To open a book brings profit
List by Jill
Quote is a Chinese proverb
You may not agree with our lists, in fact we're hoping that you won't - and that you'll email and tell us what you'd have chosen instead. This means that we'll be able to create lists that better reflect what you're reading. So...what're you waiting for?!
China
by Alison Bailey
951 CHI
This beautifully illustrated volume, printed in an oversized format (10x12.25"), presents separate sections on China's landscape, history, culture, and architecture. The spectacular photographs dominate, but the text is not superficial. Especially compelling are the chapters devoted to the lives of 14 Chinese from all ages and walks of life who live in different parts of this diverse country, with details of their daily life and photos of their houses, families, and surroundings. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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First pass under heaven : a 4,000-kilometre walk along the Great Wall of China
by Nathan Hoturoa Gray
NZ 915.1 GRA
The epic journey of a New Zealand lawyer, a Buddhist monk, an Argentinean photojournalist, an Italian recording artist and a Mormon golfer, travelling together along the Great Wall of China. Having decided to mark the millennium in cultural, racial and religious harmony, the five men quickly encountered reality: blizzards, lightening strikes, thirst, starvation, snakes and police detention. This is Nathan Gray's account of his 4,000-kilometre trek along the largest man-made structure ever built. His story is remarkable, uncovering the Wall's profound history and revealing insights into China's geopolitical climate, as he shares his personal journey of physical, mental and emotional triumph.
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Embrace the darkness
by Polly Greeks
915.1 GRE
Instant attraction turns Polly Greeks and Nathan Gray into lovers, and together they trek 500 kilometres of the Great Wall, including many of its most remote and dangerous sections. In Embracing the Dragon, Greeks vividly recounts her remarkable journey over jagged mountain passes, into villages which have never seen a European woman and through a blizzard that nearly claims her life. She also traces her increasingly tempestuous relationship with her lover and with the wall itself. Embracing the Dragon will enthrall those who thrive on adventure or only dream of it and all who are captivated by the history, mythology and crumbling might of the world's greatest man-made structure.
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Oracle bones : a journey between China's past and present
by Peter Hessler
951 HES
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world. A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time -- the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country -- is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China's transformation. Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand. Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.
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Boxing with shadows : travels in China
by Brian Johnston
915.1 JOH
Boxing with shadows is Brian Johnston's account of the two and half years he spent living and travelling in China.
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