book reviews Posts

Oct272011

Posted By
Nicki

Review: Yes China! An English Teacher’s Love-Hate Relationship with a Foreign Country

I’m a huge bibliophile. When I moved to China in 2005, half my luggage weight allotment went to books. I knew that, living in Hainan, I probably wouldn’t have access to the kind of foreign language (i.e. English) bookstores you can find in Beijing or Shanghai. So I brought my own. Of course I could never bring enough. Not even enough for the first year that we had committed to, let alone the nearly seven total that we’ve stayed for so far.

So I’m very acquisitive regarding books. I borrow them from friends, and have been lucky to have generous friends who love books just as much as me. I buy suitcase-fuls every time we leave Hainan. Ever since I got my HTC Android phone, I’ve been ecstatic about my ability to just download books anytime I want to. So when Ryan asked me if I wanted to read and review a new book on China for Lost Laowai, I was thrilled. I love books! I love China! Sign me up.

Clark Nielsen, author of “Yes China!“, gifted my Kindle reader with a copy of his book, and I was set to go. (Yes, Kindle does work on my Android phone, in case anybody was wondering.)

I read the book fairly quickly, but ever since then, I’ve been struggling with what to write in this review.

Oct032011

21Comments

Posted By
Becky

Review: The New Lonely Planet China. Is it Worth it?

If you’re planning a trip, or living in China, chances are you own a Lonely Planet guidebook. In the past, using LP showed the world you were young and crazy, and would rather stick toothpicks in your eyes than hit up the main tourists spots with all the other blue-hairs. (Or as others saw you: stoner punks who trashed obscure tropical beaches looking for the best banana pancakes.)

But nowadays it is just as common to see an old couple, or a family of six, holding a Lonely Planet guidebook as it is to see a young backpacker. In my years of traveling around China I’ve seen people clutching it in their sweaty hands at the top of mountains, and primed polished fingernails searching through the hundreds of pages to find the certain little write-up to share with their tour group. (Here’s a hint people: Just tear the pages you need out and leave the book back at the hostel. No sense adding 100 pounds to your day unnecessarily.)

Sep032011

19Comments

Posted By
Ryan

Review: River Town — Two Years on the Yangtze

I realize I’m about a decade late posting a review of Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, but it was only recently that I finally took the time to read it.

I can’t be certain why it took me so long to pick up Hessler’s seminal work, but I think it was due to the weight of it. Not the book itself mind you, though a bit weighty for a travelogue, it reads quick and handles well. Rather, because for any post-Y2K laowai, Hessler is definitively known as the laowai. Next to Mark Rowswell, few foreigners in modern China are as well known.

I suppose I was worried that reading Hessler’s experiences might colour my own. Lord knows I’m susceptible to such things, as it took me more than a couple years to stop spouting off facts learned from Jung Chang as gospel (worry not Changites, when last I visited an expat pub the doctrine was alive and well).

Jul092010

7Comments

Posted By
Matt M

A Review of China: Portrait of a People by Tom Carter

What Peter Hessler did in his memoir River Town, Tom Carter does with China: Portrait of a People. A new wave of camera-toting expats will soon come to China hoping to follow in Carter’s footsteps.

I write this within a week of coming back to America after a year of teaching English at university in southern Hunan. While it was a wonderful experience, I was eager to get back home and move on to bigger and better things. But then Carter’s book came in the mail from Amazon. My immediate reaction: every expat coming to China should have one for the inevitable day culture shock strikes; the book should come wrapped in white paper with a red cross and the instructions: “For prevention and treatment of culture shock. Open if you have any of the following symptoms…” Just paging through it compels me to return to see what I can see, do what I can do, and meet whoever I can meet.

Mar242008

5Comments

Posted By
Paul Denlinger

Book Review: Managing the Dragon

Managing the Dragon provides very good insights into what was needed in the 90s to bring a successful fund into China to build a world-class Chinese automotive components company. The author, Jack Perkowski, started out as a successful Wall Street investment banker. After twenty years, he took an interest in China and moved his family, [...]