China is one of the world's leading producers and consumers of liquor, with alcohol infusing all aspects of its culture, from religion and literature to business and warfare. Yet to the outside world, China's most famous spirit, baijiu, remains a mystery. This is about to change, as baijiu is now being served in cocktail bars beyond its borders. Drunk in China follows Derek Sandhaus's journey of discovery into the world's oldest drinking culture. He travels throughout the country and around the globe to meet with distillers, brewers, snake-oil salesmen, archaeologists, and ordinary drinkers. He examines the many ways in which alcohol has shaped Chinese society and its rituals. He visits production floors, karaoke parlors, hotpot joints, and speakeasies. Along the way he uncovers a tradition spanning more than nine thousand years and explores how recent economic and political developments have conspired to push Chinese alcohol beyond the nation's borders for the first time. As Chinese society becomes increasingly international, its drinking culture must also adapt to the times. Can the West also adapt and clink glasses with China? Read Drunk in China and find out.

In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. The man was Sir Edmund Backhouse, and his controversial memoirs, DEcadence Mandchoue, were published for the first time by Earnshaw Books in 2011. This edition, renamed Manchu Decadence, is abridged and unexpurgated, meaning that it focuses on the most extraordinary and valuable elements of Backhouse's narrative. Backhouse was a talented sinologist, and his book provides a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality.

A forbidden city for Westerners for hundreds of years, China's capital has always been viewed as one of the world's most mysterious cities. This book re-creates a sense of old Peking through a pastiche of historical snippets--stories, quotations, cartoons, postcards and drawings--and shares intriguing tidbits about the Imperial Court. Placing Peking in the context of the Boxer Rebellion, when two very different yet equally headstrong cultures clashed, this is a valuable source for those interested in Chinese history.

Pirates, plagues, pistols, and poisons: with adventure of all varieties, this is a rollicking journey into colonial Hong Kong. A collection of historical odds and ends--stories, quotations, cartoons, postcards, and drawings--this book recounts in thrilling detail how a "barren rock" seemingly destined to fail rose to become one of the richest trading outposts in Asia.

One of the most popular and controversial Chinese history books ever written, China under the Empress Dowager is also one of the best. Authors Bland and Backhouse take you inside the Forbidden City during the reign of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908), a world of power-thirsty eunuchs, concubines and Mandarins, intrigue, bitter antagonism and ruthless reprisals. The book was unique for its time in its reliance on Chinese source materials, some of which may have been fabricated. As entertaining as it is enlightening, the book that presaged the fall of the Qing dynasty is as readable today as it ever was.

China is one of the world's leading producers and consumers of liquor. In turn, alcohol infuses all aspects of China's culture, from religion and literature to business and warfare. Yet to the outside world, China's most famous spirit remains a mystery. That's about to change: baijiu, the most popular alcoholic drink in China, is now being served in cocktail bars overseas. The baijiu invasion is beginning. Drunk in China follows Derek Sandhaus' journey of discovery into the world's oldest drinking culture. He travels throughout the country and around the globe to meet with distillers, brewers, snake-oil salesmen, archeologists and ordinary drinkers. He visits production floors, karaoke parlors, hotpot joints and speakeasies. Along the way he uncovers a tradition that spans more than nine thousand years, and explores how recent economic and political developments have conspired to push Chinese alcohol beyond the nation's borders for the first time. As Chinese society becomes increasingly international, its drinking culture must also adapt to the times. But is the West ready to clink glasses with China, or will deeply rooted stereotypes prove too difficult to overcome? Far from engaging in a juvenile celebration of inebriation for its own sake, Sandhaus has aimed to examine the many ways in which alcohol has shaped Chinese society and its rituals, sometimes with disastrous consequences.