A memoir of China

 

 

Excellent condition. PB. 260pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Urgent and timeless, Legacies brings us closer than we have ever been to penetrating the great conundrum of China m the twentieth century. It could only have been written by Bette Bao Lord -- born in China, raised in America, author of the bestselling novel Spring Moon, wife of a former American ambassador to China, resident in Beijing during the "China Spring" of 1989. Lord's unique web of relationships and her sensitive insight have enabled her to observe Chinese life both high and low, Communist and dissident, intellectual and ordinary.

Lord interweaves her own story, and that of her clansmen, with the voices of men and women who recall the tumultuous experience of the last fifty years, and the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. In precise, subtle prose, Lord explores the reality of Red Guards and reeducation camps, of friends and families severed by political disgrace, and captures the individual voices of those caught up in them: the seven-year-old girl with a heart full of hate for her father; the journalist whose girlfriend believes the Party newspapers, not him; the imprisoned scholar who hid his writings in his quilt for years; the anti-revolutionary who tells his bitter story in a vein of high farce. All bear heartbreaking witness to the surreal quality of Chinese society today -- and to the astonishing resilience, humor, and heroic equanimity of the Chinese spirit.

SOLD Travels through Muslim and Buddhist China

 

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Excellent condition. PB. 352pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The early trade in silk was carried on against incredible odds by great caravans of merchants and animals traveling over some of the most inhospitable territory on Earth, including searing, waterless deserts and snowbound mountain passes. Beginning at the magnificent ancient Chinese city of Chang'an (Xi'an), the route took traders westward along the Hexi Corridor to the giant barrier of the Great Wall, then either north or south of the Taklamakan Desert to Kashgar before continuing on to India and Iran, or farther to the great cities of Constantinople, Damascus and Baghdad. For today's traveler, it is not only the weight of history that makes the Silk Road intriguing, but the incredible diversity of scenery and ethnic people along the way. This beautifully photographed and intelligent book is the authoritative guide to travel in the region.

Fully illustrated with maps.

Personal stories behind China's economic miracle

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. 384pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Jane Hutcheon's became the ABC's China correspondent in 1995, she began a journey through an ancient and intriguing culture that is undergoing rapid change. Though China has transformed itself into a heady capitalistic republic, the country's new facade covers up a multitude of the same old problems.

Journeying across China

 

Very good condition. HB. 320pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Having learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron sets off on a 10,000 mile journey from Beijing to Tibet, starting from a tropical paradise near the Burmese border to the windswept wastes of the Gobi desert and the far end of the Great Wall. 

What Thubron reveals is an astonishing diversity, a land whose still unmeasured resources strain to meet an awesome demand, and an ancient people still reeling from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Travels through China's places of pilgrimage

 

Good condition. PB. 339pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

To walk through China is to walk on holy ground. Travels Through Sacred China is a guide to the soul of China. It is also a guidebook which enters into the spirit of Tao.

A revealing guide to China's guide to the vast religious and spiritual heritage

This book explains why to understand the soul of China you must see the sacred in China, which is there in the designs of the buildings, the street plans of the cities, in the household shrines at the back of shops, and in the concept that the very land of China itself is sacred. It presents the fundamental sacred ideas that lie at the heart of this ancient land, and is also a guidebook which enters into the spirit of the Dao, through which the culture and traditions of China are brought to life.

About the author

Martin Palmer is a regular contributor to the BBC on religious, ethical, and historical issues, and appears regularly on both BBC radio and TV, including the World Service. He is also a well-known translator of Chinese classical texts such as the Dao De Jing and the Shang Shu, and is an advisor to the China Taoist Association, the Mongolian Buddhist Sangha, and the World Council of Churches as well as heading the Alliance of Religions and Conservation.

SOLD Vikram Seth hitchhikes through Xinjiang and Tibet

 

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Rare book. Reasonable condition. PB. 178pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

After two years as a postgraduate student at Nanjing University in China, Vikram Seth hitch-hiked back to his home in New Delhi, via Tibet.  From Heaven Lake is the story of his remarkable journey and his encounters with nomadic Muslims, Chinese officials, Buddhists and others.

About the author

Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.

During the course of his doctorate studies at Stanford, he did his field work in China and translated Hindi and Chinese poetry into English. He returned to Delhi via Xinjiang and Tibet which led to a travel narrative From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983) which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

SOLD Travels through Xinjiang

 

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Very rare book. A classic travelogue through parts of Xinjiang that are now forbidden to outsiders. PB. 288pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This is a first-hand account of how a tall blonde Western woman travelled in disguise as a Chinese man (in Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers), through the remote, forbidden and perilous parts of Southern China, in search of an ancient kingdom and the fabulous 2nd-century wall paintings left untouched for thousands of years. 

Christa Paula, a young German student of Central Asian art and archaelogy has something of the same adventurous spirit as her friend Nick Danziger. 

The area she set out to discover in 1989/90 was under military rule, closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and it was in the company of Chang, a taxi-driver and self-styled Chinese James Dean, that she continued her journey. 

They travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps, and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing.

An important Chinese history

 

Chinese and world history made on a race track.

Mint condition. HB. 340pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

November 12, 1941: war and revolution are in the air. At the Shanghai Race Club, the city's elite prepare to face off their best horses and most nimble jockeys in the annual Champions Day races.

Across town and amid tight security, others celebrated the birth of Sun Yat-Sen in a new city center meant to challenge European imperialism.

Thousands more Shanghai residents from all walks of life attended the funeral of China's wealthiest woman, the Chinese- French widow of a Baghdadi Jewish businessman.

But the biggest crowd of all gathered at the track; no one knew it, but Champions Day heralded the end of a European Shanghai.

Through this colorful snapshotof the day's events, the rich and complex history that led to them, and a cast of characters as diverse as the city itself, James Carter provides a kaleidoscopic portrait of a time and a place that still speaks to relations between China and the West today.

SOLD Real life stories from the People's Republic of China

 

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Excellent condition. PB. 325pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Corpse Walker is a collection of twenty-seven extraordinary interviews that opens a window, unlike any other, onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women.

Liao Yiwu reconstructs conversations he had between 1990 and 2008 with a range of remarkable people: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a leper, an abbot, a retired government official, a former landowner, a mortician, a feng shui master, a former Red Guard, a political prisoner, a village teacher, a blind street musician, a Falun Gong practitioner and a corpse walker.

The result is an idiosyncratic, powerful and dignified portrait of a people, a time and a place we might otherwise have never known.

Travels through Japan, China and Russia

 

Excellent condition. PB. 384pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'I am in exactly the right place, thinking, doing and feeling exactly the right things...'

This was the affirmation that Brad Newsham repeated daily as he cycled alone across the Japanese Alps to Mount Fuji, free to wander wherever he chose. But back home in San Francisco, life hadn't been so rosy: his wife had met someone else and wanted a divorce. He tried everything to change her mind, eventually leaving his job and buying a one-way ticket to Asia in the hope that she would miss him. It worked...and then HE met someone else on a bus in Hong Kong.

One of the first wave of Western backpackers to blaze a trail through China and Russia, Brad Newsham travelled from the neon-lit streets of Tokyo to the epic prairies of Mongolia in a journey that took him across Asia by bicycle, boat, bus and the Trans-Siberian railway. With its rich and fascinating cast of characters, All The Right Places is classic travel writing at its very best. 

Playing Chopsticks - Travels Through China

 

2007. Mint Condition. PB. 224pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A light-hearted visitor's view of a vast country with a long and revered history.

Sally Hammond shares entertaining and informative stories about her visits to China: strolls through a Kashgar cattle market, meetings with nomads, and searching for a western-style loo in the wilds of China.

Read about yak's butter in Tibet, and her experiences on the Silk Road, the Great Wall, Macau, Hong Kong, and Beijing.

There are tips on chopstick etiquette, and how to cook rice, as well as recipes for delicious regional dishes.

Anyone interested in life in modern day China, planning a visit there, or wishing to recreate authentic Chinese cooking, will find this a very helpful book.

Sally Hammond is a freelance journalist, and award-winning food and travel writer, based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She has written cookbooks, guides, and directories. She has also taught extensively, and run her own food businesses. She travels, and collaborates, with her award-winning photographer husband, Gordon.