The best single-volume introduction to the people of China and their world is Jasper Becker's The Chinese (John Murray, 2000). Longtime resident of Beijing and former Beijing bureau chief for the South China Morning Post, Becker delivers an immensely readable account of how the Chinese got to be who they are today; their pre-occupations, thoughts, and fears; and the ludicrous posturings of their leaders.
Old Beijing can now only be found in literature. The origins of many Western fantasies of the capital, then called Khanbalik, lie in the ghost-written work of Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo. Dover Publications' two-volume reprint (1993) of the Yule-Cordier edition is a splendid read (although only part of Polo's time was spent in Beijing) because of its entertaining introduction and footnotes by famous explorers attempting to follow his route. Ray Huang's ironically titled 1587, A Year of No Significance (Yale University Press, 1982) is an account of the Ming dynasty in decline; written in the first person, it paints a compelling picture of the well-intentioned Wanlì emperor trapped by a vast, impersonal bureaucracy. The parallels with the present regime are striking. Lord Macartney's An Embassy to China (J. L. Cranmer-Byng [Ed.], Longman, 1962) gives a detailed account of Qing China and particularly Beijing at the end of the 18th century. This should be compulsory reading for modern businesspeople, as it prefigures WTO negotiations and the expectations of what will arise from them. Macartney's prediction that the Chinese would all soon be using forks and spoons is particularly relevant. Hugh Trevor-Roper's Hermit of Peking (Eland Press, 1976), part history, part detective story, uncovers the life of Sir Edmund Backhouse, resident of Beijing from the end of the Qing dynasty into the Republic, who knew everyone in the city at the beginning of the century, and who deceived them all, along with a generation of China scholars, with his fake diary of a Manchu official at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. A serviceably translated bilingual edition of Lao She's Teahouse (Chinese University Press, 2004) succinctly captures the flavor of life in Beijing during the first half of the 20th century. The helplessness of the characters in the face of political movements is both moving and prophetic. John Blofeld's City of Lingering Splendour: A Frank Account of Old Peking's Exotic Pleasures (Shambhala, 1961) describes the seamier side of Beijing in the 1930s, by someone who took frank enjoyment in its pleasures, including adventures in "the lanes of flowers and willows" -- the Qian Men brothel quarter. In the same period, George Kates, an American, lived more decorously in the style of a Chinese gentleman-scholar in an old courtyard house of the kind now rapidly vanishing, and gives a sensitive and very appealing portrait of the city in The Years That Were Fat (Harper, 1955; reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1988). Ann Bridge, the wife of a British diplomat in Beijing, wrote novels of life in the capital's Legation Quarter in the 1930s (cocktail parties, horse racing, problems with servants, love affairs -- spicy stuff in its day, and best-selling, if now largely forgotten). Peking Picnic (Chatto and Windus, 1932; reprinted Virago, 1989) features a disastrous trip to the outlying temples of Tanzhe Sì and Jietai Sì (but one well worth undertaking yourself). The Ginger Griffin (Chatto and Windus, 1934; reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1985) offers the adventures of a young woman newly arrived in the city, who attends the horse races and who has a happier ending.
David Kidd, another American, lived in Beijing for a few years before and shortly after the Communist victory of 1949, and gives an account of the beginning of the city's destruction in Peking Story (Eland Press, 1988; originally All the Emperor's Horses, John Murray, 1961). Perhaps the best example of the "hooligan literature" of the late 1980s is Please Don't Call Me Human (No Exit Press, 2000) by Wang Shuo. There's little plot to speak of, but it's a devastating and surreal parody of Chinese nationalism, all the more poignant as the Olympics draw near. Red China Blues (Anchor Books, 1997), by Jan Wong, is one of our all-time favorite memoirs. Wong initially came to Beijing as a young and fervent Maoist in 1972 and became one of only two international students allowed to study at Beijing University during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Years later, she returned, older and wiser, as an international correspondent for the Globe and Mail in 1988, just in time to witness and report on the Tian'an Men protests of 1989. Black Hands of Beijing (John Wiley, Inc., 1993), by George Black and Robin Munro, is the most balanced and least hysterical account of the Tian'an Men protests of 1989, putting them in the context of other, better-planned movements for social change, all of which suffered in the fallout from the chaotic student demonstrations and their bloody suppression. Only one of Tim Clissold's tales in Mr. China (Constable & Robinson, 2004) is set in Beijing, and the naivety of the author is at times breathtaking, but his account of setting up joint-ventures from the mid-1990s onwards is frank testimony that should be read by anyone considering doing business in China.
M.A. Aldrich's The Search for Vanishing Beijing (Hong Kong University Press, 2006) is a comprehensive narrative of Beijing. The work includes stories by Marco Polo and Bernard Shaw, as well as commentary from Ming and Qing-era travel guides. Frances Wood's Forbidden City (British Museum Press, 2005) is a short and thoroughly entertaining introduction to Beijing's main attraction.
Peter Hessler was the Beijing-based New Yorker correspondent for several years. His second book, Oracle Bones (John Murray, 2006), is an insightful look into the lives of young Chinese migrants and colorful personalities from old and new Beijing.
For those looking for an atypical story about modern China, Rachel DeWoskin gives an entertaining account of her time as the star of a popular Chinese television drama in the early 90s in her novel Foreign Babes in Beijing (W.W. Norton, 2006).
