My Chinese mentor, an old family friend, professor and Ph.D likes to read books on I Ching in foreign languages as he claims not to have found anything useful on the subject in putonghua...

Any recs more in this direction on Chinese philosophy, culture and arts?

I am personally reluctant to read anything on current affairs in business and politics as the Middle Kingdom is too vast and complicated for one person, especially non-Chinese, to decipher. Rather leave that part to the excellent China board on FT.

Actually, the books that best prepared myself for China, if any, were Ephraim Kishon's lovely and satirical descriptions of life in Israel. There is something in his sense of humour and intellectual, skeptical fatalism that reminds me of the Chinese attitude towards life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Kishon