If you're into the art of Asian beading and embroidery, you'll find this book very fascinating. This book shows a lot of accessories either accented with beads or made out of beadwork. It also has examples to how some of the embroidered material are stitched. This is a great reference book to making lots of different kinds of accessories.

Once you go spicy, you never go back! How about try something hot and spicy for this coming New Year. Let me introduce you this newly printed 2007 pocket-sized restaurant ordering guide. It contains 100 photos of spicy Chinese dishes. Believe me, they look so hot and delicious. I have been going through this book at least 5 times today, and I know exactly what I want to order this weekend! Spicy, I'm coming!

Okay, the story of the Chinese zodiac is as old as time; I'm sure most of you have heard it before. But this brand-new rendition from Pan Asian Publications is jaw-droppingly gorgeous! The animation is bright, funny, and filled with lo-fi charms from the artistic use of beautifully designed paper-craft models and backgrounds. You can judge for yourself from watching a short trailer here. And it comes with 2 language tracks and 4 subtitle options, everyone can enjoy it.

Forget Alaska. This is "into the wild", a five year quest undertaken not by a callow college grad but by acclaimed explorer, world-class climber and Buddhist scholar Ian Baker to find a fabled waterfall at the heart of the deepest gorge on earth (three times the Grand Canyon) in the Tibetan hinterland. Previous explorers, including the Royal Geographical Society, dismissed the search for the falls as "the most obsessive wild goose chase of modern times". Baker never gave up however, even after a series of harrowing expeditions, all recounted beautifully in this journey to one of the wildest, most inaccessible and mythical places on earth: the Tsangpo Gorge AND the human soul. So riveting that even sitting in an armchair might require a safety strap. Will NOT be a major motion picture anytime soon.

This was the book used in the Chinese University of Hong Kong for a Mandarin Presentation class. The vocabulary in this book is not particularly difficult for a college level course, but it had many relevant topics to bounce off of for creating an interesting speech. This book includes a wild range of topics, including current condition of an industrial China to criticism on the Chinese education system. Speaking Chinese about China is a great tool to use for creating Chinese presentations while learning about the modern cultural aspects of China.

If you’re going to China, but can’t speak Chinese, this phrasebook is an absolute must! Not only is this book a perfect size, it is easy to follow. I don’t want to sound like a shameless commercial, but seriously, I’ve seen many phrasebooks before and find this one the most navigateable.

Benjamin’s “Remember” explodes the stereotype of the “Me Generation” being a mass of vapid, bubblegum popping, digital-media slurping, trend whores; he imposes a range of grey shadows over what has previously only been represented as flat cartoon colors. The stories in “Remember” – Nobody will Fly, Nobody will Remember and That Summer – are wrenching dark journeys through the underside of China’s prosperity. The protagonists are the impoverished geeks from the countryside trying to test into art school while being hazed by wealthy, “cool” city kids, girls that suddenly lose their minds, twenty somethings that live in hovels to support their art. They are powerful, narcissistic and beautifully illustrated. Whatever your age, you will come away from this book with a sense of the sweaty, gritty reality of urban youth in China today.

The characters in Ma Jian’s The Noodle Maker remind me of the madmen, beggars and servants in Lu Xun’s short stories – they are wry and clueless. Although The Noodle Maker is told through the sober eyes of a propaganda writer, the book follows characters like an actress who stages a public suicide, a painter who engages a three-legged dog in philosophical conversations and a young woman who gives up her job after being accused of sleeping around. Set in the 1970s when China first opened its’ doors to foreign trade, there are lessons to be learned from these stories: mostly that public policy affects private lives. With plenty of ludicrous characters at his disposal, Ma Jian’s funny, but biting satire spares almost no one.