Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker's Studio

China’s first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers including the much younger Mao Zedong. – Pankaj MishraI have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one, [it is] a real milestone […] Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays from Liang Qichao […]They often succeed in capturing distinctive elements of Liang’s style, including his seeming breathlessness as he lists ever more historical examples or his full-throated urgency as he rushes to convince his readers of the crisis they are facing at any given moment [… it] should be read by all serious students of modern politics – Leigh Jenco * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *Not being aware of Liang Qichao is like not being aware of Nietzsche or Hegel… eclectic and robustly cosmopolitan, a fascinating figure – Jeffery Wasserstrom

Liang Qichao (1873-1929) was a reformist intellectual, who facing brutal repression fled to Japan where he lived for fourteen years. His long exile, travels and writing - of fiction, journalism and above all essays - gave Liang a unique authority in the first years of the twentieth century.

Peter Zarrow is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. He has held teaching and research positions in Australia and Taiwan, and he has published extensively in English and Chinese on the intellectual and cultural history of China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.