China Books

Is there anyone who has traveled in Thibet in our days and
reached that famous place in Amdo and has seen the tree
with the letters on the leaves?

I got this book because I was researching central Asia, and then didn't read it for a couple of years. When I finally did, I couldn't put it down. This is a true account by two French priests who travelled by camel and horse, first to Mongolia and then to Tibet in the 1840s. What they saw and did is fabulously interesting, but the joy of this book is that it's wonderfully written. Huc, who actually wrote it, is a kind of 19th Century Paul Theroux, but without the sour attitude. This book is a great read

I'm 52 years old and was fairly smug about what I had learned after 20 years or so of pretty serious reading. Then into my life, through the miracle of "amazon.comm" comes by Dagyab Rinpoche: hold on to your beliefs folks: get ready for a roller-coaster ride through Tibetan philosophy as translated from that philosophical language: German. And at the end there are instructions on how to take care of and treat the book and other books of similar nature. Scary

I'm not a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, but I've acquired a fair amount of knowledge through osmosis: I do volunteer work for a Tibetan refugee relief organization. One slow afternoon in our shop, I picked up this book to improve my knowledge of the iconography in the graphics we sell, and was blown away. Not only has the author written a clear, readable explication of the symbolism, but the book is also a terrific introduction to fundamental Tibetan Buddhist beliefs. The average Tibetan may not be able to elucidate the intricacies of the sacred texts, or practice the stylized form of debate that forms an important part of a monk's training. But the book gives great insight into what this average Tibetan actually believes. Now I feel I have a better understanding of how the Tibetans' Buddhism has sustained them through persecution, exile, and attempts by the Chinese government to stamp out their culture. (And the Fur-Bearing Fish isn't a refugee from a Dr. Seuss book, but a symbol with profound meaning.) This is a great little book, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

The book refutes the prevailing modernization theory that capitalism can lead to democracy. Findings from the study of private entrepreneurs in different regions in China supports Professor Tsai's proposition that the relationship between economic liberalism and political freedom is not definitely correlated.

Putting it in a nutshell, this book has contributed to three major findings in the study of political economy in China. First, economic liberalization in China since 1976 has not resulted in the emergence of democratic regime or the decline of the authoritarian state. According to Professor Tsai, private entrepreneurs in China are not nuts about democracy and researchers cannot view private entrepreneurs as a homogeneous class because of their diverse identities, interests, and values in politics. Second, widespread apathy amongst private entrepreneurs in China towards democracy does not mean that they have an acquiescent nature. They tend to adopt different coping strategies rather than instigate virulent opposition against the regime or demand regime transition when various formal institutions constrain their business activities. The so-called "coping strategies" result in a variety of "adaptive informal institutions" being established in different economic regions in China. Based on hundreds of in-depth interviews and nationwide survey of private entrepreneurs, Professor Tsai divides them into five key types; namely Wenzhou model, Sunan model, Zhujiang model, state-dominated model, and Limited development model. For instance, private entrepreneurs in Wenzhou engaged in a variety of innovative financing practices to set up and expand their businesses which were outside of the state banking system. Private entrepreneurs in Guangdong province sought to establish fake foreign enterprises in order to enjoy policy advantages including tax breaks and preferential access to land. Third, the near ubiquity of adaptive informal institutions becomes an endogenous force that has prompted the government to generate institutional change without regime change. However, such institutional change to react to the existence of adaptive informal institutions cannot be likely to become sources of democratization. Professor Tsai maintains that private entrepreneurs in China show no intention of agitating for democracy but capitalism can exist without democracy, provided that the Chinese government can attend to adaptive informal institutions that complement endogenous institutional change.

This book is highly recommended to readers who are interested in political economy and the development of private enterprises in China.

this book is a must read and goes in-depth into the emerging underground economy in China. I also recommend the first book Back-Alley banking by the same author.

My 5 year old son loves this book and has learned well the meaning of the stories, highly recommended!

This is a picture book with two short stories simple enough for a five-year old to enjoy but good for older children too. Through the stories of two young Chinese boys seeking lessons from the old masters we are introduced to the concepts of meditation, mindfulness and discipline. The book includes simple definitions of Buddhism, Shaolin, Sifu and Kung-fu. The stories are about Kung-fu and archery.

I was intrigued by the fact that the story was about a soldier and his life outside of the army. There is so much more to this character than you would expect. It's a great read for anyone who loves period pieces.

I would recommend the novel "The Chains of Honor" by Robert C. Bachman as, in my opinion, it is a great book even when compared to the best selling authors of today. As a reader, I felt I was living the story. I literally lost myself among the pages.

This book is unpredictable as the main character Allen Decker travels through life's twisted ways in college, at home and in the service of his country during WWII, during which time he finds that the world can be a very small place.

Excecllent service and delivery, and good book but I am still reading it. Diane

A Change of Flag is the last and best installment in Christopher New's excellent China Coast trilogy. The opener -- Shanghai -- is a Clavell-esque epic, covering a half century of war, revolution and intrigue in one of the world's most fascinating cities. The second installment -- The Chinese Box -- is a dark, uncompromising tale of a failing marriage set amid the chaos of the mid-60s Cultural Revolution demonstrations in Hong Kong. The finale brings together strands from the earlier books. Descendants of John Denton -- the business tycoon protagonist of Shanghai -- interact with the world-weary literature professor Dimitri Johnston and other characters from The Chinese Box.

A Change of Flag is set in 1983-1984 as British and Chinese negotiators decided the fate of Hong Kong (with little input from the colony's residents). It tells several interconnected stories -- of a disillusioned Chinese communist seeking to flee the mainland; of a business tycoon struggling to protect his family from political uncertainty; of a has-been triad member seeking to make one last score; and more.

Christopher New is better at charting the East-West divide than any writer I've encountered. His Chinese characters are usually remorselessly practical, refusing to sacrifice themselves or their families for abstract ideals. But it's the well-intentioned, do-gooding Westerners who often cause more misery. New's hard-headed vision sometimes makes for depressing reading (especially in The Chinese Box). But A Change of Flag seems a bit more optimistic about the human condition, describing the willingness of people rally around those they love (or are related to).

White women don't come off very well in New's stories. In contrast to his graceful, serene Chinese beauties, New's Western women tend to be unattractive, vain, rude, asexual or lesbian. They fare better in A Change of Flag than they did in the earlier books: The American character Rachel is rendered somewhat sympathetically -- though she is naive, self-righteous and essentially asexual. And New hints touchingly at the enormous capacity for love possessed by Dimitri's promiscuous daughter, Elena.

This book shares one weakness with Shanghai: Christopher New does not seem terribly interested in what drives successful businessmen. The sensitive John Denton in Shanghai and his equally thoughtful son Robert in A Change of Flag are not really credible tycoons. They don't seem ruthless enough to accumulate fortunes in tumultuous circumstances.

But that's a quibble. The trilogy is great reading -- page-turning plots, sympathetic characters (you even find yourself pitying the aging triad), intelligent observation of the often-strained interaction between East and West and insightful asides on everything from academic jargon to the innerworkings of the triads.

Melvyn Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall's anthropological study of a Mongolian herding community, presents an intimate portrait of life on the steppes and the dramatic changes these people have undergone through the previous seventy years of Communism. In the introduction the authors provide a brief overview of Mongolian history from the conquests of the twelfth century khans to the development of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party under the Soviet System. While continually emphasizing the nomadic herding economy, Goldstein and Beall's book is really a close look at the lives of individuals and families and how they survive both this harsh climate and the changing political and economic scene.

Goldstein and Beall first layout a the problem of survival in the difficult environmental conditions on the steppes and the tenacity, illustrating the point with the tale of a herder found frozen to death as he crawled toward his home, less than a kilometer from safety. It is the livestock, contend the authors, that are the wealth and the security of these nomads. Herds are portable wealth on four legs of which no portion is wasted and each animal fulfills a specific function in the provision of basic needs: food, clothing, transportation. "Climate drives the annual cycle of the nomads life" and determines the survival of both herds and herder.

Goldstein and Beall stayed in the herding community of Moost in the Altai Mountains. Particularly detailed descriptions of traditional Mongolian hospitality--the exchange of snuff, the serving of milk-tea and "hospitality" foods--give a warm picture of an extremely outgoing and friendly people. The authors also give detailed descriptions of daily activities: slaughtering a sheep, making cheese, drying milk curds. Most such work is part of a continual preparation for surviving the extreme winters. Even ritual actions demonstrate the difficulty of life on these steppes. Goldstein and Beall attended several hair-cutting ceremonies for Mongolian children. This ritual first haircut does not take place until a child has reached the age of four or five, demonstrating that it is likely to survive childhood.

One of the questions the authors had for the Mongols was how their lives had changed under the Communist collectives and how they viewed the new free-market economy. Surprisingly, the answer was generally a noncommittal shrug. When the collective system was first forced upon the Mongols by the Communist government in 1927, herders slaughtered their animals rather than turn them over to government ownership. A less direct approach was taken by the government which, through excessive taxation, forced the independent herders to turn to the collectives for survival in the same way that tribes had traditionally banded together to survive adversity. The collectives, called negdels, took care of the business end of marketing the herds and providing social services. Now men in positions of local authority fear that herders will not be able to fend for themselves in a free-market economy, while the herders not understanding those concepts go on as they always have, bartering in their small local markets for whatever they need and living off their herds. Since there was no concept of land ownership before the collectives, the collective leaders divided negdels along a traditional boundaries of range areas--adapting the communist collective to the nomadic lifestyle rather than the other way around.

Goldstein and Beall also describe in detail the mobile housing of the Mongols, the traditional wooden-framed, felt-covered ger or yurt. Extremely portable and highly versatile, the ger is suited to the cold, high-wind climate of the steppes. Also significant to the nomadic lifestyle is the horse. The authors quote a thirteenth-century Chinese historian who said, "The Mongols are born in the saddle and grow up on horseback; they learn to fight by themselves as they spend all their life hunting the year-round" --an observation that is still true today. Along with horses the Mongols herd yaks, goats, sheep, and sometimes camels. The work of herding is no different under free-market economics than it was under the negdels or in the old tribal systems and women and men work side-by-side. The difference now is primarily in the private ownership of the animals. Where, under communism, the collective marketed the animals and made decisions about what animals to breed, the herder must now make these choices. Mongols understood the negdel system because "the collective economy incorporated important components of the traditional system of Mongol nomadic pastoralism."

According to Goldstein and Beall, some of the major benefits under Communism includesd education in rural areas and a decent health care system, benefits that Mongols fear will disappear under a freemarket economy. While the health care might not compare to hospital standards in the United States is was remarkable that the women of Moost enjoyed not only free prenatal care, maternity leave, and hospital childbirth under socialism, but also received a government stipend for each child at birth and again at sixmonths of age. Government pensions for women at age 50-55 (or as early as age 36 if they had four or more children) and for men at age 55-60 provide a surety for old age that helped to raise the standard of living for the herders.

Not only is this book a must in any scholarly study of Mongolian Culture, it is a fascinating and well-written text. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Central Asian culture.

Melvyn Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall's anthropological study of a Mongolian herding community, presents an intimate portrait of life on the steppes and the dramatic changes these people have undergone through the previous seventy years of Communism. In the introduction the authors provide a brief overview of Mongolian history from the conquests of the twelfth century khans to the development of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party under the Soviet System. While continually emphasizing the nomadic herding economy, Goldstein and Beall's book is really a close look at the lives of individuals and families and how they survive both this harsh climate and the changing political and economic scene.

Goldstein and Beall first layout a the problem of survival in the difficult environmental conditions on the steppes and the tenacity, illustrating the point with the tale of a herder found frozen to death as he crawled toward his home, less than a kilometer from safety. It is the livestock, contend the authors, that are the wealth and the security of these nomads. Herds are portable wealth on four legs of which no portion is wasted and each animal fulfills a specific function in the provision of basic needs: food, clothing, transportation. "Climate drives the annual cycle of the nomads life" and determines the survival of both herds and herder.

Goldstein and Beall stayed in the herding community of Moost in the Altai Mountains. Particularly detailed descriptions of traditional Mongolian hospitality--the exchange of snuff, the serving of milk-tea and "hospitality" foods--give a warm picture of an extremely outgoing and friendly people. The authors also give detailed descriptions of daily activities: slaughtering a sheep, making cheese, drying milk curds. Most such work is part of a continual preparation for surviving the extreme winters. Even ritual actions demonstrate the difficulty of life on these steppes. Goldstein and Beall attended several hair-cutting ceremonies for Mongolian children. This ritual first haircut does not take place until a child has reached the age of four or five, demonstrating that it is likely to survive childhood.

One of the questions the authors had for the Mongols was how their lives had changed under the Communist collectives and how they viewed the new free-market economy. Surprisingly, the answer was generally a noncommittal shrug. When the collective system was first forced upon the Mongols by the Communist government in 1927, herders slaughtered their animals rather than turn them over to government ownership. A less direct approach was taken by the government which, through excessive taxation, forced the independent herders to turn to the collectives for survival in the same way that tribes had traditionally banded together to survive adversity. The collectives, called negdels, took care of the business end of marketing the herds and providing social services. Now men in positions of local authority fear that herders will not be able to fend for themselves in a free-market economy, while the herders not understanding those concepts go on as they always have, bartering in their small local markets for whatever they need and living off their herds. Since there was no concept of land ownership before the collectives, the collective leaders divided negdels along a traditional boundaries of range areas--adapting the communist collective to the nomadic lifestyle rather than the other way around.

Goldstein and Beall also describe in detail the mobile housing of the Mongols, the traditional wooden-framed, felt-covered ger or yurt. Extremely portable and highly versatile, the ger is suited to the cold, high-wind climate of the steppes. Also significant to the nomadic lifestyle is the horse. The authors quote a thirteenth-century Chinese historian who said, "The Mongols are born in the saddle and grow up on horseback; they learn to fight by themselves as they spend all their life hunting the year-round" --an observation that is still true today. Along with horses the Mongols herd yaks, goats, sheep, and sometimes camels. The work of herding is no different under free-market economics than it was under the negdels or in the old tribal systems and women and men work side-by-side. The difference now is primarily in the private ownership of the animals. Where, under communism, the collective marketed the animals and made decisions about what animals to breed, the herder must now make these choices. Mongols understood the negdel system because "the collective economy incorporated important components of the traditional system of Mongol nomadic pastoralism."

According to Goldstein and Beall, some of the major benefits under Communism includesd education in rural areas and a decent health care system, benefits that Mongols fear will disappear under a freemarket economy. While the health care might not compare to hospital standards in the United States is was remarkable that the women of Moost enjoyed not only free prenatal care, maternity leave, and hospital childbirth under socialism, but also received a government stipend for each child at birth and again at sixmonths of age. Government pensions for women at age 50-55 (or as early as age 36 if they had four or more children) and for men at age 55-60 provide a surety for old age that helped to raise the standard of living for the herders.

Not only is this book a must in any scholarly study of Mongolian Culture, it is a fascinating and well-written text. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Central Asian culture.

Because U.S. Corporations has invested billions of dollars into joint ventures in China, they feared change. An overthrow of the Communist regime might cost them billions. As a consequence they appealed to Bush Senior to do all he could to defeat the democratic movement. CIA agents spied on the students and reported their findings to the Chinese Communist leaders. It was an ugly married between big business and the Chinese ruthless dictatorship. The author documents this well. One cannot doubt the accuracy of the book. I was there. I saw the massacre at Muxidi. As an eye witness I can vouch for its accuracy.

Good book ! its incredibal what happened to those
students in China , they thought Bush would help them,
but Bush and his busness partners were more interested
in looking after there own interast s . My heart goes out to the students . I liked how the book was written .

I was curious to read this book since my grandfather was a tailgunner in the 308th from 1943-1944, he was a member of a crew that was lost for 9 days in Dec 1943 (page 104 of the book). Great background on what this unit accomplished and the sacrifices they made to keep up operations against the Japanese. A great example of just some "regular joe's" doing some amazing things for their country.

I looked for years to learn something about the unit my Dad served in during WW2. Here is an informative and personal look at others who served in China under the command of Claire Chennault. These men and their support staff faced many of the same difficulties and supply problems as the more famous "Flying Tiger" fighter pilots, yet hardly any information has been available. Glines collected information from numerous sources: flight and ground crews, medical staff, official documents and personal diaries to shed some light on those who helped hold back the Japanese Empire during the early stages of the war when the majority of the country was focused on events in Europe. I found this book helped bring a deeper appreciation for the war my Dad never talked about and how it changed his view of the world forever. The dedication and performance of these men and women should not be forgotten. The building of peaceful relationships with all Chinese can be possible because of these few warriors.

As an amateur historian, I like to read books about historical events that are to the point, without belaboring details, but that read "like a novel". Children of the Dragon opened my eyes to the Tiananmen Square incident in a big way with personal accounts of many of the Chinese who were actually there and involved in what happened, and with many photos that captured the action and emotion. This book is a must-read for complacent Americans to learn to appreciate their own democracy, and to support those who die to have one. My heart went out to China and those brave, idealistic students who tried to change it.

This compilation of eye-witness accounts gathered from students, foreign and domestic journalists, professors, PLA men, and workers serves as a memorial for the Tiananment incident, and provides the reader with a minute-by-minute chronology of events. Some of those events are the hunger strike, Gorbachev's visit, student meetings with the leadership, and power struggles within student factions... "Children Of the Dragon" also has printed many of the statements and declarations made by members of student and government factions. This is an excellent, riveting account of the events surrounding the massacre, from Hu Yaobang's death on April 15th to the CCP's crackdown and pursuit of "instigators" through June 5-6.