I need some help/advice here, please?

[camwyn]

Hi, folks. Some of you may already know that I have a penpal in Wuhan, a major industrial city in mainland China. We exchanged calendars a while back as gifts. Recently he sent me this book: Things Chinese, by Du Feibao and Du Bai, published by the China Travel & Tourism Press. It's absolutely marvellous as far as I'm concerned - covers all kinds of cultural things that foreigners wouldn't necessarily know about or even think to research until they actually saw it. I'm just up to the second chapter, which covers architecture.

I'd like to reciprocate if at all possible, but when I go to the bookstore I find myself staring at the shelves and wondering if anyone ever bothered to put together a Big Book of Things You Might Like To Know About America for anyone over the age of eight. The tour guides don't really work, because even the DK ones full of photographs are more intended for people planning to come and visit, rather than people who just want to know. I'd prefer to find something with a lot of pictures and a relatively low amount of politics, if at all possible. Mind, this is going to be hard. Countries that get founded, instead of just sort of growing up around a given cultural nucleus, have a lot of politics in their histories. I just want the book to actually get through the mail inspectors and not get him in trouble.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Don't know what to suggest there. Although sending stuff to/from the PRC seems to be fraught with hazard. The latest batch of Amnesty International stuff to hit our doormat cites a woman from the Uighar minority who's in prison for "Sending secrets to a foreign power" - Or, to put it another way : Sending Uighar newspapers to her husband in the USA.

Nice.

[camwyn]

Urrgh. Yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm hoping to avoid. Mind you, they're a little hyper about the Uighurs these days - that part of the country has a thriving Moslem separatist movement, as opposed to Wuhan, which is mostly just Han Chinese conducting business. But that's exactly the kind of thing I want to avoid.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Don't know the book he sent, but for quirky, maybe one of those 'history of roadside attractions' books - the kind of thing Neil Gaiman used as source material for American Gods? And for straight, try 'Lies my Teacher Told Me.'