surviving civilizations. Enduring bloody civil wars, foreign incursions, and domestic unrest, the country bounced between centuries of prosperity as a regional superpower and bloodshed in the fall of a dynasty. Coming into the modern age, China entered a period of government change: ending its thousands of years of dynastic rule, experimenting with democracy, and finally building an initially struggling communist state that has risen in political and economic significance today to alarm the West. From the origin of the peculiar emergence of the city-state Hong Kong to opinions and analysis on China's current domestic policies, this compilation of short stories and articles gives readers a look into information media often leaves out of their stories.