The Bookworm’s library makes the perfect informal setting for our inspiring programme packed with readings, talks, discussions, debates, book launches and music gigs. Audiences are enlightened by well respected novelists, journalists and travel writers; enraptured by impromptu homespun musical soirees hatched round the piano; and transported to lands far away by lilting lines of live poetry. Whether your penchant is for the hottest new Chinese Writers, Asia’s most illustrious entrepreneurs, or the most risque documentaries, you’ll be able to indulge it at The Bookworm.
Tickets for all events are 20rmb for members of The Bookworm and 30 rmb for non-members unless otherwise specified.
Upcoming Events
We’ve trawled pubs, playhouses, classrooms and street corners to find some of the city’s best storytellers. This month’s theme: Crime & Punishment. Join us as local storytellers spin a yarn for you! If you are interested in being one of our storytellers, email kadi@chinabookworm.com.
This event is co-sponsored by City Weekend.
20/30rmb
Each year, The Bookworm hosts the NGO & Charity Networking Day in order to help organizations share awareness and connect with the Beijing NGO-charity community. Drop by to find out more about some of the great organizations working in the NGO and charity sectors and ways for you to get involved!
FREE
50rmb Come along for our Sunday sessions of reading, games, music and activities for little readers. Each week teacher Hannah reads new and classic children's books with the help of our storytellers. Ages 4 and up.
5rmb
Flex your neurological muscles every Monday at The Bookworm pub quiz, an evening of terrific trivia hosted by Tom Champagne. All the usual rounds are featured, each week choosing six from general knowledge, music, history, sport, geography, world events, science and nature, and naturally, art and literature. Max teams of six. Great prizes up for grabs. Get here EARLY to be guaranteed a table.
The Bookworm and Electric Shadows Film Club present open air cinema screening on the roof of The Bookworm. We’ll be screening a classic film and serving up accompanying cocktails, every other Thursday. This month, we kick off the series with The Artist.
FREE
After a vigorous spring-cleaning, we’ve collected some of our library stock of second-hand books and are putting them on sale. Books from 10rmb, all genres. Stop by to comb through some of our hidden treasures and get a start on your summer reading.
Martin Jacques joins us to discuss his best-selling book When China Rules the World. How China's ascendance as an economic superpower will alter the cultural, political, social, and ethnic balance of global power in the twenty-first century, unseating the West and in the process creating a whole new world. According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood. In this far-reaching and original investigation, Martin Jacques offers provocative answers to some of the most pressing questions about China's growing place on the world stage. Martin Jacques reveals, by elaborating on three historical truths, how China will seek to shape the world in its own image. The Chinese have a rich and long history as a civilization-state. Under the tributary system, outlying states paid tribute to the Middle Kingdom. Ninety-four percent of the population still believes they are one race-"Han Chinese." The strong sense of superiority rooted in China's history promises to resurface in twenty-first century China and in the process strengthen and further unify the country.A culturally self-confident Asian giant with a billion-plus population, China will likely resist globalization as we know it. This exceptionalism will have powerful ramifications for the rest of the world and the United States in particular. As China is already emerging as the new center of the East Asian economy, the mantle of economic and, therefore, cultural relevance will in our lifetimes begin to pass from Manhattan and Paris to cities like Beijing and Shanghai. It is the American relationship with and attitude toward China, Jacques argues, that will determine whether the twenty-first century will be relatively peaceful or fraught with tension, instability, and danger. When China Rules the World is the first book to fully conceive of and explain the upheaval that China's ascendance will cause and the realigned global power structure it will create.
In time for her English-language debut, Chinese author Sheng Keyi joins us to discuss her book, Northern Girls (published in English by Penguin China and releasing this month).
Northern Girls follows buxom, naïve sixteen-year-old Qian Xiaohong as she leaves her sleepy Hunan village, and joins the mass migration to the bustling boomtown of Shenzhen. There, she must navigate dangerous encounters with ruthless bosses, jealous wives, sympathetic hookers and corrupt policemen as she tries to find her place in the ever-evolving society. Hardship and tragedy are in no short supply as her journey takes her through a grinding succession of dead end jobs. To help her through this confusing maze, Xiaohong finds solace in the close ties she makes with the other migrant girls – the community of her fellow 'northern girls' – who quickly learn to rely on each other for humour and the enjoyment of life's simple pleasures. A beautiful coming-of-age novel, Northern Girls explores the inner lives of a generation of young, rural Chinese women who embark on life-changing journeys in search of something better.
20/30rmb
In his latest book, James Reilly (University of Sydney) explores the rise and influence of public opinion on Chinese foreign policy, revealing a remarkable evolution in authoritarian responses to social turmoil. Joins us to hear Reilly on how Chinese leaders have responded to popular demands for political participation with a sophisticated strategy of tolerance, responsiveness, persuasion, and repression—a successful approach that helps explain how and why the Communist Party continues to rule China. The event will be introduced by China foreign policy specialist Bates Gill.
20/30rmb
China’s huge environmental challenges are significant for us all. They affect not only the health and well-being of China but the very future of the planet. China specialist and environmentalist Judith Shapiro’s latest book, China’s Environmental Challenges, investigates China’s struggle to achieve sustainable development against a backdrop of acute rural poverty and soaring middle class consumption.
Shapiro poses a number of pressing questions: Do the Chinese people have the right to the higher living standards enjoyed in the developed world? Are China's environmental problems so severe that they may shake the government's stability, legitimacy and control? To what extent are China’s environmental problems due to patterns of Western consumption? And in a world of increasing limits on resources and pollution "sinks," is it even possible to build an equitable system in which people enjoy equal access to resources without taking them from successive generations, from the poor, or from other species?
Join us as Shapiro discusses how China and the planet are at a pivotal moment; the path towards a more sustainable development model is still open. But making this choice will require humility, creativity, and a rejection of business as usual. Shapiro is the director of the Masters in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development for the School of International Service at American University.
20/30rmb
Electric Shadows and The Bookworm present Summer Cinema – a series of free, open air screenings of classic films on the roof of The Bookworm. This week, join us for The Seven Year Itch (1955). An upstanding husband and father (Tom Ewell) is tempted by his seductive neighbor (the irresistible Marilyn Monroe) when his family goes away for the summer. The New York summer is so hot that the only way a girl can cool off is by standing over a subway grate for a breeze. Directed by the legendary Billy Wilder. Drink and meal specials all night.
Author Tim Luard, former Beijing correspondent for the BBC World Service, discusses the amazing true life adventure tale of the dramatic escape of more than 60 Chinese, British and Danish intelligence, naval and marine personnel on December 25th, 1941, the day of Hong Kong’s surrender to the Japanese. Led by Admiral Chan Chak – the Chinese government’s chief agent in Hong Kong - this group escaped the invading Japanese army, traveling on five small motor torpedo boats and walking for four days through enemy lines to Huizhou, before flying to Chongqing or going over land to Burma. This gripping account of the escape sheds new light on the role played by the Chinese in the defense of Hong Kong, on the diplomacy behind the escape, and on the guerillas who carried the Admiral in a sedan chair as they led his party over the rivers and mountains of enemy-occupied China.
This event is brought to you by the Royal Asiatic Society.
20/30rmb
Sunday Salon is an interactive lecture series that takes you behind China’s music. This month music critic Sam Su, music promoter Zhang Kexin and Time Out Beijing/Time Out Shanghai’s Classical and Performance editor Nancy Pellegrini are proud to welcome back world-renowned pianist Sheng Yuan, China’s only Bach interpreter, who played the country’s first Bach Cycle. Now a professor at Central Conservatory, Sheng changed China’s piano pedagogy forever by introducing a Bach requirement. This time he’ll speak about Bach’s influence on other composers, backed up by examples from his own recordings.
20/30rmb
Poet, biographer, and essayist, Robert Polito joins us to read from some of his poems and show some short films based on his work. Polito is the Director of the Graduate Writing Program at the New School in New York City. His most recent books are the poetry collection, Hollywood & God and Farber on Film: the Complete Film Writings of Manny Faber. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his biography of noir novelist Jim Thompson, Savage Art. Join us for this special multimedia event!
20/30rmb
Electric Shadows and The Bookworm present Summer Cinema – a series of free, open air screenings of classic films on the roof of The Bookworm. This week, join us for the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant verbally spar and banter in this Howard Hawke’s classic. Plus, did we mention the “Baby” is a pet leopard? Drink and meal specials all night.
The Digital Storytelling Project was set up by the San Francisco LGBT Community Center in order to encourage young people to talk about LGBT lifestyles, what is important to them and who they are. The Project has since moved to China, where it has gathered together eighty 2-3 minute interviews with young people from across the country. The short films will be followed by Q&A with the project founders, as well as some of the interviewees captured on film.
20/30 rmb
