Kirjahaku

Chinese gods: Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they do? Chinese folk religion is the underlying belief system of more than a billion Chinese people. Go into any Chinese home, office or restaurant and you will see altars, statues or paper 'good luck' images. And wherever there is a Chinese community there are temples and Earth God shrines. But what is the religion that makes sense of all these expressions of belief? How do these beliefs connect to Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism? Chinese Gods helps us understand the building blocks of this religion for which even the Chinese have no name - because the beliefs are so intertwined with language and culture they have no independent existence - and provides an in-depth analysis of 19 of the major gods of the Chinese pantheon.

This is a letter from the heart, written by Jonathan Chamberlain to his daughter. It is the painful, loving and powerfully written story of a girl who was profoundly disabled and lived for only eight years - yet who changed the world. She inspired her father to found two charities. Read this book, be moved by it. Let it change your life too.

When Joe dies, his brother Jack thinks it's an accident ...until the parcel arrives with Joe's diaries and notebooks, and the map of the cabin high up in the Appalachians where Joe's war buddy, Wash, is hiding out with a girl he's kidnapped - just the latest in a long line of girls. Joe has one last favour to ask of his brother. He wants Jack to rescue the girl and - if he has to - kill Wash too. So starts a complex and intense tale that involves a journey back to Vietnam and into the dark past: a past where Clausewitz, the philosopher of war, meets de Sade, the philosopher of man's own individual evil. But there are too the incendiary eyes of innocent judgement. And there is love - and love is complicated.

Scandal and corruption, drugs and pirates, triads and flower boats; the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the Communist take-over of Canton. Peter Hui was there. He knew everybody and saw everything. This is the real story of Hong Kong, told with the rich flavours of the street. If Peter had been only a little bit different he could have been an important man. But this is a riches to rags to riches to rags story. As we follow Peter's life, we see in sharp focus what it was like to be a Chinese man in the British territory of Hong Kong through most of the years of the 20th century. And yet this book is not just one man's tale. It is the story of a time and place -- colonial Hong Kong, Portuguese Macau and the South China hinterland -- seen from the unique point of view of a man who was at home at all levels of society. This is the bizarre story of a man who really did, for a very short time, own all the opium in Hong Kong. If Suzie Wong had been a real person, Peter Hui would have known her.