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Beijing

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Books for

Click on Essential Reading for the featured set of Beijing books and a map. We offer free shipping on anything else you order with the travel books package.

Essential Reading

Item EXCHN422. Buy these 4 items as a set for $58 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

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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)

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 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, $16.00)

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, $8.95)

 
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 Day by Day

Beijing Day by Day


by Jen Lin-liu

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2011
  • PAPER
  • 180 PAGES

A compact shirt pocket guide, ideal for a short visit, featuring remarkably good suggestions for everything from food, hotels and neighborhoods to shopping. With a separate foldout map of the city center. (CHN510, $13.99)

Knopf Mapguide Beijing

Knopf Mapguide Beijing


by Knopf Guides

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 48 PAGES

A handy set of full color, ingeniously folded maps, each indicating favorite sites, shops, restaurants and attractions. (CHN349, $10.95)

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)

Beijing, Portrait of a City

Beijing, Portrait of a City


by Alexandra Pearson

  • CULTURAL PORTRAIT
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 172 PAGES

This collection of Beijing photographs presents a highly original and unforgettable impression of one of the world's oldest and most fascinating cities. (CHN592, $27.95)

Forbidden City, The Great Within


by Caroline Courtauld | May Holdsworth | Hu Chui | Jonathan Spence

  • HISTORY
  • 2008
  • PAPER
  • 152 PAGES

This richly illustrated blend of history, anecdote, biographical sketches and stunning images evokes daily life in the Bejing's imperial city. (CHN450, $24.95)

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City


by Geremie R. Barme | Mary Beard

  • HISTORY
  • 2008
  • HARD COVER
  • 252 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, $19.95)

Understanding China

Understanding China


by John Bryan Starr

  • HISTORY
  • 2010
  • PAPER
  • 400 PAGES

The Yale professor brings us up to date in this third edition of his succinct and refreshingly forthright best-selling guide to China's economy, history and politics. (CHN196, $17.95)

Beijing Then and Now

Beijing Then and Now


by Brian Page

  • ART & ARCHITECTURE
  • 2007
  • HARD COVER
  • 144 PAGES

Past and present Beijing are compared in photographs of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Confucious Temple, the Marco Polo Bridge and other notable city sites. (CHN448, $18.95)

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, $28.00)

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)

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, $17.95)

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)

Socialism Is Great!, A Worker's Memoir of the New China

Socialism Is Great!, A Worker's Memoir of the New China


by Lijia Zhang

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 384 PAGES

A student who joined the Tiananmen Square protest, Lijia Zhang traces her coming of age in Nanjing in the 1980s in this spirited memoir. (CHN501, $15.00)

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)

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)

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

  • LITERATURE
  • 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, $13.95)

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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.