Best Gift Books

Until Death Do Us Part [双喜] focuses on the unexpected role cigarettes play in Chinese weddings.

As a token of appreciation, it is customary for the bride to light a cigarette for each and every man invited. The bride and the groom are then invited to play some cigarette-smoking games of an unprecedented ingenuousness. This publication pays homage to a tradition in which love and death walk hand in hand.

These photos come from Thomas Sauvin's Beijing Silvermine project - an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the years from a recycling plant on the outskirts of Beijing.

More on Beijing Silvermine and Thomas Sauvin

3rd Edition

Product Dimensions: 53 x 83 x 21mm

Material: Paperback, in original cigarette box, 108 pages

Publisher: Jiazazhi Press

Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas is a new translation for contemporary readers of a classic Chinese text that is at once the geography of an ancient world, a bestiary of mythical creatures, and a book of cultural and medicinal lore. Illustrated throughout with more than 180 two-color drawings that are so sinuous they move on the page, it is a work for lovers of fantasy and mythology, ancient knowledge, fabulous beasts, and inspired art.
 
The beings cataloged within these pages come from the regions of the known world, from the mountains and seas, the Great Wastelands, and the Lands Within the Seas that became China. They include spirits and deities and all sorts of strange creatures—dragons and phoenixes, hybrid beasts, some with human features, some hideous or with a call like wood splitting, or that portend drought or flood or bounty; others whose flesh cures disease or fends off nightmares, or whose pelt guarantees many progenies.
 
Drawn from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Fantastic Creatures is the work of two members of China's millennial generation, a young scholar and writer once known as the youngest "Genius of Chinese Cultural Studies" and an inspired illustrator trained in China and the United States, who together managed to communicate with the soul of a 4,000-year-old beast and have brought forth its strange beauty. Their work has been rendered into English by the foremost translator of modern Chinese literature in the West.

Publisher: Arcade; Illustrated edition (June 1, 2021)

Language: English

Hardcover: 376 pages

ISBN-10: 1950691381

ISBN-13: 978-1950691388

Item Weight: 1.74 pounds

From the Subtle Asian Baking community comes Modern Asian Baking at Home, must-have recipes for beloved sweet and savory treats found across Asia.

Explore new ingredients, surprising techniques, and interesting textures through lush photography and rewarding recipes that include exciting yet familiar contemporary bakes with innovative Asian twists. The results are unforgettable delights like miso-mochi brownies and spicy gochujang flourless chocolate cake. There’s even a recipe for homemade boba!

This is the perfect cookbook for anyone nostalgic for Asian desserts as well as hobbyist and avid home bakers interested in using vibrant ingredients like miso, matcha, pandan, and soy sauce to expand their repertoires. No passport is needed when you can easily create and experience popular Asian sweets and one-of-a-kind Asian-influenced drinks, custards, cakes, and frozen treats at home.

For this book, there are two editions. One is paperback, and the other one is hardcover. A few images repeats in these two. 

Artist's statement:

This project is about elderly woman wearing facekini on the beach. Facekini is something like bikini but is covering the face.

Many people may think these images are funny. Sure, humor is a part of my intention, but it’s far from my ultimate purpose. In this project, I try to explore a kind of self-gazing with some surreal, dramatic, and humorous portraits of Chinese. This is very similar to the current situation in China, where society is full of surreal landscape. This project attempts to document these fleeting things.

These masks are hand-made by themselves, which are made of tattered vest, rag or swimsuits, and even cloth from useless pants, so you won't find one same mask on the beach.

Each facekini consists of different fabric materials. You may think it's very artistic. They will consider whether the mask goes well with their swimsuit.

In fact, they also know that others may find it ridiculous and strange. But they say the main function of facekini is for UV protection, as well as the offshore pollution in recent years. And more jellyfish attack human. It can avoid getting hurt when wearing a facekini. It also represents another layer of meaning: if you look around the beach, young girls don't wear facekini, men neither. Only middle-aged and elderly women wear mask. So, I think another reason is that these middle-aged and elderly women are ashamed of exposing their aging and deformed bodies. Wearing mask will make them much more comfortable and confident. I still don't know what these people I've photographed look like.

Author: Peng Yangjun

Format: 

150mm X 190mm X 25mm, 252 pages, paperback

• Published by Jiazazhi
• Size：233mm x 70mm x 68mm
• Hardcover with silk-screen printing
• Box includes 3D glasses, 66 pieces of 3D cards, and a booklet
• Second edition of 1200
• Published in May 2018