Environment, Science & Technology

Some English-language books (mostly of the instructional variety) can be found at the Foreign Languages Bookstore in Wang Fujing at Wang Fujing Dajie #235.

Some Resources for Learning About China and the Chinese Language

An excellent online resource on Chinese literature is the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center and Marjorie Chan's ChinaLinks (Homepage). [http://deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/c-links.htm] website at Ohio State University. See also Sinologue .... An English-language translation of stories by migrant worker women is available at Intersections: On the Move: Women in Rural-Urban Migration in Contemporary China.

Bookworms visiting Taipei will want to see this list of Taipei bookstores in the Big5 character code used on Treasure Island. Voice of America 美国之音 Chinese News is a good resource for advanced students of Chinese. Beginners may want to look at Qingliang Chen Online Chinese . Shanghai in Images displays over one thousand photos of pre-1949 Shanghai. Blogs and blogging have become popular in China -- many are listed at SinV.com and WWW.CNBLOG.ORG which also carries some public domain tools for making Chinese language blogs.

The Huntington Archive at Ohio State has a fine online collection of Cultural Revolution Posters. See also Dr. Matthew Ciolek's Asian Studies WWW Monitor , James Mulvenon's China Security Pages and European Center for Digital Resources in Chinese Studies. Classical bookworms should also see Internet East Asian History Sourcebook , CLASSICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY FOR CHINESE HISTORY by Princeton University East Asian Studies Department Professor Benjamin Elman, 300 Tang Poems . Free Chinese language academic journal article delivery is available from the Gateway Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal Publications at the University of Pittsburgh .

Free to air satellite television on Galaxy 3C and Telstar 5 provides North American students of Chinese with over ten channels of Chinese language television from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Los Angeles. Called small ears (xiao erduo) in Chinese, these small ku-band dishes available from vendors such as Smallear Satellite and Smallear.com are great for students of Chinese! Many PRC national network radio broadcasts are available online from the Chinese Central Broadcasting website.

Internet and Computing in Chinese

Web Sites for the Sinoliterate Computeratti

You can get on the Internet by dialing "2631", name:"263" and password "263". The Internet charges go on your telephone bill. Signing up for Internet service is cheaper. The Beijing Telecommunications Bureau [北京电信局] has a web page at http://www.bta.net.cn and main offices west of Tian An Men next to the Beijing Tushu Daxia.

Several online bookstores as well as general information on Beijing can be found through the Sohu search engine at http://www.sohu.com Starting from Sohu or another search engine such as Yahoo! Chinese you can find lists of search engines, online Chinese newspapers, online bookstores and other useful information. Other good search engines are Beijing University's Heavenly Web and Baidu. Good general references are the Chinese Language Information Page and Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library .

Chinese language software is widely available on the Internet from companies such as Twinbridge, Unionway and NJSTAR. More information on the short guide atop the Chinese Web Sites guide elsewhere on this website. You can find the latest Chinese language shareware at Netease Software Download 软件下载.

People within China may find that proxy servers can improve the quality of your internet connection. Some sites, especially web sites outside China that are very slow or hard to bring up at all, come up with a proxy server. Information is available at Proxy server list and Proxy Server Information Page. Improvements in the Great Firewall of China including content filtering are making proxy servers less useful, however.

Discussion Websites

Frontiers of Thought 思想的境界：中国人的学术努力 which collected articles by many prominent Chinese intellectuals, was closed on October 14, 2000 but still exists as an archive. The webmaster in his farewell message said that overwork and not enough sleep, not political interference were the reasons for closing down the website. The Issues and Ideology 问题与主义 website at http://www.wtyzy.net/ offers many frank articles by democratic populists such as Qin Hui, Wang Lixiong and He Qinglian.

The best guide to the Chinese web is the Chinese web however: you will find hierarchic lists of various categories of Chinese web pages on the top Chinese web portals such as Sina.Com.CN and Netease. Topforum, which bills itself as the first dynamic index of Chinese websites worldwide, gathers together the most read articles from hundreds of Chinese language websites. Among the most popular discussion sites worldwide as ranked by Top Forum are World Military Forum, Century Salon , Muzi.Com . Postings to Chinese language discussion websites offer a perspective on China by Chinese abroad although China mainlanders often comment as well. Some of the better ones are Chinese Newsnet , China News Digest , BBS City . Translations of several articles by He Qinglian are available on the website of the U.S. - China Commission . Here are some other discussion web sites:

· 世纪中国 , 制度分析公共政策 , 北大法律网 , 2 1世纪,

· 思想评论 , 中宏网 Chinese Macroeconomic Information Network , 中华读书网 , 北大中国经济中心 , 北大新青年 , 天则经济所Unirule, an independent economics thinktank,

· 何怀宏主页 , 天涯之声 , 中国学术城 , 新观察论坛 , 华夏知青网 , 六朝评论 , 中国研究

· 鲁迅研究网 , 行政管理在线 , 朝圣山之思 , 谢泳居 , 天虎评论 , 新语丝

Chinese Books Online

Some websites offer Chinese books online, including a number of titles you wouldn't expect to find online. See for example the fine biography of Premier Zhu Rongji 朱熔基传 , Crossed Swords a best-selling account of the battle between Communist Party "conservatives" and "progressives" over the past two decades 交锋 and the lists of online books below. Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian's books are not published in China but his book Soul Mountain was available on several PRC websites such as 中国青少年新世纪读书网-->灵山(高行健) . See Yahoo! Chinese search result on Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" . "Hu Yaobang and the Rectification of Trumped-Up Cases" 胡耀邦与平反冤假错案 is a 1998 bestseller that makes it easy to understand why Hu is remembered favorably today. Chinese-speaking or at least Chinese-reading fans of A Dream of Red Mansions aka The Story of the Stone aka Honglou Meng will enjoy 名著 - Classic Novels - Chinese Culture. Several websites including Chinese News Digest website at Hong Lou Meng (A Dream of Red Mansions) carry the full electronic text of A Dream of Red Mansions.

· Netease list of Chinese online reading sites: 网易文学 >> 在线书屋 and Netease guide to Chinese net literature: 网易文学 >> 网络原创

· Sohu list of literary websites such as this site devoted to 2000 Nobelist Gao Xingjian 高行健专辑

· Sina.com.cn list of literary websites at 文学_搜索引擎_新浪网

· 网上书屋

· Magic Island Chinese Poetry Database ,

· Chinese Digital Library - Chinese Online 中文在线

· 超星数字图书馆 Online pay library.Special reader software available at 超星数字图书馆----SSReader下载

· 广东省中山图书馆 Zhongshan Library, Guangdong Province

· Xin Yu Si (New Threads)

· 社会科学文献出版社

· 黄金书屋 Golden Bookstore a very wide selection from Chairman Mao's poetry to translations of foreign books on politics and economics.

· 亦凡公益图书馆 large site with many novels, biographies and "report literature" includes a selection of Chinese-language gay literature: 同志文学

· Qiqi.com Features several best sellers on line, including the controversial banned-in-Beijing book Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui

The 1998 "China Problems Series", some written by scholars connected to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reflected a wave of new thinking among Chinese scholars that has become less visible to the public. The most famous of these books was He Qinglian's "The Pitfalls of Chinese Modernization". Summary analyses three of these books in this series are on this website:

· PRC Environmental Grave Concerns - Part One see top page for the rest of the series.

· Competition on the Pacific Ocean: Problems in Maritime Strategy for Modern China December 1998

· Summary/Review of China Doesn't Want to Be 'Mr. No' March 1998

See what the Party and Government propaganda departments people worry about in PRC press coverage at 中华新闻报China Press Journal written for the news media and government propaganda departments, this journals seeks to "uphold the lines and policies of the Party and support the correct guidance of public opinion.."

The Bible Online in China

One example of how the web is making some books more widely available of some kinds of discouraged although legal literature is the increased availability of the Bible. See Bible website lists from Sina.com 圣经_搜索结果_搜索引擎_新浪网 Hundreds, sometimes thousands of hits, including some worldly interlopers such as the stockpicker's Bible and the hiker's bible. The October 2000 issue of Ruanjian [Software] magazine included this software notice:
"Introduction: Once you get past the beginner's stage in English, you will want to progress still further. One way of doing that is reading original works written in English. Among these, The Gospel According to Matthew is a must read. As some people have said, The Bible is chock full of words that appear in the GRE examinations. Reading the Bible is a great way to improve your English language vocabulary. One the CD is the English text and a 21.7 megabyte MP3 audio file of the Gospel."

Online Bookstores

The book distribution system in China is confusing. You never know where you will find an interesting book. There are a few large well-organized bookstores but don't neglect the book corners of supermarkets. Some of the books from the Shanghai and Guangdong publishers don't make it to Beijing so stay alert during your travels. Online ordering is usually not as convenient as in the United States. As more urban Chinese get credit cards transferring money to the seller will not be as big an obstacle to electronic ommerce. This is beginning to change as you can see below. People do buy books and CDs they find on websites but they remit the money through the post office. You can probably generate better lists yourself by visiting Sohu, Yahoo! Chinese, Altavista Chinese or another Chinese language search engine by using the search term bookstore。

Online Chinese Language Bookstores

· WorldBizCity (in New York, accepts credit cards)

· 中国图书网 BooksChina

· 博客来网路书店Taiwan Books

· 龙源国际(GB) Dragonsource.Com

· 期刊 Qikan.Com PRC periodicals

· 当当书店 Dangdang. Convenient search engine on this site.

· 碧海银沙站海银沙站

· 上海书城 Shanghai Shucheng aka The Shanghai Bookmall has 200,000 books and audiovisual products. The Shanghai Bookmall accepts Visa for international customers. The Shanghai Bookmall was the first on-line bookshop to adopt Secure Electronic Transactions for safe on-line payment.

Bookworm Reports, Essays, Translations

· Wired China: Many Hands on Many Switches April 2002

· PRC Lead Negotiator Long Yongtu on U.S. - China WTO Negotiations Nov 2001

· Online Essays by He Qinglian and Yu Jie May 2001

· China's Need for a Strategy of International Communication

· Yu Jie's October 1st Open Letter to the China Writers' Association October 2000

· What the Taxi Driver Said April 2000

· Reading Two Books by the Chinese Writer Yu Jie: An Appreciation January 2000

· Many Interesting Chinese Books Are Online January 2000

· Peace on Earth to All People and Aliens of Good Will December 1999

· Bestseller List in Beijing on June 4, 1999

· What's Selling at the San Lian Bookstore: October 1998

· Visiting Fujian Bookstores December 1998

· Economics Books -- Chinese Translation of Stiglitz Etc. December 1998

Bookworm Book Reviews, Summaries

· China Along the Yellow River -- A Scholar's Observations and Medications on Chinese Rural Society Reading Notes, Book One

· "A Green World Tour" Censored - Part II

· Can We Believe Anything These Days? - Wang Sisi October 2000

· A PRC Net Good: Guides to Internet Resources February 2000

· "Whom Should We Worship" - January 2000 book

· "A Green World Tour" by Tang Xiyang Is Published in English

· A Section Censored from A Green World Tour

· Two Recent Books About Law and Journalism in the USA

· "Chinese People Suing Officials in Today's China" 6/99 book

· China's Minority Populations: Mongols, Tibetans, Uighurs

· A Review of China Under the Shadow of Globalism By Singapore Newspaper Dec. 99

· Chinese Sea Power, Taiwan and the U.S. Articles from net military forum

· The Wolf Has Come: PLA Daily on InfoSec Threat 8/99

· Questions and Answers for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the PRC

· PRC Environmental Grave Concerns - Part One see top page for the rest of the series.

· Competition on the Pacific Ocean: Problems in Maritime Strategy for Modern China December 1998

· Summary/Review of China Doesn't Want to Be 'Mr. No' March 1998

· Review of PRC novel "The Wrath of God", Insights Into Official Corruption Chinese text available at 《天怒》

· Studying in America Returned student Qian Ning's book on the Chinese students' encounter with America

· Review of "Pacific Reflections" by David Firestein and Zhang Aixue

· Summary, Comments on "Can the Environment Wait? Priorities for East Asia", A 1997 World Bank Report

· Recent Chinese Language Studies on Tibetan Society, Economy, and Environment

· Xinjiang Reading Notes: Population, Economy, Environment, Minorities Policy

A Few Bookstores to get you started {GB [国标 ] -encoded Chinese characters in parentheses}

· Beijing Tushu Dasha [北京图书大夏] two kilometers due west of Tian An Men on Chang An Dajie. It is on the north side near the Beijing Telecommunications Building

· Beijing Sanlian [北京三联书店] just north of Wang Fujing [王府井] at Meishuguan Donglu #22 [美术馆东路22号] Open evenings until 9 PM. An Internet cafe on the second floor.

· Feng Ru Song [Wind Entering the Willows[风入松书店]] just east of the south gate of Beijing University in the Haidian [海淀] District. A block to the southeast is Book City [Shucheng [书城]] which has thirty-odd bookstores. About a kilometer northeast of Beijing University in a small side street is the Wansheng Shudian [Ten Thousand Saints [万圣书店]. See also the list below.

Guides to Beijing

· Beijing Citizen's Life Guide [北京市民生活指南 published by 中国人事出版社] Similar to Beijing Guide below but more recent with a much better bookstore list.

· Beijing Life Map Book [ 北京生活地图册 from 中国地图出版社] detailed street maps that give the name of companies along the street in the widely available. Seventy-page long stroke order index. This is a rectangular book with a green cover available in many bookstores.

· Beijing Guide [北京向导 published by the 测绘出版社] contains maps, busroutes, and the addresses and phone numbers of many companies and government organizations. Quite a big list. It contains, for example, addresses and telephone numbers for schools, theatres and the representative office of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region Telecommunications Bureau at Beijing.

Newspapers

The most interesting kind of newspaper (and probably the most popular) are the digest newspapers. These newspapers, published all over China, reprint interesting articles from the local press, and provides the most good information for your newspaper reading time. Digest newspapers published in Heilongjiang, Fujian, Sichuan, Tianjin, Anhui and other provinces are widely available on Beijing newstands and can be ordered through the post office. Most of these four page digest newspapers have titles that end in digest or press clipping such as 报刊文摘，科技文摘，文摘报，文摘周报. Subscribers overseas can order many of these newspapers and other periodicals through Joint Publishing Co., 9 Queen Victoria St., Hong Kong as well as several other sources.

Some Chinese newspapers such as People's Daily, the Guangdong Communist Party paper Nanfang Ribao and its weekend edition, the extraordinarily popular national paper Nanfang Zhoumo have big websites with online search engines. The Communist Party's central newspaper, the People's Daily, now has an english language website at People' Daily Online English Edition .

Look for the Chinese words Jiansuo [检索 or 全文检索] to find the search engine. See list of online Chinese newspapers on the Guangming Ribao web site. The English language China Daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn) also has a search engine and a U.S. mirror site. Newshoo collects articles from many PRC and overseas Chinese language newspapers everyday for its database. See the Embassy Bejing report PRC Net Info-Benefit: Full-Text Newspaper Searches and the collection of links to interesting Chinese media and government web sites .

Magazines

The best way to figure out which Chinese magazines to read is to go to a big library such as the National Library, browse the collections and build a list for yourself. Alternatively, go to the Chinese post office and look at the catalogue. Some Chinese magazines are listed online at 期刊 Qikan.Com

Then you can order the magazines through the post office. November is magazine subscription month and so is the best time to get orders in with the local post office. Those who live outside the diplomatic postal code of 100600 [or outside the sway of the international post office] seem to be able to get a wider range of periodicals although the diplomatic disadvantage seems to be fading.

Several periodicals that may be of general interest or utility:

· 中华读书报 Zhonghua Dushu Bao a weekly newspaper of book reviews published by Guangming Ribao. Fun to read.

· 读书 Dushu a very popular monthly book review magazine.

· 新华文摘 Xinhua Wenzhai a monthly digest of articles from Chinese newspapers and magazines.

· 中国社会科学 Zhongguo Shehui Kexue published monthly. Articles by leading Chinese social scientists.

· 三联生活周刊 Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan a semi-monthly newsmagazine with a high density of good information.

· 新华书目报 (社科书目版) Xinhua Shumu (Shekeban) notices of new books and pre-publication offers of books from the New China Bookstore. This is the social sciences edition. A one paragraph notice of each book. Not fun to read but sometimes good books are to be found therein.

A Few Bookstores to Start With....

Name	Address	Telephone	Comment
北京图书大夏 Beijing Tushu Dasha			2 km west of Tian An Men next to the 北京电信局 largest bookstore in Beijing
王府井书店 Wangfujing Bookstore	王府井大街218号	6513-2842	opened 2000 at southern end of Wangfujing
三联读者服务部 Sanlian Bookstore	美术馆东路22号	6404-0604	large, well-organized, helpful staff, Internet cafe on the second floor
三味书屋	复兴内大街60号	6601-4290	social sciences, literature. Nightly live music in teahouse starts at 8 PM
风入松书店 Feng Ru Song Bookstore	北大资源楼 1/2 block east of Beijing University's south gate	6262-5939	Large bookstore catering to the large university community in the Haidian district. Visit "Book City" 书城 one block southeast too -- its a hive of 20 small bookstores.
万圣书店	海淀成府路	6262-1606	Academic bookstore with a superb selection. Most of their business is mail-order.

*Inclusion of non-U.S. Government links does not imply endorsement of contents.