eb00kie's review
4.0
Regardless of the overreaching subtitle, a good book for beginners, easy to browse because of the dictionary structure and pleasant in writing style.
peterthelibrarian's review
5.0
Very readable book with short chapters on the culture, history, social mores, politics, etiquette, pop culture, etc. of China. Authors are first and second generation Chinese Americans and write from first-hand experience. Highly recommended for the armchair traveler and (I'm hoping) for anyone planning to visit China--I will let you know if the information holds water after I return.
innae's review
3.0
I finished reading this while on a cruise in China! While there was some good information in this book, I found that it was more focused on advice for creating business relationships in China. Still not bad for the tourist if you want some background and history, but don't want to be overwhelmed.
cait's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.75
...China consumed 55 percent of the world's concrete and 36 percent of all steel produced in 2004. And there was more construction taking place in Beijing in 2005 alone than in the whole of Europe for the previous three years...
This is a nonfiction book about China organized into alphabetical order and therein lies my problem: You cannot concretely build an understanding of an entire culture in an A to Z format. What you end up doing is wasting pages with repetition. You cannot understand A, B, or C without a basic idea of different aspects of W, so W is explained in A, B, C, and W.
Ultimately, I just found myself reading the same things over and over in different chapters until I thought I was in some sort of nonfiction loop akin to Groundhog's Day. Which was so disappointing, because there was some genuinely fascinating information mixed in with the repetitive high school history teacher droning.
This is a nonfiction book about China organized into alphabetical order and therein lies my problem: You cannot concretely build an understanding of an entire culture in an A to Z format. What you end up doing is wasting pages with repetition. You cannot understand A, B, or C without a basic idea of different aspects of W, so W is explained in A, B, C, and W.
Ultimately, I just found myself reading the same things over and over in different chapters until I thought I was in some sort of nonfiction loop akin to Groundhog's Day. Which was so disappointing, because there was some genuinely fascinating information mixed in with the repetitive high school history teacher droning.
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