Welcome!

Enrich Your Travels with Longitude

We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.

SIGN UP FOR

Longitude News

Get our monthly e-mail update

GET A

Catalog

In the Kitchen

Gran Cocina Latina, The Food of Latin America

Maricel E. Presilla

SEE ALL >

Antarctica

Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Alfred Lansing

SEE ALL >

Our Favorites

Arctic Dreams

Barry Lopez

SEE ALL >

Tuscany

Every Day in Tuscany, Seasons of an Italian Life

Frances Mayes

SEE ALL >

IMPERIAL JEWELS OF CHINA

Beijing & Shanghai

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

A Comrade Lost and Found, A Beijing Story

A Comrade Lost and Found, A Beijing Story

by Jan Wong

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2010
  • PAPER
  • 336 PAGES
  • NEW

Jan Wong (Red China Blues) returns to Beijing, with her husband and reluctant teenage sons in tow, on a mission to find a classmate she wronged decades ago at Beijing University. (CHN547, $14.95)

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City

by Geremie R. Barme | Mary Beard

  • HISTORY
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 288 PAGES

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. (CHN468, $14.95)

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai

by Wang Anyi | Michael Berry

  • LITERATURE
  • 2008
  • PAPER
  • 440 PAGES

Evocatively set in post-World War II Shanghai, this novel follows the adventures of Wang Qiyao over four tumultuous decades. A girl born of the longtong -- Shanghai's crowded, working-class neighborhoods -- Wang sees fame as Miss Shanghai, indulges in the decadent pleasures of the pre-liberation city and emerges as an icon of Old Shanghai. (CHN570, $22.95)

Eyewitness Guide Beijing and Shanghai

Eyewitness Guide Beijing and Shanghai

by Eyewitness Guides

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2011
  • PAPER
  • 240 PAGES

This superb guide features color photography, excellent maps and a neighborhood-by-neighborhood overview of each city. (CHN385, $23.00)

 
Beijing Guidemap

Beijing Guidemap


by MapEasy

  • 2006
  • MAP

This handy colorful double-sided map shows Central Beigin along with The Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, the Summer Palace, Greater and out-of-town Beijing. (CHN530, $6.95)

Beijing Map

Beijing Map


by Borch Maps

  • 2007
  • MAP

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, tops sights, key attractions, an index and Chinese characters for key place names. (CHN199, $9.95)

Lonely Planet Beijing

Lonely Planet Beijing


by Damian Harper

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 272 PAGES

This practical guide to Beijing features maps, an overview of culture, history and nature, and a good deal of nuts-and-bolts information on excursions, accommodations and sightseeing. There's even a section on the locally spoken dialect of Mandarin. (CHN47, $19.99)

Odyssey Guide Beijing Walks, Exploring the Heritage

Odyssey Guide Beijing Walks, Exploring the Heritage


by Don J. Cohn

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2007
  • PAPER
  • 304 PAGES

An illustrated, literate guide to scenic and historical walks throughout Beijing, much enhanced by color photography and maps. Compact, but includes background on culture and natural history. (CHN369, $24.95)

Visiting Historic Beijing, A Guide to Sites & Resources

Visiting Historic Beijing, A Guide to Sites & Resources


by Robert L. Thorp

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2008
  • PAPER
  • 335 PAGES

Thorp weaves essays on culture and history with site plans and description in this excellent, in-depth guide to exploring the temples, tombs, gardens, palaces, ancient archaeological sites and noteworthy architecture of Beijing and environs. (CHN521, $24.95)

The Forbidden City, Center of Imperial China

The Forbidden City, Center of Imperial China


by Gilles Beguin | Dominique Morel

  • HISTORY
  • 1997
  • PAPER
  • 144 PAGES

This slim volume is packed with maps, archival photographs and illustrations. With a useful chronology and a carefully chosen selection of writings over the ages, it's an indispensable guide to the Forbidden City and the history of Imperial China. (CHN32, $15.95)

The City of Heavenly Tranquility, Peking in the History of China


by Jasper Becker

  • ART & ARCHITECTURE
  • 2008
  • HARD COVER
  • 320 PAGES

A British journalist, Jasper mourns the jumble of courtyard houses, tangle of alleyways, carefully tended ginkgo and pomegranate trees, gardens and canals swept away in the zeal to reinvent Beijing for the 21st century in this rich elegy. (CHN407, $35.00)

Beijing Time

Beijing Time


by Michael Dutton

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2010
  • PAPER
  • 288 PAGES

Dutton's exuberant scholarly analysis of the people, neighborhoods, monuments and transformation of contemporary Beijing includes his charming black-and-white photographs. (CHN467, $18.50)

Dreaming in Chinese, Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language

Dreaming in Chinese, Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language


by Deborah Fallows

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 2011
  • PAPER
  • 208 PAGES

A linguist, living in Shanghai and Beijing with her journalist-husband James (Postcards from Tomorrow Square) the exuberant Deborah Fallows illuminates the Chinese worldview through language in playful, anecdotal essays, documenting her own missteps and growing understanding with self-deprecating humor. (CHN648, $14.00)

Foreign Babes in Beijing, Behind the Scenes of a New China

Foreign Babes in Beijing, Behind the Scenes of a New China


by Rachel DeWoskin

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 2006
  • PAPER
  • 332 PAGES

DeWoskin entertainingly illuminates Chinese versus Western perceptions in this enlightening memoir of her experiences in Beijing (where she landed a role in a soap opera of the title). (CHN478, $21.95)

Red China Blues, My Long March from Mao to Now

Red China Blues, My Long March from Mao to Now


by Jan Wong

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 1997
  • PAPER
  • 368 PAGES

Jan Wong tells of her experiences in the "hermetically sealed bubble of Maoism" as one of two westerners to attend Beijing University, then offers a first-hand account of recent reforms in China. (CHN37, $15.95)

The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City

The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City


by Michael Meyer

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 368 PAGES

Meyer's lovely memoir of the hutong (ancient lane) where he taught school captures the rhythms, traditions and spirit of the alleyways, gardens and courtyard houses of Beijing's traditional neighborhoods south of Tiananmen. (CHN493, $18.00)

Beijing Coma

Beijing Coma


by Ma Jian

  • LITERATURE
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 624 PAGES

In this remarkable novel former Tiananmen Square protester Dai Wei awakens after a decade, learning that his mother had sold one of his kidneys to finance his care, and that the China he knew has undergone radical change. (CHN502, $18.00)

Death of a Red Heroine

Death of a Red Heroine


by Xiaolong Qui

  • MYSTERY
  • 2003
  • PAPER
  • 464 PAGES

Marvelously evocative of Shanghai and tremendously informative about China's transition towards a market economy in the 1990s, Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police must find the murderer of a National Model Worker in this award-winning debut. The series continues with A Loyal Character Dancer (CHN412). (CHN374, $15.95)

Empress Orchid

Empress Orchid


by Anchee Min

  • LITERATURE
  • 2005
  • PAPER
  • 346 PAGES

In this novel of the glorious, decadent last days of 19th-Century Imperial China, Min (Red Azalea, Becoming Madame Mao) combines her tale of a young girl from the provinces who marries an emperor -- and then improbably becomes the Last Empress -- with a lovingly re-created portrait of life in the Forbidden City. (CHN267, $14.00)

Flashman and the Dragon

Flashman and the Dragon


by George MacDonald Fraser

  • LITERATURE
  • 1995
  • PAPER
  • 320 PAGES

The eighth entry in Fraser's popular series of 19th-century adventures starring Harry Flashman, the womanizing rogue and international troublemaker, set in 1860s China. In this installment, our reluctant hero is hoodwinked into joining the Teiping Rebellion, participates in the Seige of Nanking and ends up as a plaything of the Dowager Empress at the Summer Palace. (CHN116, $15.00)

More Recommendations

Here are some other groups of books that might be of interest

Longitude provides recommended reading for travelers in partnership with the leading tour operators and travel programs for hundreds of destinations worldwide. We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.