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I mean thanks to this book China would be last on my wish list of places to visit.I actually waited for when Maarten had the Aha. He's clever and irreverent and so funny - entertaining and informative - a wonderful travel/adventure writer. that's how a human gets rid of what is gunking up their lungs." but I guess he was just so grossed out by people hocking up gobs of gunk (from the pollution permeating their air) that landed at his feet, and beating each other up in lines: to get on cable cars, subways, to get into a museum or take a walk up to a famous temple, that he never put it together.The other aspect of him that I find comical is: he writes like what you would think is an England-educated prissy older gentleman who is probably portly and sporting a comb-over, with a red nose, who is a little Woody Allen whiny, and yet he's this adorable hunky man.unless he switched photos.again. Not for the book. ate it like candy - I'm always looking for Troost's newest book. moment of "Oh phlegm.
Troost covered a lot of ground in China - Beijing to Hong Kong to Tibet and beyond but I cannot find where he records a single instance of a more than cursory encounter with a Chinese person. In fact if you took out all of the references to the air in China this book would have been reduced to a rather shortish magazine article. This book would have been infinitely more informative and entertaining if he had slowed down a little and gotten to know them a little better. While Mr. Troost is certainly a talented writer and an amusing personality he fails miserably in his attempt to "understand the world's most mystifying nation." Perhaps if he had tried to get to know some Chinese people rather than just wandering around and complaining about the polluted air he might have come closer. The Chinese are what's incredible about China.
So what better place to continue his exploits than in, say, China. That being said, all your perceptions of China are still wrong, because China is different. And because of this, it is impossible to gauge the Chinese experience from a Western perspective.Troost surrenders himself to a China left un-traveled by most laowais (foreigners). For readers will encounter, through Troost's initial perceptions, that China is the preeminently overpopulated & polluted, tightly controlled yet super-industrialized nation in the world today.
Excellent read. Despite the temperature, he feels the warmth in his visit to the local Siberian Tiger preserve; literally fishing for tigers with live chickens, his Chinese context slowly blooms upon a fascinating chance encounter within the North Korean neutral zone. And despite there being so many diverse provinces and minorities adding to his inability to fully communicate, despite the harsh exertion of the ever-present big brother, Troost does discover the human connection, whether exchanging smiles with an old farmer on a crowded midnight train or being happily fed by a street vendor in Xi'an's Muslim Quarter.So as Troost's Chinese experience starts to reach its conclusion, the reader may acknowledge in his writing a sense of fulfillment, perhaps harmony, as his sojourn winds down in the cold northern wilds of Harbin. Maarten Troost is a curious sort of traveler. Willing to endure the various waterborne intestinal afflictions encountered during his stay in the South Pacific, he's not a typical tourist. His latest book, Lost on Planet China, intriguingly relays his intrepid dispatches.It is a wonderfully gonzo experience, one that readers may come away thinking how glad they are that someone other than themselves took the time to do this. It is the most complex, contradictory, and rapidly changing country in the world.
Everything, as the saying goes, is not only relative but foreign. J. Specifically, his curiosity, like that of many, is to discern just exactly what the Chinese context is. Some of his more curious destinations include the windy and dusty streets of Beijing (the Gobi is subtly encroaching), stumbling upon an endangered species black market in Guangzhou (incidentally where SARS is rumored to start), to the seemingly separate kingdoms of Shanghai, Hong Kong & Macau, to deathly day hikes at the Tiger Leaping Gorge, hearing karaoke in a state-sponsored Shangri-La, the frighteningly alien plateau of Tibet, and the frozen northern borders with Russia and North Korea.Despite Troost's unavoidable preoccupations with the crowds, unhealthy air and the ever-present Communist grip, his observations of China really point to the country as being otherworldly.
Troost's writing makes him seem like a teenager looking for cheap jokes in a foreign country he has no understanding of. It is probably just meant to provoke some juvenile laughs. As he pointed out in his own book, he has some sentiments against communism and China's rule of Tibet. So you should not trust any information provided by the author in the book. There are many ways to write a funny travelogue, but his way of writing is definitely not one of them, unless you like the same kind of shallow observations he made. Although this book can be categorized as a travelogue, it lacks the kind of witty observations made in Mark Twain's travel stories.
So he basically viewed China through his lense of prejudice. As some other reviewers have pointed out, this book is not a travel book. This book is not intended to provide information either. Many of the things he described are grossly exaggerated, although they are not total fabrications.
While he attempts to engage the reader through self-defacing humor at his own inaptitude, this just adds insult to injury. Troost is essentially taking all of a Westerner's fears about foreign travel and China, and magnifying them. Imagine if someone came to America and only wrote about the obesity epidemic, the mass hysteria encouraged by the media, and our rampant commercialism.I would go so far as to label this book a work of Orientalism, a term defined by the academic Edward Said. Troost is the type of tourist I have encountered, both abroad and at home, whose attitude reflects poorly on himself and the nation he is supposed to be representing as a guest in another country. His paltry attempts at humor through self-mockery hardly make up for his off-hand, uninformed and usually dismissive remarks about a rich, vibrant nation. He is the type I have been tempted on a number of occasions to tell to simply go home. We are clean and progressive; they are dirty and backwards.
In Lost on Planet China, Troost establishes the whole of China as the Other of the West. As a Westerner who has extensively studied and lived in Asia, I can tell you that China has many faults, which must be address with all due seriousness. If you are looking for travel writing about China that is informative, well-written and entertaining, I would suggest Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones. Despite all its faults, China deserves better. But Troost lacks in the necessary cultural sensitivity, focusing solely on the negative. While reviews in The New York Time and others have remarked upon the success of Troost's style as neither travel writing nor journalism, they overlook the rather blatant fact that he relies entirely upon sensationalism and misconception, resulting in a skewered and often derogatory description that misleads the reader. His occasional insightful observation is undermined by his relentless disparaging comments and poor understanding of Chinese culture and history.
This influences the reader in a negative way, especially if that reader is, as the inside flap of the book suggests, an "armchair" traveler. He wrote about how cultures will choose an Other against which to compare themselves. The author's note in the beginning of the book, which states Troost knows nothing about China other than the same random bits of common knowledge as most Westerners, should really read as a disclaimer, a warning to potential readers.If you are looking for a book to read about another culture and laugh at their shortcomings, and feel better about your own, this is the book for you. I would only recommend this book to someone who is already well-versed in Chinese culture, historical events, and the political, social and economic situation developing in the world's newest superpower, and only then as an example of misinformation available in popular media. At every turn, Troost affirms Western values, beliefs, policies and lifestyle at the expense of what China may have to offer. Everything that is good about us can be reflected as a negative aspect of them.
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