A Dance With the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking's Foreign Colony

8vo, hardcover, pp. 263. Julia Boyd tells the fascinating tale of the foreign community surviving in Peking between the end of the Ching Dynasty and Mao s communist revolution. It is a great story very well told - turmoil behind, turmoil ahead and turmoil all around. --Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, Chairman of the BBC and former Governor of Hong Kong Based on a treasure-trove of original sources, this book gives an enthralling insight into the expatriate community in Peking during the half-century before the triumph of Mao. Anyone who wants to understand China's relationship with foreigners, today as well as yesterday, should read it. --Piers Brendon, author of The Decline and Fall of the British Empire A fascinating account sourced from many previously unpublished letters and archives. Boyd's characters flit on the surface of the city like water beetles, unaware of the depths below. --Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections, British Library, author of China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. '.with its fresh insights into this historic non-meeting of minds, [A Dance With the Dragon] appears at an opportune moment.' --Literary Review A fascinating account sourced from many previously unpublished letters and archives. Boyd's characters flit on the surface of the city like water beetles, unaware of the depths below. --Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections, British Library, author of China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. 'Boyd s volume stands alone as a valuable history of our foreign predecessors, but also offers a healthy reminder of the responsibilities incumbent upon those who make China their home.' --Asian Review of Books A fascinating account sourced from many previously unpublished letters and archives. Boyd's characters flit on the surface of the city like water beetles, unaware of the depths below. --Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections, British Library, author of China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. 'It is as much a glimpse of a corner of the fashionable intellectual life of Europe and America in exile as it is a guide to the vanished world of Peking itself.' --Asian Affairs A fascinating account sourced from many previously unpublished letters and archives. Boyd's characters flit on the surface of the city like water beetles, unaware of the depths below. --Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections, British Library, author of China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. L'autore Julia Boyd is the author of Hannah Riddell, An Englishwoman in Japan, and The Excellent Doctor Blackwell. She has traveled frequently to China.