Then a Timeout Shanghai listing with Seven Shanghai Bookstores pops up. Two bookstores are right here - so that’s where we go.

On Fuzhou road we spot the Shanghai Ancient Bookstore.

No English books here. Still, we spend ages walking through its four floors, admiring the painting studio, the calligraphy scrolls and ancient texts on display.

Across the road is the Foreign Languages Bookstore. Inside a theme song from the Harry Potter films plays in the background. We see books by David Baldacci, Robin Cook, Charles Dickens, Chimmamanda Ngozie Adichie and Norwegian Nobel prize winner Jon Fosse - all in English.

What about some Chen Cao murder mystery books - the police inspector in this series is based right here in Shanghai. I’ve been hooked to these mysteries for months now, watching Chen navigate the complexities of modern China, solving murders while he balances conflicting power centres - his police department bosses, the Communist party bigwigs and the rich business men, all with their wives and their ernai (modern day concubines).

We look through the four floors of the Foreign Languages Bookstore, but no Inspector Chen.

What about Inspector Li? This police inspector features in Peter May’s China mysteries. Li is based in Beijing, but he visits Shanghai to solve cases- in The Killing Room, which I just read, he investigates deaths caused to women and babies during the years of the One Child Policy. But no Peter May either.

OK no fiction, maybe we should hunt for non-fiction- Like Once upon a Time in the East, a memoir by award winning British-Chinese writer Xiaolu Guo. That’s not here either. And the recent House of Huawei by Eva Dou - maybe that will be here.

But the bookstore manager shakes his head - “Sorry, we don’t have that one either”. It feels strange that such bestselling books on China should have no presence in such a large and otherwise well stocked bookstore.

Walking out we are contemplative - China doesn’t seem repressive. Everywhere people have been friendly and generous - they have been forthcoming about their businesses, we’ve eaten together sitting at revolving round tables, using our chopsticks to pick roasted eggplants and green beans, shredded pork and even fried scorpions. We’ve talked about tariffs and geopolitics, infrastructure, solar battery cars and even child rearing. Am I reading too much into not finding contrarian bestsellers in this bookstore ? After all, we maybe barred from visiting a Chinese colleague’s ancestral home in the provinces without a special pass, but we have been able to easily visit every factory we wanted to.

At the airport, I sprinkle spring onions, roasted garlic and chilli sesame oil onto my bowl of steaming noodles - now dextrous with my chopsticks, as I read the closing pages of Enigma of China on my Kindle.

This book, No. 8 in the Inspector Chen series, goes behind the scenes of the murder. Here’s where Chinese State is controlling the internet, employing special police to track whistleblowers who expose corruption in the Party ( because such whistleblowers threaten the ‘harmony’ of the country) Through all this our Inspector Chen manages to find a middle path as he cracks the case of the murder of the Head of the Housing Committee in Shanghai.

Chen has found clarity which is more than I can say for myself. Literature converges with my first hand experiences and it’s amazing to take this all in, even though I feel I am still far from sorting out my own ideas on this complex country.

As our plane lifts off from Shanghai’s ultramodern Pudong International Airport, I hold tight to my own pieces of China - a ceramic jar of tea and a cream-coloured teapot with beautiful gold calligraphy. I can’t fully decipher the symbols on it. But I do want to know more.

Here then are my favourite fiction books set in China. And here’s non-fiction to help you understand China . What China books would you recommend to add to these lists?

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Land of Big Numbers - short stories of modern day China by journalist Te-Ping Chen

Enigma of China, Shanghai Redemption and others in the series featuring Inspector Chen by Qiu Xiaolong

The Killing Room and other China Thrillers, a six book mystery series by Peter May

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - a novella by Dai Sijie set in the Cultural Revolution

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh - historical fiction set in the Opium Wars.

The Iron Widow and The Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao - The first two sci-fi books of a planned trilogy, where history meets politics.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeliene Thien - Two generations of a musical family grapple with being fractured by repression.

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo - historical fiction meets ancient folktales in this story set in the dying Qing empire.

The Good Earth and other classic novels set in China by Nobel prize winning Pearl S Buck.

(Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)