Pam's Book 10: Lost on Planet China

As far as I'm concerned, it's a toss-up as to whether Bill Bryson or J. Maarten Troost is the best ever travel writer. Bill Bryson is entertaining and informative, plus he's written some cool linguistics books as well. J. Maarten Troos is entertaining and informative, and he goes to some pretty wild places and stays there for extended periods of time. This time I read a Troost book, Lost on Planet China. Maarten and his wife Sylvia have returned to northern California from various out-of-the-way Pacific islands to raise their two young sons. Yet, their once middle class neighborhood in Sacramento has been overtaken by drug-dealing renters and is not quite the place they envisioned their boys growing up. Maarten gets the bright idea that China, being the next big thing, is the perfect place to move. Sylvia is not so sure about all this, so Maarten decides to mount an exploratory mission on his own to China.

Upon his arrival in China, Maarten discovers a world more foreign even, in some ways, than the tiny island of Kiribati, where his adventures began many years ago (The Sex Lives of Cannibals). The air is thick with pollution, pedestrians regularly hock loogies on the street, small children regularly drop trou to take a shit on the street (encouraged by their mothers), waiting in line is a contact sport, and it is necessary to bargain for absolutely everything.

Maarten explores as much of China as he can, big cities, small towns, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet. He explores the political and practical ramifications of China's past, Chairman Mao, the People's Revolution, the Japanese invasion. He explains everything in an informative yet highly entertaining manner. Parts of the book, such as his description of visiting Chairman Mao's mausoleum and his description of eating live squid (with great gusto, I might add) were so highly entertaining that I gut-laughed, out loud, in the Orlando airport, on the plane, in the Atlanta airport. People looked at me funny, but I didn't even try to hold in the laughter, because it would have been futile.

Asia is not at the top of my list of places to visit, but it is definitely on there. After reading this book, I want to visit China both more and less than I had wanted to previously. In some ways I enjoy sticking to the more culturally familiar western nations, but there's much more to be seen and experienced, and until I can afford to go everywhere, I will continue reading books like Lost on Planet China.