"This is a delightfully witty and insightful guide to today's China."—The Guardian

China, the world's next superpower, is a complex, compelling, and often contradictory country that can bewilder even the most seasoned travelers. The journalist Kai Strittmatter made Beijing his home for ten years and, with varying degrees of success, navigated his way through its many pitfalls. On returning to Europe he wrote this unique book, a blend of reportage and anecdote that goes a long way to explaining the Chinese and why all our hopes, from prosperity to peace, rest with this enigmatic country.

Kai Strittmatter lived in Beijing as a newspaper correspondent. He is now the Istanbul correspondent for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and has published several books.