"What a romp….Alan Paul walked the walk, preaching the blues in China. Anyone who doubts that music is bigger than words needs to read this great tale." —Gregg Allman
"An absolute love story. In his embrace of family, friends, music and the new culture he's discovering, Alan Paul leaves us contemplating the love in our own lives, and rethinking the concept of home." —Jeffrey Zaslow, coauthor, with Randy Pausch, of The Last Lecture
Alan Paul, award–winning author of the Wall Street Journal’s online column “The Expat Life,” gives his engaging, inspiring, and unforgettable memoir of blues and new beginnings in Beijing. Paul’s three-and-a-half-year journey reinventing himself as an American expat—while raising a family and starting the revolutionary blues band Woodie Alan, voted Beijing Band of the Year in the 2008—is a must-read adventure for anyone who has lived abroad, and for everyone who dreams of rewriting the story of their own future.
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In this entertaining memoir, Paul recounts an unanticipated life-changing experience that began when his wife accepted a three-year work assignment in Beijing. After resettling their three young children from suburban New Jersey to China, Paul, a music and basketball journalist who played guitar only as a hobby, embarked on an exploration of local culture and music. The search prompted his transition from writing about music to being a bona fide rock star in the band Woodie Alan, a cross-cultural blues group named after Alan and his Chinese band member, Woodie Wu, a guitarist with a Stevie Ray Vaughn tattoo. Paul blogged about his Chinese experience and also wrote a column on it for the Wall Street Journal's Web site. His story, however, is much more than a musical and journalistic victory dance. It's equal parts family memoir, travelogue, personal analysis of globalization and expatriate communities, and a view of the world's most populous nation through American eyes. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
*Starred Review* In this funny, poignant, and entertaining memoir, Alan Paul tells his improbable story of an American music journalist unwittingly becoming a rock star in China with grace and good humor. What�s more, his Chinese American blues rock band, Woodie Alan, earns the title �Beijing�s best band.� This achievement was an accidental by-product of his journalist-wife Rebecca�s position as China bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. He writes with enthusiasm about his new life as an expatriate American in China with three children in tow, the difficulty of learning Chinese (he concludes he has a better chance of communicating with dolphins than mastering its strange words and sounds), getting a driver�s license, and understanding Chinese rules of the road, which, he theorizes, means never having to stop unless you absolutely have to. His experiences playing in a mostly Chinese band offer plenty of entertaining anecdotes that offer culture-shock insights. His Chinese sojourn ending after his wife returned to New York as the paper�s international news editor, Paul looks back with equal doses of regret for the unforgettable opportunities that came his way and anticipation toward a new American future. Immensely enjoyable. --June Sawyers
Alan Paul is the author of Big in China, a memoir about raising three American children in Beijing and the unlikely success of his Chinese blues band, Woodie Alan. He also wrote the EBook One Way Out: An Oral History of the Allman Brothers Band.
Paul wrote "The Expat Life" column for the Wall Street Journal Online from 2005- 2009. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists named him 2008 Online Columnist of the Year. He also reported from Beijing for NBC, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets.
Paul is a longtime senior writer for Slam and Guitar World magazines, the only journalist to be an expert on both the Allman Brothers and Spencer Haywood. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, People, ESPN.com, Rolling Stone.com, SI.com and many other publications and websites. He has contributed to The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Guide, The Insider's Guide to Beijing, and several other books.
Paul has written liner note essays for many CD and DVD releases, including the SRV boxed set, A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gregg Allman's One More Try, the Allman Brothers Band's Decade of Hits and Luther Allison's Live in Chicago.
Woodie Alan, featuring three Chinese musicians and one other American, was named 2008's Best Band in Beijing. Their debut CD, Beijing Blues (Guitar China Records), has been praised by ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, the Allman Brothers' Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes and other musical luminaries, including guitarist Joe Bonamassa, blues harp master Charlie Musselwhite and jam band legend Col. Bruce Hampton who termed the music "simply amazing."
Alan, his wife Rebecca, and their three children reside in Maplewood, NJ.
What are the chances of a guy going to China with his wife and family to pursue her career, and ending up winning "Beijing's Best Band" award and touring to rave reviews all over China? Here's this guy who makes the sacrifice to follow his wife along with their three kids to Beijing when she is given the opportunity to be The Wall Street Journal's China bureau chief, giving up everything familiar, and he ends up fulfilling a lifetime dream of his own. He and Woodie Wu, along with two other Chinese friends and an American expat saxaphone player, end up forming the Woodie Alan blues band (How cool is that name?) after they meet when Alan takes a guitar to be repaired at Woodie's shop.
Alan Paul has a style of writing that pulls you into his world. You're right there with him, discovering this country that's changing every day with its industrial and cultural growth. You're standing in the aisles, cheering him on with the band, sharing his interactions with the people and living some of his incredible adventures in a country that is somewhat of a mystery to most of us. Paul is very open in his writing style, conveying a depth of feeling and reflection on his experiences. There's a lot more here than just the story of his band, in fact the first hundred pages or so are about their decision to make the move, descriptions of the community where they live in China, their adjustments to living there and about the different tours and vacations they take within the country. He gives such interesting descriptions and points of view, that it's easy to see why he won the Columnist of the Year award for his Wall Street Journal columns on expat life in China. (Another project while he was there).... This was an insider's view of what daily life was like for them in Beijing, a very different and personal view rather than some of the stereotype impressions that I would have imagined.
Although this was a very uplifting and positive book, there were anxious, sad and reflective times included as well. Life is like that. He manages to include them all without a dull moment in the entire book. I knew that if the book was anything like its description, I would enjoy it, but I didn't realize just how much. It was the kind of book that I just couldn't put down (except to check out their youtube videos) even when it was late and I had to get up early the next morning. It's a book I'm already planning to buy for some friends because I enjoyed it so much. It's a "feel good" adventure. It seems like the perfect book to be made into a movie and if it ever is, I'll be the first one in line.Read more ›
I thoroughly enjoyed 'Big In China' - journalist Alan Paul's tale of his expatriate experiences in China with wife Rebecca Blumenstein (posted there as China bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal) and their three young children. I agree with the spotlight reviewer: Paul's book would make an excellent movie - not because of drama and angst. Far from it. Instead, such a film would capture the magic of the serendipitous life twist that comes with the trip. Namely, that Paul - a writer about musicians by vocation - forms a band that becomes big in China. As a musician, Paul's dream is to form a "blues and jam band" that plays a "loose but tight" style. His band Woodie Alan (great name) - a true Sino-American partnership - becomes known as Beijing's best.
The author makes it sound like that success was due to luck, good fortune and a lot of meeting the right people. His chance encounter with the band's co-founder, Woodie Wu, being example A-1. There's a lot of that, for sure. But Alan Paul is also someone with a self-deprecating, wear-the-cape-lightly manner. His forthrightness in calling himself the 'trailing spouse' throughout the book is a testament to his nature. So, rest assured, there's doggedness and intelligence behind his Chinese success, too. He's just not the type to have to call attention to that.
Paul's easy, descriptive writing style is a joy to read. He takes you on an incredible journey. Couldn't have happened to a nicer or more well-deserving family.
This is a terrific memoir from a freelance journalist whose wife was transferred to Beijing to head the China bureau of the Wall Street Journal. Author Alan Paul, his wife Becky and their three young children lived in China for nearly four years. What began as a great and scary adventure ended up being all that and more, as the family became attached to their host nation and its people, as well as to several other Western families who were part of their expat community.
While Becky went to her office most days and the kids were either at school or in the care of a nanny, Paul did house husband things like grocery shopping and wrote columns for several music magazines, with which he had an established relationship going back many years. He also began to reinvigorate his own performance career by organizing a jazz/blues band composed of Western and Chinese members. As the band got better and better they became quite popular in Beijing and environs, eventually being voted the best band in Beijing and getting as many bookings as they could reasonably play -- sometimes two or three in a week. Paul tells some very funny stories about how he and his group became "big in China," which is the origin of the book's title.
Paul also tells some good tales about his friends, wife and kids and how they adapted to Chinese customs, food and lifestyles. The family had open minds about everything that they came across, which seems to me to have enhanced their experiences in China a great deal. I very much enjoyed reading about the markets, foods, pastimes and other facets of Chinese culture that are under reported or ignored by most mass media outlets.... Since Paul is a professional journalist, the book reads well and has that feel of immediacy that engages readers and gives us a reason to keep turning the pages.
If you read much about globalization, especially nonfiction tomes and serious news reports, the prevailing view of China as an economic competitor to the US, while perhaps true, is a narrow and biased perspective that can get a bit depressing. Big in China will give you a different (and for me much appreciated) point of view about our 'global village' and the basic goodwill of the people in it. Highly recommended.Read more ›
Alan Paul provides some good insight into what it is like to be a foreigner living in China. Being a student of Mandarin language, I was curious about his experiences. The first quarter of the book goes though the move his family makes from New Jersey to Beijing. His writing style is fun to read as he takes you though the ups and downs of being an "expat" in a country he knows little about at first.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a bit of insight into what China is really like, pushing aside stereotypes, and getting the real deal from someone who for over three years immersed themselves in the culture and became accepted as a popular blues entertainer, along with his new friends.
People who may be moving to Beijing because of their jobs, will probably find this book helpful to them as well.
