Beijing: Portrait of a City

A collection of wry and telling photographs of Beijing; a highly original and unforgettable impression of one of the world’s oldest and most fascinating cities.

Beijing: Portrait of a City is the shared work of some of Beijing’s finest storytellers, authors and academics: James Kynge, Zhu Wen, Adam Williams, Roy Kesey, Ma Jian, Alfreda Murck, Tim Clissold, Catherine Sampson, Peter Hessler, Karen Smith, Paul French, Michael Aldridge, Hong Ying and Rob Gifford.

The contributors all experts in their field lead us through hutong alleys, antique markets, artists’ communities, gay bars, parks and the nostalgic streets of memory. They beguile with poems, amuse with camel anecdotes and thrill with two murder stories—one a genuine antique, the other a fictional contemporary. They take us back to the often-ignored Mongolian roots of the city and project forward to ask whether spectacular modern architecture will suffice to return Beijing to what it sees as its ancient place at the center of the world. 40 b&w illustrations