Five Beijing Books You Haven't Heard of But Should Read
As colder temperatures arrive, Beijing bunks down for the winter in a sort of socialized hibernation. With darkness falling around 5pm, long nights provide good stretches for reading. To fill those hours, here are five Beijing books with which even the most avid reader may not be familiar, but should add to their library.
1. Perfumed Palace. By Michael Aldrich and Lukas Nicol
Ever wonder why duck and lamb are so popular in the capital of the world's largest consumer of pork? Simple answer: Islam. The religion's influence on Beijing cuisine and culture are artfully catalogued in this dense but supremely researched book by lawyer Michael Aldrich, with photos by Lukas Nicol.
2. The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China's Capital Through the Ages. By Michael Aldrich
Ok, we're big fans of M.A. Aldrich's two books on Beijing and hope he's busy writing a third. Although Mike Meyer's The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed is also excellent, Aldrich's work is less known and more comprehensive. Beijing old-timers will recognize many of the areas photographed for the book's plates, and Beijing residents for any length of time will appreciate the illumination that their neighborhood likely receives in its pages.
3. Beijing Jeep. By Jim Mann
It's been available for years, but it seems like too few people have read former Beijing correspondent for the Los Angeles Times Jim Mann's account of the automobile joint venture that gave rise to Beijing's favorite vehicle: the Jeep. Read this book and understand how little Beijing (and China) and specifically its business culture has changed since the first western executives appeared here in the late '70s. Then go have a nostalgic drink at Charlie's Bar at the Jianguo Hotel.
4. Foreign Babes in Beijing. By Rachel DeWoskin
A semi-autobiographical account of the author's time as, well, a TV foreign babe in Beijing, and playing that role both on and offscreen. DeWoskin has since gone on to a larger literary career, with her fourth novel, Blind, due out next summer. Babes is a colorful look at love, sex, television, and life in Beijing in the mid- to late-1990s, and almost a parlor game for long-term expatriates to identify who is who.
5. China High: My Fast Times in the 010. By ZZ
Billed as a memoir that should be taken with a grain of salt, the pseudonymed ZZ – actually the founder of one popular Beijing food delivery service – documents turn-of-the-millennium, pre-Olympics Beijing, when people you knew were sent for three months of "re-education" after being picked up outside nightclubs for doing drugs. Love this book or hate it, people who were part of the scene will see from the writing that ZZ was there.
Try The Bookworm for these titles. Some are now out of print and may be ordered online or in electronic formats such as Kindle.
Is there a Beijing book you think deserves more attention? Please let us know in the Comments section below.
Images: Amazon.com
