Reading List
FIELD GUIDES
A Naturalist's Guide to the Birds of China, Southeast China, Including Shanghai
Ding Li Yong
A handy field guide to 280 bird species common to southeast China. In beautiful John Beaufoy style, the guide's colorful and high-quality photographs are accompanied by detailed species descriptions, size distribution, preferred habitats and nomenclature.
Chinese Wildlife
Martin Walters
This compact introduction to birds, mammals, reptiles, insects and plants found from the Tibetan plateau to the deserts, tropical forests and mountains includes 200 color photographs.
MAPS
China Adventure Map
National Geographic
A double-sided, full-color map of China, at a useful scale of 1:4,375,000, which shows roads and cities. Printed on tear- and water-resistant paper.
Beijing Map
Borch Maps
This laminated, folded map of Beijing, with a blowup of the city center at a scale of 1:24,000, notes 2008 Olympic venues. With detailed inset maps of the Beijing Metro, top sights, key attractions, an index and Chinese characters for key place names.
GUIDEBOOKS
Eyewitness Guide China
Eyewitness Guides
This hefty illustrated guide to sites, attractions and places throughout China features excellent maps and hundreds of color photographs and site diagrams.
Culture Smart! China
Kathy Flower
This is a handy guide to local customs, etiquette and culture.
Eyewitness Guide Beijing and Shanghai
Eyewitness Guides
This superb guide features color photography, excellent maps and a neighborhood-by-neighborhood overview of each city.
Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook
Hua-Yuan L. Mowry & Justin Ben-Adam Rudelson
A handy phrasebook for basic Mandarin, focusing on pronunciation, grammar and essential vocabulary for the traveler.
Natural history
The Way of the Panda
Henry Nicholls
Nicholls, whose previous book was on the Galapagos tortoise, here turns to the panda as a powerful political and cultural symbol for modern China as well as for conservation.
HISTORY & CULTURE
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China
Evan Osnos
Longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker Osnos considers China's modern struggle: the conflict between a growing need for individualism and the Communist Party's fight for conformity.
Wild Swans, Three Daughters of China
Jung Chang
In this riveting tale of three generations spanning the end of Old China, Mao's regime and the Japanese occupation, Chang chronicles the enormous changes in China since 1929.
Understanding China
John Bryan Starr
A Yale professor's essential primer on the history, politics and economy of China. A succinct and refreshingly forthright best-selling guide, this third edition discusses the issues at stake in China's present and future.
The State of China Atlas
Robert Benewick & Stephanie Donald
A bold visual survey of political, economic and social change in China.
Beijing, Contemporary and Imperial
Lois Conner
Taken over a 30-year period, internationally-celebrated photographer Lois Conner's black-and-white panoramas explore Beijing's dramatic transformation from an ancient dynastic city to a modern capital of concrete and steel.
China in Ten Words
Allen Barr
"Like ten pairs of eyes -- to scrutinize the current China under ten different angles," Yu Hua traces the transformation of life in China since the Cultural Revolution through key words.
China in the 21st Century
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Wasserstrom puts China's policies, industrialization and international relations in the context of its history and culture in this concise, illuminating introduction.
China Shakes the World
James Kynge
China Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, Beijing-based Kynge brings experience and perspective to this very readable, enlightening report on the transformation of China today.
Chinese Rules
Tim Clissold
An adventurous banker offers an exciting account of his many trials, errors and (mis)adventures in the world of Chinese business. Subtitled "Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China," Clissold's book is shot through with a love for China.
Dragon Rising, An Inside Look at China Today
Jasper Becker
Asia scholar Jasper Becker examines the pertinent questions and issues facing modern China and its relationship to the global economy.
On China
Henry Kissinger
Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the global balance of power in the 21st century.
Out of Mao's Shadow, The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
Philip P. Pan
A former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief's frank but sobering account of the iniquity underpinning China's lurch towards capitalism. Pan crisscrossed the vast nation to reveal "the moral drift of a cynical society" presided over by a corrupt oligarchy.
Postcards from Tomorrow Square
James Fallows
Ranging from politics to society and business, these richly observed, candid essays capture the complexity, tumult and promise of modern China. A correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, where these essays first appeared, Fallows and his wife moved to China in 2006.
Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space
Wu Hung
Author Hung witnessed firsthand the the reinvention of Beijing since the Communist revolution. Focusing on Tiananmen Square, Hung chronicles its evolution from an ancient Imperial site to a political public space, and its shift from an official socialist monument to a place for protestors and demonstrators.
Shanghai Modern, The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945
Leo Ou-Fan Lee
A scholarly look at Chinese urban culture in pre-war Shanghai.
Shanghai, The Rise and Fall of the Decadent City 1842-1949
Stella Dong
A riveting portrait of "the most pleasure-mad, rapacious, corrupt, strife-ridden, licentious, squalid and decadent city in the world."
The Forbidden City
Geremie R. Barme & Mary Beard
A compact, elegant volume in Harvard's excellent Wonders of the World series, this pocket history illuminates the culture, mystique, architecture and politics of imperial Beijing. Fittingly, the book opens with Mao's symbolic address from the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
The Great Wall, China Against the World, 1000 BC - 2000 AD
Julia Lovell
The Who, Why and Wherefore of the Great Wall, this marvelous history demolishes myths (no, the wall is not a continuous structure of great antiquity, as much of it was built in the 1600s) with fresh insight and wit.
The People's Republic of Amnesia, The Legacy of Tiananmen Square
Louisa Lim
NPR China correspondent Lim evaluates the impact of the Tiananmen Square Massacre through the interwoven stories of eight individuals involved in and shaped by the events of June 4, 1989.
The Terra Cotta Army, China's First Emperor and the Birth of a Nation
John Man
Man recounts the 1974 discovery of the 8,000 terra cotta soldiers and uses the legend, lore and facts associated with Emperor Qin's Tomb to speculate about the mysterious emperor himself.
Wealth and Power, China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Orville Schell & John Delury
Orville Schell and John Delury trace the remarkable arc of recent Chinese history through incisive portraits in this lively book.
The Story of Chinese Art, From the Pre-Qin Period to Modern Times
Pan Gongkai
Spanning more than 5,000 years of China's art, this collection brings together more than 1,000 images of art pieces drawn from every museum, library and palace in China and Taipei.
Chinese Lessons, Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
John Pomfret
Pomfret chronicles the lives and fates of his classmates from the University of Nanjing, where he was an exchange student in 1981, in this dramatic account of tumultuous change.
Empress Dowager Cixi, The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
Jung Chang
Jung Chang (Wild Swans) returns with a revealing biography about one of the most important and influential women in Chinese history, Empress Dowager Cixi.
Mao Zedong
Jonathan Spence
Yale sinologist, writer and historian Spence tracks the life of the architect of the People's Republic from his provincial upbringing to his savage three-decade rule.
China, A Traveler's Literary Companion
Kirk Denton
An introduction both to China's finest modern writers and its diverse cultures, concerns and landscapes, organized geographically.