The World of a Tiny Insect

"As an important primary source, I highly recommend the English version of this memoir to students of the modern history of China."—Kent Dang, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

"[L]ucid and erudite. . . . With Tian's translation, we now have represented in English a wide range of different primary source perspectives on the Taiping civil war. This is an important and highly readable translation and an outstanding resource for teaching."—Tobie Meyer-Fong, Monumenta Serica

"[A] fascinating memoir. . . . The World of a Tiny Insect makes the human cost of the rebellion more concrete and comprehensible, especially for students. . . . Xiaofei Tian has done an excellent job as translator. . . . [A] unique and extremely valuable source for understanding rebellion and its impact in nineteenth-century China. . . . [A]ccessible and highly engaging."—Carl Kilcourse, Journal of the American Oriental Society

"The author and narrator recounts his terrible experiences and miraculous survivals with a child's curiosity and in a vivid, straightforward way. But he also embeds what happened to him in a larger historical, philosophical, moral, and aesthetic context. No comparable primary source available in English does anything like this for the Taiping Rebellion."—Judith Zeitlin, University of Chicago