NCW Libraries

WINNER OF THE 2009 JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE 2009 IACP BEST INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK AWARD A bold and eye-opening new cookbook with magnificent photos and unforgettable stories. In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet,...

Journey across China from the peaks of the Himalayas to the barren steppe, the sub-Arctic to the tropical islands, through deserts both searingly hot and mind-numbingly cold and see a dazzling array of mysterious, beautiful, wild and rare creatures.

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler...

An irreverent tale of an American Jew serving in the Peace Corps in rural China, which reveals the absurdities, joys, and pathos of a traditional society in flux In September of 2005, the Peace Corps sent Michael Levy to teach English in the heart of China's heartland. His hosts in the city of Guiyang found additional uses for him: resident expert on Judaism, romantic adviser, and provincial basketball star, to name a few. His account of overcoming...

Draws on the author's own parallel journey and new evidence to retraces the steps of the medieval Italian merchant who traveled from Venice, through the Middle East and Central Asia, to China and Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan.

Explores China, the third largest country in the world with a diverse population of over a billion people and alive with history, culture and beautiful landscapes.

The longer I stayed in Kashgar, the more I began to realize that Xinjiang was a country within a country, one with far doser connections to its central Asian neighbors than to China. the Sunday market, the social event of the week, was an exhilarating mix of local tongues and minorities. Ethnic Kyrgyz and Tajiks from the surrounding countryside arrived on donkey carts piled high with watermelons, or trailing dispirited lines of sheep, to join the...