Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
get maps of Beijing. If you'd rather browse than buy, there is the National Library of China
(
www.nlc.gov.cn
), which is at its own subway station on Line 4.
If you know what you want, however, it's really worth shopping online. Amazon, TMall,
360buy, Dang Dang Wang, and Taobao are just some of the places that are threatening the
cash registers at the real life bookstores. You can find a huge range of English-language
books, plus delivery is most likely going to be free and quick.
Books printed in China are extraordinarily cheap. Novels might be only RMB20,
and Chinese-language textbooks would be considered expensive if over RMB50. English
books, on the other hand, are usually imported, so you'll find they sit on a different price
scale altogether. Novels can easily range between RMB100 and RMB250. Alternatively,
if you're not opposed to fake books, these go for around RMB20, give or take. They are,
however, somewhat necessarily disposable. You'll probably find that pages fall out as you
read, that the ink looks like the printing factory was squeezing every last drop out of their
ink cartridges, or that sections of the story are missing altogether.
Occasionally titles are banned, so you won't find these in any mainstream sales place.
International travel guides relating specifically to Beijing are also suspiciously absent, al-
lowing for a monopoly on the genre by local publishers.
The main television network in China is CCTV, and while it might share the acronym of
a surveillance camera system, it actually stands for China Central Television. CCTV was
founded in 1958. It has 22 channels, which cover such genres as documentary, comedy,
entertainment, and drama. Turn on the channel and you are more than likely to see period
dramas set in one dynastic era or another. The company was originally situated in the China
Central Television Building in Haidian district, but now much of it has been relocated to
the CCTV Headquarters in Chaoyang district near Guomao. This astounding complex was
designed by architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren and was finally completed in May
2012, eight years after it was first commenced. It is now one of the major iconic buildings
of the city.
The only free-to-air English channel is CCTV NEWS (formerly CCTV-9), a channel
that's about as stimulating as a hot cup of chamomile tea. Its key programs include News
Update, News Hour, China 24, Asia Today, Biz Asia, Biz Talk, New Money, Culture Ex-
press, Sports Scene, Dialogue, and World Insight. Around these are other programs relating
to Chinese culture and history.
