Atlas of China
National Geographic, HK$208
Pieced together by a National Geographic phalanx of cartographers, writers, editors, researchers and consultants, Atlas of China is impressively compact. The guide, equipped with more than 400 maps and illustrations, weighs in at only 98 pages.
And yet, it is thorough, covering subjects ranging from conservation and military strength to economic and 'human' development, including standards of living, employment and so on.
In addition, big cities are profiled. That includes Hong Kong, whose humble 'barren rock' origins are revisited. When, a few years after the second world war, the People's Republic of China came into being, Hong Kong was far from barren, and the appearance of its new neighbour must have been a worry. 'An enormous eastern communist country looked straight at a western capitalistic colonial enclave right on its shoreline,' the atlas says.
Chengdu, Beijing, Kunming, Lhasa, Shanghai, Taipei (controversially), Urumqi, Xian and the ice city of Harbin, make the cut too.