As usual we end our S3 Newsletter with news loosely related to the business world.
On this occasion we bring the list of the ten best books on China in English to a close, by presenting the complete list for those who may have missed any of the last ten editions of our S3 Newsletter.
Furthermore, we continue with the theme of large, but little-known Chinese cities.
However, on top of focusing on cities, in this edition we are starting a new theme with a presentation of the ten most beautiful natural parks in China.
The 10 best books on China
As mentioned in the introduction above, we hereby show our readers the list of the 10 books on China we highlighted in earlier editions:
- ‘The Corpse Walker’, Liao Yiwu
- ‘China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know’, Jeffrey Wasserstrom
- ‘China in Ten Words’, Yu Hua
- ‘Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China’, Leslie T. Chang
- ‘The Search for Modern China’, Jonathan Spence
- ‘China’, Henry Kissinger
- ‘The Complete Fiction of Xu Lun’, Xu Lun
- ‘China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know’, Arthur R. Kroeber
- ‘The 1-hour China Book’, Jonathan Woetzel, Jeffrey Towson
- ‘A Brief History of China’, Jonathan Clements
Source: Internal elaboration 🙂
Large yet little-known Chinese cities
After placing Wuhan (central China), Shenyang (northeast), Guiyang (southwest), Shaoxing (east), Chengdu (west), Fuzhou (southeast), Hainan Island (south), Xi’an (northwest) and Nanjing (east), on the map, we return to the south of the country, where we find the capital of Yunnan Province: Kunming.
Kunming, known as the ‘City of Eternal Spring’, thanks to its mild climate, was historically an important stop on the Silk Road.
It was a well-known city for its connection of eastern China with the most important trading posts in Tibet, Sichuan, Myanmar and India.
Today, it is a vibrant metropolis with more than 6,500,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the southern province of Yunnan.
Although the city centre offers several interesting visitor attractions, many tourists take advantage of their Kunming trip to visit the ‘Shilin Stone Forest (or Karst)‘, about a hundred kilometres away from the city.
It is a protected area (of about 350 km2) of rocks that look like petrified trees.
These ‘karst’, created by the dissolution of limestone, are estimated to be about 270 million years old.
The city of Kunming itself offers the visitor many interesting landmarks, such as temples and lakes.
The local economy has extensive natural and energy resources including hydroelectric. Tobacco production and the export of flowers to Asian markets are two of the most important economic strengths.
The ten most beautiful natural parks in China
We start this new theme with the almost impossible task of choosing the 10 most beautiful national parks in China from the extraordinary total of 225 parks!
True to our tradition of offering rigorously selected and fascinating information for the S3 Newsletter, we accepted the challenge and start the list with a real pearl.
We mentioned this park a few years ago; Jiuzhaigou or the ‘Valley of the Nine Fortified Villages’, of which seven are still inhabited, is in the province of Sichuan.
It is not only a Chinese national park but was also declared part of the World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1997.
Jiuzhaigou contains spectacular lakes with crystal clear waters and is also the habitat of a large number of rare species of plants and animals including the well-known panda bears and the lesser-known red pandas.
The Park covers an area of about 72,000 hectares (720 km2) and is visited every year by hundreds of thousands of mainly domestic tourists.