With a history of over 5,000 years, China is a country full of interesting stories and traditions. Get rMeeady for a journey like no other as we explore its beautiful nature, diverse culture and lifestyles, and mind-blowing technology! This book will be your guide to travel through the following 16 themed sections!

The acclaimed travel writer chronicles a year of train travel across China in a revealing travelogue that “gives the reader much to relish and think about” (Publishers Weekly). The author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. The always irascible, infectiously curious author “is in top form as he describes the barren deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, the ice forests of Manchuria and the dry hills of Tibet. He captures their otherworldly, haunting appearances perfectly. He is also right on target when he talks about the ugliness of China's poorly planned, hastily built cities” (Mark Salzman, The New York Times). Theroux hops aboard a train as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From sweeping and desolate natural landscapes to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton, Theroux offers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and an extraordinary people.

Presents facts, photographs and information on the Great Wall of China.

"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

The rise of China will profoundly change the world, and the rest of us now have a chance to understand how and why this is happening, or continue to moralise about this “disaster”, thought to harm our way of life. What is especially galling is that the Chinese appear better able to create wealth and value than the West. Even in the midst of political denunciations, more and more businesses are profitably engaging China. We have to face the fact that China excels at what we are supposed to admire, the peaceful creation of wealth. It even withstands the current pandemic several hundred times more successfully than we have. The answers to China’s success lie not in “communism” but in Chinese civilization and culture which is 22 centuries old and extends to most of East Asia, and has traded peacefully since Roman times. This is a book about measured business cultures, East and West, and explains, using largely Western scholarship, why China is winning and will continue to do so unless and until we wake up.

China's currency, the renminbi, has taken the world by storm. This book documents the renminbi's impressive rise to global prominence in a short period but also shows how much further it has to go before becoming a major international currency. The hype about its inevitable ascendance to global dominance is overblown.