Customer Reviews

Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing

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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.

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.

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 was a terrific read. Somehow Paul managed to avoid the potential pitfalls of penning another mid-life crisis tell-all and created an engaging account of his adventures in China. He recognized the advantages he had as an expat in China, and yet never preached. Here is a dad, a stay-at-home dad, who took advantage of his opportunity to step beyond his boundaries (literally and figuratively) and, in the words of Gregg Allman, "preach[ed] the blues in China." I enjoyed every minute, from the descriptions of the off road trips he took with his wife and three children to the late night jam sessions and what it meant to him to have found his voice (again, literally and figuratively) with his band.

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.

Basketball and music journalist Alan Paul was in his early 40s when he and his wife decided to make a move to Beijing, where she took over the Wall Street Journal office and where he became a "trailing spouse" in the expat lingo. His kids became third culture kids, with a foot in China and a foot in the US. This memoir covers some of his expat life in general, including the adventures in food, driving and travel that are common to most expats (particularly in developing countries), but its focus is on how Paul achieved his dream of really becoming a musician, and performing in a blues band that became "Big in China." There was so much going on in his life, he could really have spent his years in China just writing about his family and their experiences. I give him a lot of credit for finding friends and building a band on the local music scene in Beijing and I especially am impressed because he did so at a time of life when most people are getting complacent and suburbanized. The only criticism I have of the book is his writing style; he could have added a lot more descriptions of people and places, and set the scene in a little more detail. Perhaps this is due to being accustomed to writing short journalistic pieces. I recommend this book.

As a first generation Chinese immigrant to the states, I can relate to Alan's experience going through while expat'ed to China especially the "going home" part. He tells his stories so well that you are right along with him as they unfold. Great read for anyone who enjoys travel or anyone who just want to know what it's like living in China as a foreigner. Highly recommended!

I am not usually a fast reader, but I could not put this book down. I read the whole book in a few sessions over a period of about 24 hours. The pages just seemed to fly by. Several parts made me laugh out loud, and other parts had just the opposite effect. In the end I found this a very fascinating and uplifting account, presented in a style that is both honest and entertaining. When it comes to the art of writing or, for that matter, the art of playing music, you either have it or you don't. Alan Paul has it.

Big In China, by Alan Paul, is Paul's excellent memoir of his 3 1/2 years as an expatriate American in China. It is that unique book that is both engaging and a quick read but also somehow manages to be uplifting and insightful.

Paul, a freelance sport and music journalist, moved with his wife and three children to China in 2005, when his wife took a job as the Wall Street Journal's China bureau chief. Unlike most American spouses in China, Paul took the trip as an opportunity to try to get a real taste of a foreign culture and a chance at personal growth.

To whit, Paul not only tried to maintain his position as a freelance journalist for Guitar World and the sports magazine, Slam, he also took the opportunity to learn Chinese and began writing a blog which later became 'The Expat Life' column for the WSJ. The column itself gave Paul some notoriety, but more interestingly Paul--an amateur musician--took a try at a personal dream: he hooked up with some incredible Chinese jazz musicians and became the frontman for Woodie Alan, a Chinese-American fusion blues band.

The book becomes a travelog, a family picture album, a memoir, and keen sociological assessment of the cultural differences between Americans and the Chinese. Paul writes with incredible sensitivity for the Chinese and the expats who live among them. Paul takes you on a tour of remote areas in China and the strange paradoxes of expatriate life. His prose is simple, easy to read, but also infused with an infectious enthusiasm for his subject.

The most interesting aspect of the book, of course, is Paul's unlikely ability to form a blues band in China and the popularity that the band achieved in such a short time. The story of how they got together and how they rose to popularity would be enough for a book.

There are occasional places where the narrative slows down a bit, with some of the trips back to the States and some of the extended touring in China. But on the whole, Paul does an incredible job of putting it all together into a quick and easy read. Recommended

This book is lots of fun to read and it shows that music can unite people from totally different cultures. Having been in China myself and being married to a Chinese woman I can totally relate to the author's descriptions of cultural interactions and how Chinese appreciate foreigner's efforts to speak their language.