Gabriel Male, 33, Married. Milano, Italy

Un libro interessante, controverso, estremamente originale, che affronta un tema di interesse ormai globale in maniera nuova e abbandonando, per quanto possibile, i preconcetti e i luoghi comuni della letteratura commerciale o accademica. Come pensano i cinesi? Come percepiscono il mondo attorno a loro, rispetto a noi? Come reagiscono alle cose, e come decidono il loro modo di agire?

L'autore esplora molti territori sconosciuti della mente cinese rilevando fatti inoppugnabili. Le conclusioni sono talora provocatorie, ma in ogni caso lo scopo è raggiunto: far riflettere il lettore non sulla Cina, intesa come Paese, ma sui cinesi, che lo rendono quel che è.

Un libro che tutti quelli che hanno a che fare spesso con dei cinesi dovrebbero leggere. Non per spiegare cosa sono e perché, come in un manuale, ma per insegnare ad ascoltarli e osservarli meglio, per poi darsi una risposta da sé, senza dimenticarsi che, prima di tutto, i cinesi sono essere umani come noi, ognuno con le sue specificità e le sue diversità personali.

This collection includes pictures from both professional and amateur photograpers, local, waidi (Chinese from other cities) or laowai (foreigners) who offer their personal take on an ever changing city. All photos were taken in the night between August 7th and 8th, 2007, exactly one year before the Olympics, to document a city which would never be the same again, the death of Old Beijing and the birth of the New one. All in all, this book gives a good impression of what the city was, and still is today. If you happen to like Beijing, you will like this collection as well.

This book is a list, complete with pictures and descriptions, of the items that define modern Chinese culture today. From VCD players to Sanlunche (Motor Trycicle Taxi), from Split Pants for children to Hell Bank Money to burn for the dead, this book has got them all. It is a treasure find for aybody interested in modern China, and fun for anybody who visited the country and went crazy for all those strange habits of the local people.

I know this is a Classic, like the Iliad, the Odyssey or the Divine Comedy. In order to understand Chinese culture, this is one of the key books, and that's all. But it's really, really difficult to read. Part of the blame shoud probably go to the translation, which is quite poor and uses a modern American English that is all but fit to the subject, interspersed with aulic expressions which, standing alone, sound like Renaissance Fair.

It's difficult to define this work: it's not history, because it romanticises several events, and because it doesn't actually try to analyse or explain any historical process. It's not a romance either, since most of it is about random characters doing random actions that usually result in some other random people killed or executed, while nothing really happens in the general economy of the Story. It's more a chronicle, and as such some very beautiful chapters are mixed with pointless records of pointless events, without a minimum attempt to make then interesting through beautiful prose or epic tones.
The few notes are all written at the end of book three, making it really a pain to reach them if you are reading book one or two. They are anyway too few, and inadequate to the work. There should also be a list of major characters, helping to set them apart from the mass of random goners in the story.

All in all, after 369 pages read in about 7 months, I give up. If I find a better translation, I might try it again, in a few years, but for now I find the many movies about Three Kingdoms much more effective in transmitting the principles of Chinese culture than this set of books.