SOURCE: “Peking in the Past Tense.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 3122 (29 December 1961): 926.

In the following review, the critic discusses how Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China is an excellent illustrated scrapbook of Peking, but cautions readers that Lin's descriptions are of out of date.

This is a handsomely produced, excellently illustrated Chinese scrapbook [Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China] built round the kernel or theme of Peking and its court life. Some new and brilliant photographs of the city decorate the first pages of text and others are included that might have served to illustrate books on Peking published thirty years ago, but there are no general views, nothing to reveal the “breath-taking vistas” promised by the wrapper. The truth is that Peking's main streets are generally shabby and unimpressive; the most breath-taking view is the city seen from the air when the outer and inner walls, and the...