Black Dragon River

Black Dragon River recounts a personal journey down one of Asia's great rivers. The world's ninth largest river, the Amur serves as a large part of the border between Russia and China. As a crossroads for the great empires of Asia, this area offers Economist journalist Dominic Ziegler a lens with which to examine the societies at Europe's only borderland with East Asia. Part travel writing, part history, it reveals how the long shared history on the Amur has conditioned the way China and Russia behave toward each other.

'Thubron on top form. Richly detailed, immaculately written and full of insights and encounters that bring a complex corner of the world to life' MICHAEL PALIN 'A masterpiece' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE 'Unforgettable' ANTONY BEEVOR As read on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week _______________ A dramatic and ambitious new journey from our greatest travel writer. Rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific, the Amur River forms the tense border between Russia and China. This is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth. In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic and often treacherous journey from the Amur's secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles. Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, he makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores. By the time he reaches the river's desolate end, a whole, pivotal world has come alive. _______________ 'An epic journey along a frozen, fraught frontier... Fascinating' The Times 'This book is a triumph' Daily Telegraph A Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and Spectator Book of the Year Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award 2022

Considering the global implications of the disaster, Salisbury describes the devastation and ecological and environmental consequences of the 1987 fire in Manchuria that destroyed an area the size of England

Beyond the Amur describes the distinctive frontier society that emerged in the Amur, a river region that shifted between Qing China and Imperial Russia as the two empires competed for resources. Official histories depict the Amur as a distant battleground caught between rival empires. Zatsepine, by contrast, views it as a unified natural economy populated by Chinese, Russian, Indigenous, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, and Mongol people who crossed the border in search of work or trade and who came together to survive a harsh physical environment. This colourful account of a region and its people highlights the often-overlooked influence of frontier developments on state politics and imperial policies and histories.

Although he had been advised by everyone to avoid the bleak north east of China, Ben Whately spent six months in Qiqihaer in the winter of 2004, one of only six native English speakers in this city of five million people. In telling the story of his growing understanding of the way of life and of the people here, the author introduces the reader to China today. Arriving in mid-winter, - 30 C, to find a grey, concrete city concealed beneath layers of ice, the author learnt to deal with and eventually to enjoy the frustrations and impossibilities of everyday life. He travelled widely to parts of the remote northern province of Heilongjiang, rarely visited by westerners. In relating his experiences in an often self-deprecating fashion, he displays a deep fondness for an extraordinary place. Full of amusing and illuminating stories and insights, this book offers an indispensable introduction to this fascinating country and its people.

In this “astonishing fantasy debut,” a mother and a mysterious Chinese man—who is more than he appears—search for her missing daughter in San Francisco (Locus). Offering “a deft blend of the oldest of magicks in a dragon, and the newest of sorceries in computers” (Anne McCaffrey), this is the incomparable novel that garnered Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick Award nominations, and earned its author the John W. Campbell Best New Writer award. Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter, Elizabeth, is in trouble—she just doesn’t know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact they've had for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her mother a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at the city’s most luxurious hotel. Yet, since Martha checked in, she still hasn’t been contacted by her daughter, and is feeling lonely, confused, and a little bit worried. But Martha meets someone else at the hotel: Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who is drawn to Martha’s good character and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. They become close quickly, and he promises to help her find Elizabeth. Before he can solve the mystery, though, Martha herself disappears—and Mayland realizes that he’s in love with her. Now, a man whose true nature and identity is unknown to those around him will embark on a potentially dangerous adventure in a city on the verge of exploding with its own sort of magic as technology spreads through the region that will become known as Silicon Valley. An elegant, delightful, and unusual novel that blends ancient myth with modern wizardry, Tea with the Black Dragon is “a small masterpiece, setting a fantasy story against a contemporary background” (Booklist).

In August 1968, naturalist-explorer Peter Matthiessen returned from Africa to his home in Sagaponack, Long Island, to find three Zen masters in his driveway—guests of his wife, a new student of Zen. Thirteen years later, Matthiessen was ordained a Buddhist monk. Written in the same format as his best-selling The Snow Leopard, Nine-Headed Dragon River reveals Matthiessen's most daring adventure of all: the quest for his spiritual roots.

In the ongoing courageous struggle of a relatively small group of Chinese to prevent the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in China, Dai Qing is the outspoken leader whose eloquent voice is always heard despite threats and intimidation by the Chinese authorities to silence it. Dai Qing, an investigative journalist and author with a wide audience in China and abroad, compiled this book of essays and field reports assessing the impact of the Three Gorges megadam now under construction at Sandouping in China's Hubei province at great risk to her own freedom. This book is an effort to prevent history from repeating itself ten-fold (a reference to the great floods in 1975 during which over 60 dams collapsed and at least 100,000 people lost their lives) if the 39 billion cubic metres of water in the Three Gorges reservoir ever escapes by natural or man-made catastrophes. These comprehensive essays reveal the deep rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges project that the government is attempting to disguise or suppress. The main concerns are population resettlement and human rights, the irreversible environmental and economic impact, the loss of cultural antiquities and historical sites, military considerations, and hidden dam disasters from the past. Opponents of the dam are attempting to kill the project or at least reduce the size of the megadam now planned to be the biggest, most expensive and, incidentally, the most hazardous of all hydro-electric projects on this planet.