RE: religion, the impression I've gotten is that it's specifically organization that the government sees as a threat. So, without the context of Urumqi riots or bombings, they'd probably default to seeing catholics or certainly falun gong as a bigger threat than disorganized Uyghur muslims. Protestant christians less so, if they knew enough to discriminate.
I don't have any great reading materials for 2020 daily life, there's laowhy86 and serpentza on youtube who I haven't watched much but they've been recommended.
Mao, the unknown story, fantastic original research but you've gotta discount for a LOT of bias as the author is clearly still butthurt over the civil war. Not to say that Mao was a nice guy, but if you're refusing to use pinyin in the 21st century, calling Beijing 'Peking', you've got some baggage.
Longer run of history, makes you realize all of the cultural context that they have which differs from ours and makes conversation impossible at times.
I don't have any great reading materials for 2020 daily life, there's laowhy86 and serpentza on youtube who I haven't watched much but they've been recommended.
Books: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MHHREI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
Mao, the unknown story, fantastic original research but you've gotta discount for a LOT of bias as the author is clearly still butthurt over the civil war. Not to say that Mao was a nice guy, but if you're refusing to use pinyin in the 21st century, calling Beijing 'Peking', you've got some baggage.
https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-China-J-Roberts/dp/06...
Longer run of history, makes you realize all of the cultural context that they have which differs from ours and makes conversation impossible at times.