CHINA DISCOVERY
Beijing   |   READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

Here's a page from Longitude, the specialty bookseller for travelers. To order online, and to see the latest, most comprehensive selection of books and maps, go to http://reading.longitudebooks.com/U5332. You may also call 800-342-2164 to order or request a catalog.


Essential Books These 4 items are available for $58, including
U.S. shipping, a 15% discount (Item no. EXCHN422)		  
Lonely Planet Beijing  •  Damian Harper
GUIDEBOOK •  2009 •  PAPER  • 272 PAGES
In its hallmark style, this practical guide to Beijing by Lonely Planet 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. With color photographs and excellent travel information. (CHN47, $19.99)		   Lonely Planet Beijing
The Forbidden City, Center of Imperial China  •  Gilles Beguin  •  Dominique Morel
HISTORY •  1997 •  PAPER  • 144 PAGES
This slim volume is packed with maps, archival photographs and illustrations. A surprisingly effective overview of Beijing's Imperial Court, with a useful chronology, and a carefully chosen selection of writings over the ages. Part of the acclaimed "Discoveries" series of references that fit in your pocket, for travelers it's an indispensable and handy guide to the Forbidden City and the history of Imperial China. (CHN32, $15.95)		   The Forbidden City, Center of Imperial China
The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City  •  Michael Meyer
BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •  2009 •  PAPER  • 368 PAGES
A thoroughly engaging memoir of two years living in Beijing's oldest neighborhood. As more and more of Beijing's alleyways fall to its rapacious growth, journalist Michael Mayer moved into a threathened central Beijing hutong neighborhood (outside latrine and all), and here captures the rhythms, traditions, lively characters and history of the alleyways and courtyard houses. Meyer thoroughly enmeshed himself in the neighborhood -- he even becomes a teacher in the local elementary school -- and the result is a lovely elegy to a dying way of life. (CHN493, $16.00)		   The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City
Beijing Map  •  Borch Maps
2007 •  MAP
This laminated, folded map of the city center of Beijing, at a scale of 1:24,000 notes 2008 Olympic venues, attractions, a map of the metro and ddetailed inset maps of key attractions. With an index and Chinese characters for key place names, very useful for getting around by taxi. Two Sides. 20 X 35 inches. (CHN199, $8.95)		   Beijing Map



Also Recommended

Beijing Guidemap  •  MapEasy    •  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  •  Jen Lin-liu   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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 Guides   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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  •  Don J. Cohn   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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  •  Robert L. Thorp   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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  •  Alexandra Pearson   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  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  •  Caroline Courtauld  •  May Holdsworth  •  Hu Chui  •  Jonathan Spence   • HISTORY  •  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  •  Geremie R. Barme  •  Mary Beard   • HISTORY  •  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)
 		  
Understanding China  •  John Bryan Starr   • HISTORY  •  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  •  Brian Page   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  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  •  Jasper Becker   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  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  •  Jan Wong   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE • 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  •  Michael Dutton   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  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  •  Jan Wong   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  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  •  Lijia Zhang   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  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  •  Ma Jian   • LITERATURE  •  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  •  Anchee Min   • LITERATURE  •  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  •  Rachel DeWoskin   • LITERATURE  •  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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