Author/photographer Tom Carter has gone on record about “getting his start” in China through the Beijinger. He answered a job ad in the back of the February 2004 issue, after the Craigslist ad he originally responded to – and flew out all the way to China for – turned out to be a scam (“some guy in a bathrobe running an ‘English school’ out of his Haidian apartment”). He later worked as a freelance photographer for the Beijinger.

Tom has published two books since then, CHINA: Portrait of a People and the new expat anthology Unsavory Elements, both which prominently feature Beijing in their pages.

Leading up to his May 21st book talk at The Bookworm, we asked Tom to name some of his own personal favorite reading material about Beijing, and he obliged us with the following list, along with some movies thrown in for good measure.

1) The Last Days of Old Beijing

Pretty much essential reading for any Beijinger. Michael Meyer’s portrait of this rapidly changing capital city is as much a declaration of its gleaming future as it is an elegy to its bulldozed past.

2) Decadence Mandchoue

Speaking of the past, the 19th-century memoirs of Sir Edmund Backhouse’s gambol through the bedchambers and brothels of Beijing will shock even the most ribald readers.

3) Beijing Coma

While in China, everyone should read at least one Ma Jian novel – they are all good – but for the purposes of this list I propose starting with Beijing Coma, which centers around Tiananmen.

4) One Night In Beijing

As a photographer, I endorse this as one of the must-have coffee table books about China. The Beijinger crew sent out a drove of photographers to capture all of the capital city on a single summer night. And for the record, no I’m not in it; just my luck, I was in Hong Kong that night.

5) Ich in Ein Beijinger

For those of us Beijingers who, upon getting our hands on the newest issue of the Beijinger every month, immediately flipped to the back to read Kaiser Kuo’s cynically tantalizing column, here is a collection of his best work.

6) Beijing: Portrait of a City

Beijing Bookworm boss Alex Pearson compiled and edited this lovely collection of Beijing-themed writing, which includes vignettes from Old China Hands like Paul French and Peter Hessler.

7) Beijing Bicycle

This is the very first Chinese movie I ever watched, about a teen peasant who moves to Beijing and works as a bike messenger, then gets his bike stolen by a gang of high school bullies. It’s touching and bold, and more China movies should be like this.

8) Lost in Beijing

Don’t roll your eyes, I actually liked this film. A massage parlor employee (played perfectly by Fan Bingbing) gets raped by her boss, then paid by him and his barren wife to carry the illegitimate baby to term.

9) Beijing Taxi

An indie documentary about the transformation of this city we love through the eyes of taxi drivers (whom we tend to love less), using the streets as a metaphor for Beijing’s jilted road towards progress and development.

10) Wasted Orient

Documentary about Beijing punk band Joyside. I used to watch these guys jam at the Nameless Highland, and singer Bian Yuan actually hung out at my apartment once (he didn’t seem to know where he was and will probably deny it).



Tom Carter speaks about his new book, Unsavory Elements, at the Bookworm May 21. Excerpts and a full review of the book are also available.

Photo: Xinhua