If you are planning a trip to China or if just want to get to know a little more about the Chinese, let “China A-Z” by writer and journalist Kai Strittmatter be your introduction to this marvellous country and its people. The book is both amusing and informative, giving an understanding of the world’™s fastest growing superpower, its ancient tradition and the millions of Chinese who inhabits its lands. All Chinese look the same, some say. Same goes for Europeans. Did you know that our Olympic hosts in 2008 don’™t eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning?Kai Strittmatter lived and worked in China for ten years and in this fascinating book he lets in on a few secrets. Introducing us to some telling Chinese symbols – but not all 57,000 of them! – he explains in a wealth of charming, amusing anecdotes and what they reveal of China and its people.On the way we meet pensioners who practice the art of street calligraphy, read the Beijing police’™s hilarious English phrasebook and have the dubious pleasure of sampling trendy ‘˜Western’™ food, as well as a hundred other surprises.With the Beijing Olympics 2008 luring even more travellers to China, this amusing, affectionate and perceptive book provides a fascinating guide to this lively, sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society. As the author says: ‘˜Be prepared for everything when you come to Beijing. It really is unbelievable what can happen here.’™’˜Anyone who has spent a night on the same floor of a hotel as a group of Chinese tourists will know that most Chinese love re nao : ‘œheat and noise”. They love to go where lots of people are already squeezed together, where all hell has broken loose. Re nao is a state of being that people strive for because it brings them pleasure and joy. The idea is to dive into as large a mass of people as possible and then, through emitting as many decibels as possible, to reassure each other that you aren’™t alone in the world. Some people still suspect that the construction plans for fireworks are encoded in Chinese genes. As a result, they invented them and use them with a mastery and pizzazz unequalled anywhere else in the world. Today re nao is more popular than ever in China, thanks to the increase in happy occasions, which historically have been all too rare for this long-suffering people.The mother of all re nao ‘™s was the day when it was announced that Beijing would host the Olympic Games. All that night you couldn’™t understand a word the television reporters were saying. Re nao fits the Olympic spirit: the character re once represented a torch-holder. The opposite of re nao is tai ping , ‘œthe highest peace”. Here’™s a tip: tai ping can be found in Beijing in only one way – you’™ll have to be alone in a swimming pool, with both ears underwater.’™`…this is a delightfully witty and insightful guide to todays China.` The Guardian `A humourous and insightful study of life in China’™ WANDERLUST

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