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Located in the center of Beijing, the Forbidden City served as the palace for the emperor of China from 1420 to 1912 CE, a period encompassing the Ming and Qing dynasties. It was home to the celestial leaders of China, men that possessed the Mandate of Heaven. A total of 24 emperors lived and ruled from the vast and magnificent complex for almost 500 years, until the last Chinese dynasty was overthrown in 1912 with the abdication of Emperor Xuantong, more commonly known as Puyi.

The Three Kingdoms is one of the Chinese Noble Classics. The great empire of China is in turmoil. As the government becomes increasingly incompetent, warlords and nobles battle for power. In the north is the Kingdom of Wei, headed by cunning and manipulative Cao Cao. In the southeast is the Kingdom of Wu, ruled by masterful and charismatic Sun Quan. In the west is the Kingdom of Shu, commanded by kindhearted and humble Liu Bei.

Considered encyclopedic due to its detailed descriptions of upper class life in the 18th century Qing Dynasty China, this masterpiece is one of China's four great classical novels, and it vividly narrates the rise and fall of the aristocratic Jia family. An exceptionally large cast of major characters—such as Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, and Wang Xifeng—are depicted in a way that is at once vivid and cutting. Their stories of joy, sorrow, love, and hatred are universally known throughout China.

Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her.

Between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over "the Chinese Question": Would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?

Without the Marines the entire United Nations core strength was at risk of collapse which would have changed the outcome of the Korean War. This is a compelling history of the Marines’ incredible tenacity and of woeful combat leadership as the Chinese gambled away their men’s lives and ultimately victory.

In 1885, following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Must Go shows how American immigration policies incited this violence, and how this gave rise to the concept of the "alien" in America. Our story begins in the 1850s, before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. By tracing the idea of the alien back to this violent era, Lew-Williams offers a new origin story of today's racialized border.

Lenora Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China's state-run public school system. The results were positive - her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends - but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education.

Lily is haunted by memories of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower and asks the gods for forgiveness.

Writing in response to the growing anti-Chinese sentiment and alarmed by the threat of war, Dr. David Daokui Li pulls from his wealth of firsthand experience to demystify contemporary Chinese society and advocate for understanding between China and the West. In this urgently needed and fascinating book, he explains the inner workings of a rising superpower to help the world understand how it works-and how to work with it.

This audiobook breaks down the complex language into its simplest parts. It focuses on patterns with frequent repetition in a way that is easy to follow and remember. The goal is to have children talk like native speakers instantly! It includes various learning modes such as repetition, Q&A, lots of music, and encouragement. Your child will have a blast. They won’t even know they’re learning!

Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith. The diary is that of a man who acknowledges that he is not a "Somebody"—Charles Pooter of 'The Laurels', Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, a clerk in the city of London—and it chronicles in hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle class during the Great Victorian age.

Clever, rich, and single, the beautiful Ān Mò (Emma Woodhouse) is focused on her career as fashion designer in the glamour of 21st-century Shanghai. She sees no need for romance in her life, but when she tries to find a boyfriend for her new friend Fangfang (Harriet), her carefully laid plans being to unravel. As she ignores the warnings of her good friend Shi Wenzheng (Mr. Knightley), her decisions bring consequences that she never expected.

For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture, a lucid epigrammatic text that reveals as much about human psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-Tzu's text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable insight in these ancient words.

The Cultural Revolution, known in full as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, as a means of quashing capitalism in China. Over the course of a decade, from the summer of 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong implemented a number of changes that have led him to be known as one of the most brutal tyrants of the modern age. If you want to discover the captivating history of the Cultural Revolution, purchase this book today.

Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and forced across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her.

This audiobook contains 2500 of the most common Chinese words so that you can get a head start compared to those still learning Chinese in a more traditional way. Usually, Chinese textbooks rely on learners to learn the characters. But here, Pinyin is introduced, allowing learners to quickly remember every word. As you will discover, these words will be more than enough for your travels, and you’ll start to be able to have conversations in Chinese.

The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier.

Do you have a minute? That's all you're going to need to learn to speak and understand authentic Mandarin Chinese. Well-known language author Mark Frobose brilliantly demonstrates how a few wasted minutes can be focused and used to learn to speak and understand Mandarin Chinese quickly and easily. Minute Mandarin features an educated native Mandarin Chinese speaker who will delight you with her expertise and authentic Mandarin accent.

The Water Margin is one of the most popular classics of early Chinese literature. It tells the vigorous story of 108 characters who, falling foul of the established state authorities, are forced to become outlaws. They form a bandit community in Liangshan Marsh, becoming such a formidable force in their own right that they threaten the power of government itself.