Customer Reviews

Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion

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Much in the tradition of "Iron and Silk", Michael Levy has written a very good first hand account of teaching English in China. Through his stories and the people he meets, the reader gets a good sense of what modern China is like. I liked the fact that the book focused on a part of China that is not the eastern 1/3 that we always here about. Shanghai and Beijing are very different from the rest of China. The book is funny too. For me, having travelled to China, I liked that the author talked about how there are no such things as a line in China, its is very Darwinian to wait on line in China. I also liked that he too noticed that the Chinese love John Denver and Take Me Home Country Roads. There are plenty of books out there where an American goes to China and is a fish out of water. Some are really good: Salzman Iron and Silk or China Road or River Town. And some are not. If you like this genre of travel narrative, you will like this book. The only problem that I have with books like this is the timing. The author was in China in 2005 and 2005 China is very different than 2011 China. For that, I recommend reading The Last Days of Old Beijing or China Road, two first person fish out of water narratives of China that are more up to date. Regardless, this was a great book to read.

This is a memoir of an American who travelled to Asia to teach English. I've done two tours of this duty myself and am always happy to have the chance to compare notes with another veteran. (I haven't lived in Seoul in years; it's mostly laziness that keeps me from updating my hometown on here, but a small part of my heart is still there, and it beat quite strongly as I read this book.)

The gold standard for such a book is River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.) by Peter Hessler, who has contributed a blurb endorsing this book to the promotional material. (Hessler journeyed into the interior of China with the Peace Corps in the mid-90s; Levy did so a decade later, and while the two volunteers did not serve in the same regionk a side-by-side comparison of the authors' experiences is a useful way to track China's rural development in the intervening years.) It's a tearfully poignant tale of cross-cultural friendship and a chronicling of an ancient society in transition.

As for this book, the rather flip title and especially the kitschy cover illustration had me worried that this would read more like a cheap parody. But one shouldn't judge a book by its cover; it wasn't long before I realized that Kosher Chinese is, both intellectually and emotionally, every bit the equal of River Town. And that's high praise indeed.

The book strikes a slightly goofy tone, especially in the opening chapters, but that's only because the author is faithfully recounting his first impressions of a new culture; and when one is making the acquaintance of a society quite different from one's own, there are many times when one must simply bow to the absurd.

As it goes on, Levy becomes increasingly used to the rural Chinese lifestyle, and his descriptions of it take more and more uniquely local habits for granted, but he never fully acclimates to some of them. A recurring theme is the struggle to balance himself between respect for another culture which is in no way inferior to his own and the desire to share the experiences and perspectives of his American life. He recounts many failures to strike the right balance and often thinks back on a cynical Australian he met at a party who told him "They know what they want from you, and they'll take it and use it and leave the rest, no matter how hard you try to stop them." He often thinks back on Greg the Australian, as part of a larger theme of reflecting on how, in the name of "X with Chinese Characteristics," the Chinese assimilate elements of other cultures and mix and match them in ways that are hardly recognizable to someone familiar with the original article: sometimes amusingly, sometimes impressively, sometimes horrifically.

He encounters facets of Chinese society which are extremely jarring to him; sometimes (like abandoning kosher laws) he breaks his own cultural taboos and finds himself better for it, while other times (like witnessing an appalling case of animal abuse) he gives in to feelings of outrage which are likely just to make a bad situation worse. No matter how upsetting an incident may be, he never invokes some objective standard of morality but scrupulously avoids making cultural judgments.

Humor is present throughout the book--irreverent where Hessler would have been ironic--but it's far too intelligent to turn the book into the parody I had initially feared it would be. It's often used to dilute upsetting passages, but in ways that complement rather than compromise the pathos of the incident being described. One very memorable example involves Levy recounting how, despite the skill his Jewish mother and grandmother brought to the task of instilling in him a sense of guilt, not even they had prepared him for "Guilt with Chinese Characteristics"--which is what he felt when he realized there was nothing he could do to help a once-happy young girl who had been forced to drop out of school and collect recycleables on city streets: a victim of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

All of these things are weaved together perfectly to produce a seamless narrative, but the strongest element is friendship. The book is filled with people who are separated from Levy by barriers of cultural misunderstanding, but who are nonetheless able to recognize mutual goodwill and establish unique, unusual, but definitely genuine and meaningful relationships.

The book is beautiful and heartwarming. It's a must read for anyone interested in cultural exchanges between the US and China; but beyond that, it rests on universal truths of diversity and commonality of human experience which anyone, anyone at all, can appreciate.

It's a tightrope, really, to write compassionately but not condescendingly about people in a culture radically different than one's own. And this writer pulls it off in grand style, writing with self-awareness and in a way that expresses respectful interest in even the characters at the edge of the story, such as President Bill. He conveys his curiosity, and yet he avoids voyeurism: not an easy feat.

All this said, it is a funny and poignant story. Here is a teacher who wants to give his best in a system where his methods and aims are, to put it mildly, out of step with the prevailing idea of pedagogy. And here is a human being intent on establishing genuine relationships while holding on to his own values, if not the precise rules, of his own culture. For such a gentle story, there is a surprising amount of tension.

In the end, the author is able to draw together disparate threads such as basketball, post-modern literature, and rural poverty. It is a strangely cohesive story, a crazy quilt held together by the author's frame of reference and point of view. I enjoyed it and, at a time when China's prominence is poised to eclipse the USA's, I learned from it.

I picked this book for review because my daughter just returned from a stint in the Peace Corps, in West Africa. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, launched by J F K in 1961 as a way to get nonmilitary Americans out into the developing world. In the beginning many of the volunteers were experienced older professionals such as retired veterinarians who had real skills to offer local villagers. As the years went on, more of the volunteers who came forward were idealistic kids out of college whose function in developing countries became mainly just to be there, showing that Americans are good people who care. But this diffuse job description has not served the countries or the volunteers as well as it could. A major re-evaluation is now underway of the Peace Corps mission and how it can support more focussed goals in a dangerous world.

Even so, most PCV's enjoy their service. This memoir by Michael Levy is a delightful story of one person's experience. Levy did have background in the role he served, as a teacher. His adventures in central China are presented in a lighthearted narrative which had me laughing out loud in places (such as when his Chinese students confused Olympic athlete Michael Phelps with Mark Spitz and called Phelps "the swimming Jew"). The Jewish side came up because Levy added a wrinkle to the usual PCV by being (or starting out anyway) an observant Jew attempting to follow strict religious dietary laws. Good luck on that in China, the least kosher country in the world. His encounters with his students and colleagues, and his insights into the better and worse aspects of a rapidly changing China, give a valuable insight into the next major world power.

Being the same age and similar background to the author, I was eager to experience China through his eyes (we even both attended Cornell at the same time though I never met him). Michael Levy did not disappoint in this book. He dives right into his first uncomfortable experience, describing how he didn't want to eat millipedes because he was Jewish ,or in Chinese, "A person who is special too". His hosts finally get it---just like Komrade Marx and Albert Einstein!

The book proceeds through his amazing experience in China. He specifically lived in a small village, and experienced the generational shift from pure communism to "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". While the older generation relies on government-provided everything, the younger generation frets about getting jobs, buying houses, and getting mortgages. He discovers a studious people who can learn and memorize every aspect of a subject, but lack the critical thinking ability to question if everything written in their books is true. And while American sensitivites view all Chinese the same, Levy documents the class struggles and ethnic racism that cuts through Chinese society.

All the while, we join Levy as he becomes a part of the people he teaches (he even tries dog meat!). The book is full of great analogies to familiar Western Media (Lost, The Matrix, Star Wars, Left Behind) and humor over how he handled uncomfortable situations (like a student giving herself an English name that referred to a part of the female body).

The book is a quick read, but I learned a surprising amount from such an entertaining book. I highly recommend it to you for learning a bit about China and for enjoying a unique perspective on the country.

China has a thirst for anything American. Clothing, music, and, of course, English. Thus, the book - the author, a Peace Corps Volunteer, is sent to a small but ambitious university in rural China to teach English literature. Oh, and he's Jewish.

The writing here is simple and straightforward (ironically so, given that the author was teaching about postmodern literature). The storyline is a study in contrasts. American politics vs. Chinese, urban vs. rural, Han vs. ethnic minority, pre-cultural revolution vs. neo-capitalist, Walmart vs. Mao, and so on. Yeah, I get it.

When I was preparing for a sojourn in Japan, I kept hearing about the vast contrasts between the two cultures ("The word for rice is the same as the word for food." "Oh, you mean like 'meal'?". "And everybody is very polite in their words, but you have to look at their body language" "I guess you've never been to Minnesota?"). While the author presents these vast contrasts as a difference between the US and China, frantic social climbing and blatant nepotism are also found in just about any American company town (dog meat stew, not so much). And China is, at some level, just a giant company town.

In the epilogue, the author mentions that he is now teaching in a big city, with students who are very different from the ones he describes in the book. I would be interested in seeing a sequel. But I would also love to hear his impressions of teaching in, for example, Appalachia. I bet they don't understand kosher laws there either.

I've read several books by Americans teaching in China, but this was the best. In the second half of the book Levy really gets inside the minds of his Chinese students, and shows how they face change, At first they are reluctant to speak out but they write honestly and powerfully. He struggles with Chinese methods of teaching but finally succeeds in getting them to share how they are thinking about China. A complex picture emerges of how they view their lives. The author also describes his struggles with living in a different culture (culture shock). Very honest and at times he is very funny too. For example when the students meet as a group on Friday nights to learn about Jewish ritual. Delightful read.

Was interested in reading the book because the author is Jewish, and I had learned years ago that China had lots of Jews at one time. So the book proven to be wonderful, funny and educational in so many ways. Downside would be the quality of the paper the book is printed on. Its not a book I could donate to my library as it wouldn't hold up. And as someone who keeps books for decades I am wondering how long it will last in our home library if read more than a few times.

The chapter title Parmesan Cheese is hard to read if you are vegan, vegetarian or care about animals because he writes of the smells, sights, feel of open markets in Guiyang where dogs are slaughtered as you wait and hung to display for ready buyers. He notes 'The market smelled bad. Real bad. The tarp was trapping more than noise:it was also capturing the fragrance of sweating, unwashed people,slowly rotting food, and death.' Did you know that Walmart in China sells dog meat?

In chapter All Foreigners Are Bastards he made me proud in how he stood up to the Chinese man who had puppies in a pillowcase whom he was punching. Although the author was on his way to find the KFC outlet for fried chicken.

Am really enjoying the book, with his humor, intellect and curiosity holding my attention.

Teaching English and learning something of the Guizhou dialect of Mandarin, and of Guizhou culture, and of "socialism with Chinese characteristics,"* and making many friends, and perhaps a few enemies, that's what.

Too big a city to be called the hinterlands? No, despite being the largest city in Guizhou Province, and home to Guizhou University where PCV^ Michael Levy taught English for two years, Guiyang is Podunk compared to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc. A little village grown by many orders of magnitude in population, but still a little village at heart; the best comparison that comes to mind is with the biggest city in Tennessee, Memphis, which in many respects remains an overgrown small town.

I ordered this book because I wanted to learn more about China. I am very glad that I did; it has more than doubled my knowledge of China. Michael Levy has recounted his experiences in a way that manages to be highly entertaining as well as educational. My interest in China was stimulated when my youngest son visited Beijing for about a month in May-June of 2007 at the invitation of a college classmate. I am going to send this to my son and his former classmate, now his wife. I think even she will learn from it.

TEACHERS TAKE NOTE: This would be an excellent book to be on the reading list for a history or social studies class, or to be read and reported on to the class by one or a team of two or three students.

Highly recommended!

watziznayme@gmail.com

* I suspect that is a word-for-word translation, and that a better translation would be "socialism, Chinese style."
^ No, not Pollution Control Valve: Peace Corps Volunteer

This is a updated "Rivertown" and just a great read. Our hero is amazing for his go with the flow and bounce back attitude. Also its well written and I hated to set it down to do chores. Just the best of this type of book, As I said in a few other vine reviews, I am tired of the EPL womens lit. This is so refreshing to read.