China (eBook)

'This is a delightfully witty and insightful guide to today's China.'—The Guardian

China, the world's next superpower, is a complex, compelling, and often contradictory country that can bewilder even the most seasoned travelers. The journalist Kai Strittmatter made Beijing his home for ten years and, with varying degrees of success, navigated his way through its many pitfalls. On returning to Europe he wrote this unique book, a blend of reportage and anecdote that goes a long way to explaining the Chinese and why all our hopes, from prosperity to peace, rest with this enigmatic country.

Kai Strittmatter lived in Beijing as a newspaper correspondent. He is now the Istanbul correspondent for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and has published several books.

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It's time we got to know a little more about the Chinese. Did you know they don't eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning? This guide to avoiding the numerous pitfalls of Chinese etiquette is both amusing and informative. The writer and journalist Kai Strittmatter lived and worked in China for ten years. This amusing, affectionate and perceptive book provides a fascinating guide to this lively, sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society. As the author says: "e;Be prepared for everything when you come to Beijing. It really is unbelievable what can happen here."e; The new material in this edition takes a critical look at the challenges posed by this, the next global superpower.