The spectacular Beijing Olympics of 2008 signaled China's arrival as a superpower on the world stage. The global economic crisis that followed in 2008-9 saw it become banker to the West, poised to eclipse the United States. This new edition of Kathy Flower's bestselling Culture Smart! China has been revised and updated by the author to take on board the transformation in China's fortunes and the changing face of Chinese society. This edition of Culture Smart! China is the indispensable visitors' guide to the complexities of a rapidly changing world power whose ancient culture and traditions owe little to the West.
Japan is at a crossroads. The postwar economic miracle that brought it unprecedented development and prosperity is over. Since the publication of the first Culture Smart! guide, it has been overtaken by China as the world
Hong Kong is the worlds most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful ur...
Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she has come to know all too well the many ways this police state can be described as "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has...
Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolita...
Troost charmed listeners with his humorous tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific in The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned with Savages. When the travel bug bit again, he took on the worlds most populous and intriguing na...
Two modern adventurers sought a treasure possessed by the legendary “Wild Men of Borneo.” One found riches. The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected m...
This is the account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one-fifth of humankind. To both Buddhists and Hindus it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has nev...
This is the inspiring story of how one man realized his dream of witnessing firsthand the most dramatic of meteorological events: the Indian monsoon. Alexander Frater spent the first six years of his life on a South Pacific island, where his father,...
India is in transition. Since the publication of Culture Smart's first guide to India in 2003, it has been transformed from a developing, third-world country into the world's fastest growing economy. This completely new and up-to-date volume by...
