The Beijing Olympics focused the world's eyes on China. But despite increased tourism and rampant foreign investment, the cultural distance between China and the West remains as vast as the oceans that separate them. This little book is a visual tribute to the People's Republic of China, with an ardent emphasis on the People.
Do the Chinese experience ghosts, hauntings, ESP and other paranormal phenomena just like Americans? Or is their culture so different that the accounts in this book, collected in Hong Kong in 1980/81 and updated by recent materials over 30 years later, will seem bizarre to anyone else? Interestingly, in spite of clear influences from ancestor ......
Chinese gods: Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they do? 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. And wherever there is a Chinese community there are temples and Earth God ......
Street food is the fuel of daily life in China, just as it has been for generations. In every Chinese city, adventurous travellers seeking a deeper understanding of authentic Chinese culture can find unique local street foods unavailable anywhere else in the world. If you want to sample these treasures but don't know where to start, look no ......
A Guide to Shopping at Hong Kong's Fresh Food Markets
Have you ever wondered about that wacky-looking fruit staring back at you in the local wet market? Or did you want to know how to cook a particular Chinese vegetable, but don't have the language skills? The Chinese Wet Market Handbook gives you the answers! This pocket-sized guidebook, designed to be taken out shopping with you, identifies fresh ......
Squatting amid the luxury hotels and malls of modern Kowloon, Chungking Mansions resembles the dirty vent of a giant subterranean machine. This Hong Kong landmark is a hotbed of criminality and home to pimps, hookers, thieves and drug pushers. The five 17-storey towers also offer the city's last low-rent refuge for asylum seekers and immigrants ......
The 'great' HongKong novel is probably still to be written. But for a definitiveaccount of what the people of the city live by and die for, look nofurther than David T. K. Wong. At last a native son hascaptured brilliantly the essence of a unique society. A range ofcharacters, from barmen to laborers, from scholars to wealthybusinessman, infuse ......
Michael Kohn, former editor of the Mongol Messenger, is one step ahead of the journalistic posse in this epic Western set in the Far East. Kohn's memoir is an irresistible account of a land where falcon poachers, cattle rustlers, exiled Buddhist leaders,death-defying child jockeys and political assassins vie for page one.A turf war between lamas, ......
For the privileged a cosmopolitan pleasure ground; For the desperate a port of last resort. A pot of gold at the end of an Oriental rainbow; A thick slice of hell denounced from the pulpit. The start of a journey for many; The end of the road for some. A place to find fame, or to seek anonymity; Rogues, chancers, showgirls, criminals. For so many ......