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The Years That Were Fat: The Last of Old China
“Marco Polo was the first Westerner to describe the old capital of China in its grand design...George Kates is one of the last Westerners to take its measure…With unending delight, he watched and became part of the great swarming city that was Peking.” Harvard Professor of Chinese History JOHN FAIRBANK
“Kates was the last, and perhaps the best, chronicler of a way of life that is gone forever…He was one of the last witnesses to a culture that has all but been erased by forty years of Communist rule, yet remains subtly and indelibly printed in the Western psyche as a quintessentially ‘Chinese’” Author FERGUS BORDEWICH
The Years That Were Fat is an iconic account of life in 1930s Beijing. During seven years spent in the heart of the ancient city George Kates came to know and understand the culture that was all about him.
About the
George Kates was born in Cincinnati in 1895 and educated at Columbia, Harvard and Oxford. He is best known for his memoir of life in Beijing – “The Years That Were Fat”, published in 1952, and for the first Western study of Chinese classical furniture – “Chinese Household Furniture”.
“Kates was the last, and perhaps the best, chronicler of a way of life that is gone forever…He was one of the last witnesses to a culture that has all but been erased by forty years of Communist rule, yet remains subtly and indelibly printed in the Western psyche as a quintessentially ‘Chinese’” Author FERGUS BORDEWICH
The Years That Were Fat is an iconic account of life in 1930s Beijing. During seven years spent in the heart of the ancient city George Kates came to know and understand the culture that was all about him.
About the
George Kates was born in Cincinnati in 1895 and educated at Columbia, Harvard and Oxford. He is best known for his memoir of life in Beijing – “The Years That Were Fat”, published in 1952, and for the first Western study of Chinese classical furniture – “Chinese Household Furniture”.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 25, 2015
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