Customer Reviews

Beijing: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tongzhi means "friend" or "comrade" in the westernized version of the Chinese language known as Pinyin. Tongzhi might also be the subtitle for Philip Gambone's new novel Beijing, which chronicles his year working for a small health agency in the Chinese capital city and trying to overcome the loss of former friends and lovers while looking for new ones.

Beijing is the latest in a growing genre of travel-focused books penned by popular American gay writers. But unlike David Leavitt, Edmund White, and Michael Cunningham, whose novels on Florence, Paris, and Provincetown seem more like prose poem praises to their selected destinations, Gambone's look at Beijing is grittier, sweeter, ... Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my leisurely strolls through Florence, Paris, and Provincetown with Levitt, White, and Cunningham. I just liked my hike through Beijing better.

I've visited Beijing only once. For five days only. And from my limited perspective, I think Gambone does a good job portraying the big crowded city and its friendly people, ugly housing developments, air pollution, boy soldiers, bicycles, and wonderful little tea houses. I found myself saying, "yes, that's just the way I remembered it" or "I wish I'd experienced that." I liked that he didn't fill the book with flowery recollections of the Forbidden City or the Great Wall. I also appreciated his honesty and frankness, especially with regards to his loneliness, horniness, and gradual and growing attraction to Chinese men.

Gambone's novel isn't perfect. There are a few sections I found boring, and the main protagonist gets a bit whiny at times. But, all in all, it's an informative, friendly read, especially if you're interested in China and gay life in China. Check it out.

David Masiello's trip to Beijing is the stuff made from heaven. This remarkable novel is structured around the four seasons, and we see the David's journey through the perspective of each changing season. Each section gives us just a little more insight into David's journey, as he gains confidence and gradually adjusts to living in a foreign culture. His story is fictional, but it could almost read as a non-fiction travelogue, and I suspect that much of what is written was gleaned from Gambone's own experiences traveling through China and living in Beijing.

Living in Boston, stuck is a rut, pining for his dead boyfriend; David takes the initiative and applies for a job at a Western medical clinic in Beijing. Then his life changes forever as he confronts parts of himself, and goes on an exciting journey of self-discovery to become "whole again."Gambone masterfully takes us on David's journey from the nervous, worrying pre-flight preparation to the anxiousness and excitement of his first night and weeks in China. All the sights, sounds and smells of Beijing are seen through the prism of David's eyes - the eyes of an inexperienced and somewhat hesitant traveler. The trash on the streets, the drab colours of the University dorm that David is forced to sleep in, the food, the endless smog, the crowds of people cycling to work, the market stalls, the militaristic boy soldiers, the warmth of the people, and the furtiveness of Chinese gay life are all bought vividly to life.

As David becomes more comfortable with the city, he also searches out the closeted gay life, which he knows must exist in the city. At night he cruises the local park in the hope of making contact with men; he finds the Ta Ta Club, a local watering hole for gay men, and he goes to a bathhouse, where gays are reported to furtively meet. During his year in Beijing he meets many interesting people and makes many good friends. And he also finds time for love with Bo, a handsome young Chinese artist, who makes him understand the limitless possibilities for love again.

Anyone, gay or straight who has picked up and left familiarity, particularly anyone who had lived in another culture for an extended length of time, will find a lot to admire in this novel. The East/West divide is ever present, particularly the East's cultural attitudes to homosexuality. Traditional "family values" are ever present in this society: Auntie Chen, David's work mate constantly asks why he is not married and many of the young gay men David meets confess to him that they are under pressure from their parents to find a girl and marry. But the book also presents the the boarder theme of the new China - a China that's rapidly opening its borders to the West, and stumbling towards open markets and capitalism with differing degrees of success. In one important scene David looks out over his apartment building and stares with a mixture of wonder and shame at "nothing but tall bland buildings, as far as the eye can see, pillars of reinforced concrete, heaps of steel. This is the new China - wondrous and shameful." Beijing is an insightful, thought provoking book on loneliness, longing, cultural dislocation and a country that is undergoing rapid change.

Michael

I was fascinated by the diversity and extremes in the reviews! As an avid reader of "literary" gay-themed fiction, I took a chance on this book and was rewarded with a fascinating look into a culture hidden from most Americans, gay or straight. I suspected from the outset that there was an autobiographical element to Mr. Gambone's writing - he is secure and at ease writing of the culture and nuanced layers of life in China - including the inevitably present but furtive world that China's gay population lives in. The story captivates one from the outset and takes one on a roller-coaster of emotional highs and lows that one might expect if left to fend for oneself in a world filled with mystery and exploration. Complicate that by the longing for companionship (to be with like-minded individuals) and you have a story that is heartfelt and universal, a story of loss and discovery, of fears and elation, of playing teacher and pupil. As the tour guide, Mr. Gambone takes us far afield of the tourist attractions and makes a gem of this story of love and loss in China.

50-year old gay man with mid-life crisis spends a year in Beijing sniffing around after every guy half his age he meets. Men who don't interest him he flirts with anyway. If/when for some reason they become his friends, he patronizes them relentlessly. Would you really want a friend who hung on your neck all the time and insisted on addressing you as "Cupcake," whether you liked it or not? The author seems to have intended this behavior to make his protagonist warm and endearing. Instead, I found him annoying.

Gay men in Beijing are portrayed as generally so isolated and lonely they'll mate for life with the first gay man they meet. If this is accurate, the most annoying thing our protagonist does is to go out of his way to engage the affections of an affection-starved gay man when he knows he will have to leave the country in a few months, and that the chance his boyfriend will ever be able to join him in the U.S. is remote. This indeed sets up a poignant situation, but seems extremely selfish and irresponsible. Middle-aged men, especially those with the amount of experience our protagonist is supposed to have, ought to behave better, at least if they expect us to like them.

This novel is in all aspects a love story. The main character David is a 49 year old man in search of someone to love. He spends his days and nights looking at every man that wals by like a slab of meat just waiting to be comsumed. So he realizes he needs a change so he takes a job in Beijing. While there he goes to all the gay parks for most of the book. He meets a chinese man named bosheng and they hit it off. Then it comes time for David to go back to the USA. He wants to stay but he cant for for some reason unknown to me but he also wants to stay with bo. This is a fine and dandy story but everytime it starts to get good some silly sub plot comes along and makes the reader wait for a few mindless pages for the story to pick up again. for example: if the reader is getting into the romance of bo and david, the next page will be about some silly poem or flower that halts the plot. Poems are fine, but if I wanted to read about them i would have picked up a book about them. Also the ending made me cringe. He goes through a year of finding himself and he finds the perfect partner and he learns that he only needs himself? maybe thats true but that isnt what i signed up for. It took me 5 days to read this book. This book cost me $18. for all the time i wasted on this book i could have watched a movie! yes thats right, i recommend going to a movie instead of reading this! If you must have a gay romance fix, than just go see brokeback mountain. I have not yet seen the movie but even if it is worse, at least it is shorter...

Based on a suggestion by a friend (who may not be a friend after suggesting this book), I picked up BEIJING and thought that I would be transported to a place where I had never been but had always wanted to go. Instead, I was with a tour guide who was nothing more than a weepy old queen who is just looking to score. Truly sad. This book could have been so much deeper; it could have been so much more profound; it could have been tolerable. This book is nothing more than about a man who does not really discover anything of significance about himself (except that he now is attracted to "Asians"--as if they are all the same) or about the locale he visits. This is several steps below Baldwin, James, Hollinghurst, or White, and one step above what passes for "blue" fiction. Philip Gambone, please do not write anything else.

I enjoyed this story very much. Mr. Gambone is an excellent story teller. Fan Shen, Rochester, MN

this book, despite the book blurb, will be of NO interest to anyone who isnt interested in the whiney angst of a 50 year old gay man who's favourite word is "cupcake." It is a tedious read, that fails to capture Beijing and is basically an old queen in search of pretty chinese boys with pretentious references to opera and fortune cookie type words of wisdom that reinterpet Dao and Buddha into being justifications for gay sex. It is full of one dimensional characters with cliched writing that reads like a formula from "How to write a first novel." Not worth reading.