Bestselling author Paul French returns to the Chinese capital in Destination Peking to tell 18 true stories of fascinating people who visited the city in the first half of the 20th century. From the ultra-wealthy Woolworths heiress Barbara Hutton and her husband the Russian emigré Prince Mdivani, to the poor “American girl” Mona Monteith who worked in the city as [...]
"This book is a record of descendants of Baghdadi Jewish merchants who settled in the Treaty Port of Shanghai in the mid-19th century," says Maisie Meyer. "They are authentic voices, allowing us a glimpse of bygone days of privilege, and the rich diversity that made the community so vibrant. It offers infinite perspectives of personalities whose lives were shaped by [...]
Dai grilled fish scented with lemongrass and fresh herbs is one of the great fish dishes of China's Yunnan province, alongside the Bai fish stew made with carp from Dali’s commanding Erhai Lake. The fish from Yunnan’s majestic lakes are generally highly prized. It is a land-locked province, and so it is unusual to find seafood and salt-water fish, but [...]
Roads and Kingdoms magazine has published an interview with Laurent Zylberman, photographer of our new book, Tibet, the Last Cry. "Our stance is that the situation in Tibet is a fixation for many foreigners who know little about it," he says. "It’s always been portrayed as a black and white situation, someplace where there is no middle road. The usual [...]
We've just spent three days cooking, shooting and eating over 70 dishes from Yunnan province, the most diverse in China for both food and people. Linda has brought some hard-to-find ingredients from the province; we've been to various shops and markets in Wan Chai; and Linda has cooked up the dishes with Annabel in her Hong Kong kitchen. See a [...]
Thanks to Time Out Hong Kong for a full-page interview with Annelie Rozeboom, author of our newest title: a book of interviews which explores the life stories of Chinese and Tibetan people in and around Tibet. Click to see at full size. Also read a great review of the book in Cairns Media Magazine: Almost everything that's revealed in Waiting [...]
We don’t publish a lot of fiction — it’s hard to compete in the marketplace with the big names — but occasionally we find an author with a set of stories so relevant we have to go with it. Such was the case with Xujun Eberlein’s Apologies Forthcoming, a collection of short stories set in and around China’s Cultural Revolution. [...]
In advance of Graham Earnshaw’s talk at the Beijing Bookworm on Saturday, here’s a chapter from his brand new book, The Great Walk of China. After crossing flat country for most of the distance from Shanghai, Graham finds himself in the Dabie Mountains of rural Anhui Province. Chapter 2: Drinking Games The day’s walk was over and I returned to [...]
With students at Chinese colleges accused this month of conducting cyber attacks on US businesses in and outside China, plus the alleged Mossad involvement in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, I’m reminded of Paul Ulrich’s spy thriller Saudi Match Point, in which Chinese and American spies compete to seize control of the Saudi oilfields. An excerpt below. [...]
How long would it take to walk from Shanghai to the edges of Tibet? Long-time China resident Graham Earnshaw is in the process of finding out. His westward trek is described in his new book, The Great Walk of China, out at the end of this month. Through his conversations with the people he meets along the way, Earnshaw paints a [...]
Veteran Hong Kong and China journalist Graham Earnshaw -- who is currently engaged on a series of walks from Shanghai to Tibet, picking up each time from the place he left off -- was interviewed this week for Shanghai Urbanatomy's Why I Write column. His latest book, The Great Walk of China, will appear in early 2010. Graham will also [...]
Three copies of Bernd Hagemann's Sleeping Chinese are on their way to readers who can stay awake long enough to answer this question: There are sixty minutes in an hour. But how many winks are there in a nap? Answers to pete at blacksmithbooks dot com, Asian postal addresses only. (Does not include the Land of Nod).
Further to last month's post about the Danxiashan national park in Guangdong, it's worth mentioning that many of the rock formations bear uncanny resemblances to human sexual organs. (I have no photos of those, but Wikipedia does). Ancient Confucians probably avoided the area for these reasons, and it's still very much off the beaten track, but modern China has few [...]
Some years ago now, I crossed the border from Kazakhstan into Xinjiang in China's far northwest, and found myself stuck in Urumchi with the equivalent of US$50 and no onward tickets. It wasn't a problem; saving my cash for food, I 'hitch-hiked' on China's trains by boarding them at small-town stations and then jumping off before the ticket collectors reached [...]
Thanks to ULN at the insightful blog Chinayouren for his review of Chinese Gods: … in terms of surprises, this book delivers from the preface. First, you discover it was actually written and self-published by Chamberlain 30 years ago, inspired by a series of painted glass figures he collected from local markets. It goes on [...]
Beijing-based dealmaker Jack Leblanc's book Business Republic of China has just been reviewed by the South China Morning Post: It has been just under 20 years since Belgian Jack Leblanc heeded a call to go to China and arrived in Chongqing with a suitcase of science books to teach at a university. The freshly minted nuclear physics graduate had abandoned [...]
This month we're offering copies of Jonathan Chamberlain's Chinese Gods to the first three correct answers to our challenge question below. First, here's the book blurb: Chinese folk religion is the underlying belief system of more than a billion Chinese people. Go into any Chinese home, office or restaurant and you will see altars, statues or paper ‘good luck' images. [...]
It was some decade. The universities were closed. Students were at war. Poetry was banned. And the word “love,” unless applied to Mao, was expressly forbidden. Artists were denounced, and many opted for suicide. This is the time — its madness, its passion, its complexity — that Xujun Eberlein brings vividly to life in Apologies Forthcoming, her moving collection of [...]