Product Description

Paul Theroux invites you to join him on the journey of a lifetime, in the grand romanttic tradition, by train across Euope, through the vast underbelly of Asia and in the heart of Russia, and then up to China. Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers of our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243400 in Books
• Published on: 1989-03-28
• Released on: 1989-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 464 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780804104548
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Theroux (The Old Patagonian Express, The Great Railway Bazaar) spent a year exploring China by train, and his impressions about what has and has not changed in the country, as gathered in hundreds of conversations with Chinese citizens, make up a large portion of the book. The Cultural Revolution and the vandalism of the Red Guards have left scars on both the land and the people. Mao's death brought a collective sigh of relief from the population; reforms brought about under Deng Xiaoping have generally been welcomed. Still, this is not a political book. Whether describing his dealings with a rock-hard bureaucracy, musing over the Chinese flirtation with capitalismthey've "turned the free market into a flea market"or commenting on the process of traveling, Theroux conducts the reader through this enormous country with wisdom, humor and a crusty warmth. Along the way are anecdotes about classic Chinese pornography (forbidden to the citizenry, but all right for "foreign friends"); 35-below-zero weather; the Chinese penchant for restructuring nature; and the omnipresent thermos of hot water for making tea. The last chapter, "The Train to Tibet," deals with the extremes to which the Chinese have gone in their attempts to subjugate the Tibetan people. Theroux develops an understanding of China through his travels, but he falls in love with Tibet. As in his previous works, he gives the reader much to relish and think about. BOMC featured selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Theroux's penchant for train travel is well knownhis Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express are modern travel classics. On his latest jaunt he takes almost a year to crisscross China, traveling on 40 trains from the southern tropics to the wastelands of the Gobi in western Xinjiang to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton. What emerges is a curious melange of ancient and modern: while some things are literally changing overnight, the Chinese still manufacture spittoons and steam engines. For Theroux, traveling is both about peopletheir thoughts, customs, and peculiaritiesand a form of autobiography, and here we learn as much about his own quirks and fancies as we do about the intriguing world of contemporary China. Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
Paul Theroux invites you to join him on the journey of a lifetime, in the grand romanttic tradition, by train across Euope, through the vast underbelly of Asia and in the heart of Russia, and then up to China. Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers of our time.

Customer Reviews

Fine Insight , Good Writing, Great Laughs
This is a well-written literay account of Theroux's travels through the difficult land of modern China. I first read this while living in (British) Hong Kong and making trips to and through the mainland. I have never laughed so much at the crazy predicaments Theroux gets himself into or observes (many the same as I was experiencing), and was struck not only at the quality of his writing but how rare a writer he is for covering this difficult and insecure part of the world.

What shines through in the pages of this book is that Theroux the writer is beholden to no one; he delivers accuracy of description everytime, and while this is the essence of a good travel writer, it is not a trait relished by governments out east like China's, where in fact the culture demands "saving face" over telling the blunt truth (see Bo Yang's book The Ugly Chinaman for an in-depth account of this fascinating aspect of Chinese culture). Even some westerners who live out East (and might like us to think of the Third World as some kind of paradise posting) can get upset at this kind of sober truth-telling about "their" China. For the detached reader, Theroux's book is an honest, funny, non-spin-doctored account.

If you like this book, try Theroux's Kowloon Tong, his Hong Kong novel banned in China, a very accurate depiction of that small city and the people (both westerners and easterners) who lived in it at the time of the Handover (I read it while living there). Timothy Mo's The Monkey King is another classic China novel about an eccentric Chinese family - a witty, poignant tale, and a book so on the mark that, if anything, it was even more attacked by certain frumps out East than Kowloon Tong!

Notes from a Jaded Traveler
This book relates the experiences of train enthusiast Paul Theroux when he set out to write a book about train travel in China. Theroux has traveled many thousands of miles by train, perhaps more than he would care to remember. In this book, he decides to visit China by train. As he sets out from London in the spring of 1986, he joins a package tour, which takes him across Europe through Poland and Moscow and continues on to China via the Siberian Express. Theroux was fortunate in that his train cleared Eastern Europe before the radiation cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the area with radiation. After a long journey across Russia, he arrives in Beijing and begins his explorations of the Chinese train system. At first, he is saddled with a Chinese escort, (who he demanded be non-English speaking so that he could practice his Chinese), but later he manages to travel independently. Theroux ends his journey with an expedition (by road) to Tibet.

From the very beginning of the book, Theroux comes across as a burnt-out traveler, whose primary goal seems to be completing the journey so that he can write about it. He can't seem to find a single positive trait of his fellow travelers to remark about. He dismisses others he observed along the way with negative terms such as "fatties" or "simians." With this negative attitude, much of the book is a grind to get through, although some readers may see humor in Theroux's attitude, and others may find the information about travel conditions worthwhile. Theroux is a very experienced traveler, and he makes a point not to mention minor ailments such as belly-aches, although he must have had quite a few, considering the food he ate. The text finally comes alive in the last chapter, where Theroux gets off the trains at last and has a real adventure. Die-hard Theroux fans may get a kick out of this book, but others may find Theroux's negative attitude simply dreary.

Ups and Downs of Late 80's Travel in PRC
I was assigned this book for a class in modern Asian history. The professor was deadly dull, but I'm glad I took the class because it led me to Paul Theroux. In RtIR I found some of the funniest and most memorable bits of nonfiction in my life. China is a truly unique place and Theroux seems very well suited to its mysteries.

The author has made a career out of sharing his wit and wisdom about his travels in the world (fiction as well as non). As in all his travel tales, Theroux points out everything odd and fascinating to him along his route to and through the area he's focused on, including meaningful chunks of local history, literature, and cultural background. This is very literate travel writing and, taken with a grain of salt, can be highly educational though parts are a bit dated now.

You'll learn nearly as much about Theroux (or the character of Theroux, travel writer) as you do about the place. There is no story here: this is travel writing and you must go with the flow or put the book down. But the payoffs are tremendous; there are always dozens of "I gotta read this to somebody" passages in Theroux books. This one is no exception. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in modern China and some humor.