Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (Traveler) [Paperback]

Stuart Stevens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 1994 | Series: Traveler

The first account of travel in Chinese Turkistan, closed to foreigners since 1949, shows a world where bureaucratic hazards often loom larger than geographical ones. First serial to Esquire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stevens, a freelance journalist, filmmaker and political consultant, retraces explorer and author Peter Fleming's legendary 1935 journey through Chinese Turkistan from capital Beijing to remote, unpopulated Kashgar. Stevens was accompanied by three American friends, including Mark Salzman, whose Iron and Silk records his own extensive travels in China. In this colorful, simple narrative, the difficulties outweigh the pleasures as the foursome continually battles the bureaucratic nightmare of government control in China, where purchasing train tickets requires the combined skills of a rug merchant, diplomat and spy. They ride crowded, unheated buses that move at a snail's pace along rough roads and planes that fly low, nearly skimming the ground. They find that their hotels do not have basic amenities like running water and working toilets. Stevens portrays China and the Chinese in a negative, surely controversial, light ("China was like an army, ugly and inefficient, joyless and numbingly monotonous, with little use for art or literature"). Yet, he is also moved by flashes of individualism and rebellion, and by kindness. An aura of romantic adventure buffers the hardships he describes, linking the author and his literary forefather whose footsteps he followed across China.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

pap. $7.95. adventure Cold, windswept deserts, rundown hotels, bumpy, crowded buses, and evasive officials were the usual lot of four intrepid Americans intent on retracing the 1935 route of Peter Flaming and Ella Maillart through far western China. Unlike such adventurers as Charlotte Salisbury ( Long March Diary, LJ 2/1/86) who traveled with Chinese government sponsorship, Stevens and his friends ventured on their own. They met a succession of bureaucratic obstacles in the frontier towns of Dunhuang, Turpan, and Kashgar. Stevens's keen observation and wry comments will serve like-minded adventurers well. Elizabeth A. Teo, Moraine Valley Community Coll. Lib., Palos Hills, Ill.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; 1st edition (January 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871131900
• ISBN-13: 978-0871131904
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ...those who liked Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk", April 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (Traveler) (Paperback)

People who have read Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk"will find this book interesting because its author travelled withSalzman on another journey through China. The author's honesty about the horrors of travel through China in mid-1989 is refreshing. Stevens somehow manages to avoid the mindless chipper attitude seen too frequently in travelogues without falling into Paul Theroux style cynicism. Although I enjoyed this light read, I nevertheless finished the book feeling that I had gained little in the way of new insights. Stevens doesn't seem to like China much or to come to any conclusions other than that the Cultural Revolution was bad (hardly a revelation) as are Chinese architecture and manners. Eight years later, this book has the feel of a period piece -- China's capitalist revolution is far more advanced now.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's all about the journey, April 21, 2002

By 

marared (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (Traveler) (Paperback)

Stevens provides a humorous recounting of a romp through Western China attempting to follow the trail of 1936 travelers Fleming an Maillart along the ancient Silk Road. Night Train to Turkistan is entertaining for its quirky characters including infuriating bureaucrats, reluctant Chinese interpretor (Mark Salzman, author of Lying Awake and Iron and Silk), a six foot female athlete who draws a crowd of suitors and gawkers everywhere she goes, and proprietors of various roadside establishments.

The four travelers are just outrageous and creative enough to actually make their way from Beijing to Kashgar and back, despite a multitude of bureaucrats that seems hellbent on prohibiting them from doing just that. The book starts out with the quartet delivering skis to a national ski team in a country with no ski areas, in the hopes of obtaining a vaguely official-looking reference letter that might unlock some door somewhere. It goes on from there.

This was a fairly quick read, and, as other reviewers have noted, it's not heavy on anthropological or historical insights. But I don't think the intent of the book was to provide these insights. This is a case where getting there is all the fun. The book is all about the journey, and those who have attempted to journey through bureaucratic developing nations are likely to recognize the types of frustrations and seemingly inexplicable events and policies recounted here. The book is all about crammed unheated buses and trains and low-flying planes and various other conveyances. It's about imperfectly built Russian hotels and incomprehensible bus stations and greasy roadside noodle stands and scheduled group pit stops and increasingly implausible explanations from government workers, desk clerks, and pencil pushers. This all sounds like an incredible bore, but Stevens' entertaining descriptions take you there and hold your attention to the end. If you are looking for an anthropological or historical treatise on Western China, you will be happier looking elsewhere. But as a humorous recounting of a journey through Western China, this one fills the bill. It is primarily from the perspective of a traveler, and the insights are limited, but the observations of a traveler are well worth the price of the book.

As an aside, several of the other reviewers suggest that this book was set in 1989 or around the time of the protests in Tiananmen Square. In fact the book was published in 1988, and the journey occurred in 1986, both prior to the protests in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. It is unfair to suggest that the author was minimizing the events of that spring, as they had not yet occurred.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Honest, refreshing, funny, June 24, 1999

By 

zey - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (Traveler) (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this book. The author's basic premise is interesting. The four unlikely companions who depart on the journey are outrageous and funny. Especially the description of the Uighur "minorities" was touching. A little more history would have been welcome... But, very readable, enjoyable and funny. Definitely recommended.