But the "poison dragons" of misfortune shatter his orderly existence. First, when his village is threatened by a vicious civil war, his family stability is threatened by his second son, a brutal rebel officer. Meanwhile, Yun Cai struggles to free an old friend, P'ei Ti, from a hellish prison—no easy task when P'ei Ti is the rebels' most valuable hostage, and Yun Cai sees himself only as a frightened old man. Throughout his ordeals, Yun Cai draws from the glittering memories of his youth, when he journeyed to the capital to study poetry, joined the upper ranks of the civil service, and secured the friendship of P'ei Ti. Above all, he reflects Su Lin, a great love he won and lost, and for which he paid with his freedom and almost his life. Yun Cai is forced to reconsider all that he is and all that he has ever been in order to summon the wit and courage to confront the warlord General An-Shu and his beautiful but cruel consort, the Lady Ta-Chi.

    The poet Donald Davie writes: 'Vikram Seth's poems should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility?'

     She is desperately excited to explore not only the foreign land with all its alien culture but also the role of a wife and all the pleasures that come with it… In no time at all Constance is shocked on both accounts. China stuns her with its barbaric and improper behaviour which, almost against her will, begins to tease her imagination. At the same time, Mr Henry Baird, despairing of his sinful desires, proves unable to indulge Constance’s wishes. The marriage, failing from the beginning, spirals further and further out of control as Constance, aided by her only ally Kate, inadvertently becomes a famous ‘Devil Woman’ throughout the region and faces an audience with the Empress herself. As her new life unfolds, Constance finds herself tortured by desire, teetering on the edge of love and caught up in a dangerous whirlwind of international politics. She ricochets between the Chinese extremes of complete intimacy and deadly violence as they head slowly into war. What does ‘The Crimson Pagoda’ promise? ‘The Crimson Pagoda’ is a gripping and engaging historical romance by a master of the genre. Praise for Christopher Nicole: ‘Well-researched…Evocative descriptions of scenery and edifices, and exact period dialogue’ – Historical Novels Society Christopher Nicole was born and brought up in British Guyana and the West Indies. His output of books has been prolific and many of his novels are historical with a Caribbean background.

     It also explores the circumstances surrounding the true-life event of my grandmother's gift of a concubine to my grandfather on his birthday to enhance the chance of an heir to the Family.

    He returned with stories of exotic people, tremendous riches, and the most powerful ruler in the world – Kublai Khan. The explorer told of inventions ranging from gunpowder to paper money. The intellectual ferment and cultural diversity he described helped move Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. In his lifetime, people scoffed at his stories. But as this book explains, he changed the world.

    Traditional morals and behavior are being turned on their head as the country’s climb towards economic prosperity brings sex into the open. But it is a revolution distinctly different from the one experienced in the West and has taken unexpected twists and turns.Written in a highly engaging and readable style, Behind the Red Door: Sex in China takes the reader on a journey from ancient days, when China’s rulers relied on shockingly vivid Daoist sex manuals, to the present, where China is torn between sexual orthodoxy and Western-style openness.

    China Star begins in 1920s Paris, where Shanghai Station the 's Russian count, Alexander Karlov, and Viktor Polyak, the Soviet agent who killed Karlov's parents and abducted his twin sister Katerina, hunt each other through grand hotels, sewers, fashion houses, and embassy parties. Soon after, Katerina sets sail with Alexander for China on the China Star.

    One weekend, Mark escapes to Moganshan, a dilapidated mountaintop village built by foreigners in the early 1900s as a summer retreat. Mark falls in love with the place and decides to restore one of the villas, as if he were in Tuscany or Provence.

    For the U. S. Navy, that meant restricted budgets — and the Asiatic Fleet, on the far side of the world out of sight of the Navy’s commanders and the American public, was at the bottom of the list for the Navy’s limited resources. Bobby MacPherson, Seaman 2nd Class, only seventeen years old and freshly graduated from radio operator school, was naively excited by his assignment to the submarine S-37 stationed with the Asiatic Fleet. The exotic places providing bases for the American Navy — Manila, Shanghai, Tsingtao — and their strange cultures, histories and people engaged his driving curiosity and sharp mind. He was very different from most of the “China hands,” the long time sailors of the Asiatic fleet, who spent their time drinking and chasing the countless prostitutes that populated the port cities of the Philippines and China. His outstanding athletic ability and his earnest integrity made him popular with his crewmates and officers despite his differences. All of those qualities drew Bobby into a dangerous and malicious plot against the American forces in Asia; a plot involving nearly all of the competing powers in China — General Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, Mao Tse-tung’s Communists, the Imperial Japanese military occupiers of China, warlords and ancient, powerful families who considered themselves the true rulers of China. CHINA HAND is a never before published novel by best-selling author Harry Homewood. Like his previous, hugely popular novels FINAL HARBOR and SILENT SEA, CHINA HAND is based on his real life experience — in this case his service in an S-Class submarine in the Asiatic Fleet in the years before World War II. It is intensely authentic. Harry Homewood was a qualified submariner before he was seventeen years old, having lied to the Navy about his age, and serving in a little "S"-boat in the old Asiatic Fleet. After Pearl Harbor he reenlisted and made eleven war patrols in the Southwest Pacific. He later became Chicago Bureau Chief for Newsweek, chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and for eleven years had his own weekly news program syndicated to thirty-two PBS television stations.

    The race included only five cars and their crews who wrote their agreed code of conduct on the back of a menu the night before the start. The only navigational aids were the sun and telegraph poles. Ninety years later, the race ran again.Rosie Thomas and her companion, Phil Bowen a thirty-year old climber, pearl-diver, charter-boat skipper and photographer were two of those daring enough to go for the challenge. On 6 September 1997, an assembly 110 vintage cars gathered in Peking, with the finish line in Paris lying 45 days and 16,000 kilometres ahead halfway across the world. The excitement of the daily time challenge, the strange camaraderie, the test of sleeping outdoors, in flea-pit hotels, in foreign lands, is more than matched by Rosie's own internal journey, including a near death experience at the top of the Himalayas.

    No one has depicted that world - the dazzlingly modern, obdurately traditional Crown Colony of Hong Kong - more faithfully, shrewdly, or affectionately than Jan Morris, who in this contemporary classic of travel writing celebrates the city's charm and squalor, unravels the tangle of its history, and gives us an informed glimpse into its future. Combining firsthand reportage with exemplary research, Morris takes us from Hong Kong's clamorous back alleys to the luxurious Happy Valley racecourse, where taipans place their bets between sips of champagne and bird's nest soup. Morris chronicles the exploits of opium traders and pirates, colonists and financiers, and shows how their descendants view the prospect of reunification with the Chinese mainland. What emerges is an epic tableau, vastly informed and pungently evocative.

    Our beginners guide contains all the essential information you need in order to succeed. It covers the basic techniques, well illustrated with over a hundred images, and explains everything you need to know in an understandable way. Bonsai Empire is the world's most visited Bonsai website and has provided beginners with quality information for over a decade. We have developed this guide to help you get a taste of this fascinating and living art, and hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do! This book includes: - Over 100 stunning images - Over 80 pages - Explanations of the basic techniques - Care guides on the 10 most popular tree species - Background on the history, definition and styles Walter Pall: "Now here is the ultimate book to lead beginners. I am happy to have been able to contribute to this" Mauro Stemberger "Very clear" and "With great quality drawings and pics"

    A deluxe paperback edition: Thomas Cleary's brilliant translation of the sayings of Confucius presented in the order of the 64 classic I Ching hexagrams.

    TheCult of the Luxury Brand illuminates the mysterious inner workings of Asia’s love affair with luxury for business professionals and intrigued consumers alike.

    Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she's always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water, doing wacky things like stealing the shoes of a shifty delivery man, spraying local women with a bidet hose, and contemplating the murder of her new pet cricket.It takes the friendship of an elderly tai chi instructor, a hot Mandarin tutor, and several mah-jongg-tile-slinging expats to bring Tina closer to a culture she doesn't understand, the dream job she never knew existed, and the self she has always sought. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns.