Customer Reviews

Riding the Iron Rooster

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a well-written literay account of Theroux's travels through the difficult land of modern China. I first read this while living in (British) Hong Kong and making trips to and through the mainland. I have never laughed so much at the crazy predicaments Theroux gets himself into or observes (many the same as I was experiencing), and was struck not only at the quality of his writing but how rare a writer he is for covering this difficult and insecure part of the world.

What shines through in the pages of this book is that Theroux the writer is beholden to no one; he delivers accuracy of description everytime, and while this is the essence of a good travel writer, it is not a trait relished by governments out east like China's, where in fact the culture demands "saving face" over telling the blunt truth (see Bo Yang's book The Ugly Chinaman for an in-depth account of this fascinating aspect of Chinese culture). Even some westerners who live out East (and might like us to think of the Third World as some kind of paradise posting) can get upset at this kind of sober truth-telling about "their" China. For the detached reader, Theroux's book is an honest, funny, non-spin-doctored account.

If you like this book, try Theroux's Kowloon Tong, his Hong Kong novel banned in China, a very accurate depiction of that small city and the people (both westerners and easterners) who lived in it at the time of the Handover (I read it while living there). Timothy Mo's The Monkey King is another classic China novel about an eccentric Chinese family - a witty, poignant tale, and a book so on the mark that, if anything, it was even more attacked by certain frumps out East than Kowloon Tong!

I was assigned this book for a class in modern Asian history. The professor was deadly dull, but I'm glad I took the class because it led me to Paul Theroux. In RtIR I found some of the funniest and most memorable bits of nonfiction in my life. China is a truly unique place and Theroux seems very well suited to its mysteries.

The author has made a career out of sharing his wit and wisdom about his travels in the world (fiction as well as non). As in all his travel tales, Theroux points out everything odd and fascinating to him along his route to and through the area he's focused on, including meaningful chunks of local history, literature, and cultural background. This is very literate travel writing and, taken with a grain of salt, can be highly educational though parts are a bit dated now.

You'll learn nearly as much about Theroux (or the character of Theroux, travel writer) as you do about the place. There is no story here: this is travel writing and you must go with the flow or put the book down. But the payoffs are tremendous; there are always dozens of "I gotta read this to somebody" passages in Theroux books. This one is no exception. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in modern China and some humor.

Paul Theroux has always had an extremely sharp eye for detail, and an even sharper pen with which to mold these observations into telling, sometimes ascerbic commentary. In "Riding The Iron Rooster", Theroux is at the top of his form in capturing the flavor and collective psyche of mainland China during the last quarter of the 20th Century.

One of the more revealing angles put forth in "Iron Rooster" is the face-saving that the Chinese government has engaged in with respect to The Cultural Revolution. Everyone knows that what Mao Tse Tung did was monstrous, but few in China appear willing to own up to the magnitude of the sin in any public way; so half-measures are taken to pay "proper respect" to Mao at just the appropriate place and just the appropriate time.

The author also nicely captures the first wave of pro-capitalist fervor that began engulfing China in the late 80's. But the core of Theroux's book, as always, are the vivid snapshots of the customs, foibles and mores that constitute a culture.

Reading "Iron Rooster" as I boarded a plane in Hong Kong in 1994, I discovered I was about to experience, first-hand, the aeronautical and social turbulence that the author ascribed to Chinese plane travel. By the time I landed in Guangxi Province, all of his observations had been confirmed.

"Riding The Iron Rooster" is vintage Theroux - insightful, droll, always pleasurable.

I am great fan of Thoreaux, and have read ALL of his travelogues. It is rare for someone of his literary genius to risk his life and reputation to travel to remote places in the most inconvenient manner to report his candid observations and penetrating insights into the characters and cultures of the place. We the readers are the beneficiary of his extraordinary ability to take the least traveled road and report back the very essence of the experience in a most vivid and often impolitic manner.

That said, I found Thoreaux's relentless questioning of every local he meets about Cultural Revolution irritating as well. Thoreaux seems to find curious or amusing the Chinese' reticence about discussing their haunted past. However, Thoreaux's own behavior is inconsistent and rather curious, since when he was in South Africa ('Dark Star Safari'), he did not interrogates the locals there about the Apartheid. When he was in Russia ('Great Railway Bazaar'), he did not interrogate them about the Stalinist purges. When he was in Australia ('Happy Isles of Oceania'), he did not press the locals about the Australians' long hisory of mistreatment of the Aboriginals.

Every country - especially those with history as a Colonial power - has its own haunted history of violence that it'd prefer not to revisit in depth. America has its own share, including slavery, lynchings, and violence against the native Americans. If a foreign writer travels solo through the American Deep South questioning the locals about these topics, s/he may receive a response more hostile than an uncomfortable 'Haha'. It's a tribute to the civility of the Chinese culture that Thoreaux did not suffer violence at the hand of the locals for his deliberate provocation.

Thoreaux admits that he is an equal opportunity offender, that his writings have alienated or offended his publishers, his business contacts, foreign governments, etc. Yes, his writings are very often politically incorrect, but overall he is a brilliant writer of exceptional courage and singularity of vision. There is no one like him, and I admire him greatly as one of my favorite writers of all time.

While a little slow in getting up a head of steam, "Riding the Iron Rooster" makes for a captivating read. The wonderful places that Mr. Theroux visits and the diverse characters of the people he encounters and details in the pages of this twelve-month odyssey places the reader in a virtual world - right upon the train with him. China has certainly changed immensely since the mid 1980s when this account was authored, but Theroux's writings lends great insight into the national psyche that prevailed during the decade following Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution. With especially the latter, Theroux seems obsessed - be it Shaoshan where Mao was born, mighty Shanghai or isolated Tibet, he relates the present-day to events from the mid-1960s, usually via the often ghoulish memories of local citizens. He offers criticisms and praises where he feels they are due. For me though the highlight comes through rich descriptions of the places to where he travels. Theroux visits dozens of localities which will remain but mere place-names on a map for the vast majority of his readers. However, through his writings one is privileged to share such sights as the isolated grandeur of the Xinjiang desert as he coasts along by steam-drawn train. The rugged mountain scenery of Sichuan is also memorable but with the unforgettable account of his journey across the Tibetan Plateau in a dilapidated old taxi (with an even worse for wear driver), he saves his best for last.

In an instant I would recommend this book to any traveler contemplating a trip to China. Mr. Theroux touches upon almost every place of interest in this fascinating land and lends a unique perspective into the Chinese persona. While an obvious allowance is needed for the political, social and economic changes that have occurred over the past 15 years, "Riding the Iron Rooster" remains a useful if not valuable travel companion.

This book relates the experiences of train enthusiast Paul Theroux when he set out to write a book about train travel in China. Theroux has traveled many thousands of miles by train, perhaps more than he would care to remember. In this book, he decides to visit China by train. As he sets out from London in the spring of 1986, he joins a package tour, which takes him across Europe through Poland and Moscow and continues on to China via the Siberian Express. Theroux was fortunate in that his train cleared Eastern Europe before the radiation cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the area with radiation. After a long journey across Russia, he arrives in Beijing and begins his explorations of the Chinese train system. At first, he is saddled with a Chinese escort, (who he demanded be non-English speaking so that he could practice his Chinese), but later he manages to travel independently. Theroux ends his journey with an expedition (by road) to Tibet.

From the very beginning of the book, Theroux comes across as a burnt-out traveler, whose primary goal seems to be completing the journey so that he can write about it. He can't seem to find a single positive trait of his fellow travelers to remark about. He dismisses others he observed along the way with negative terms such as "fatties" or "simians." With this negative attitude, much of the book is a grind to get through, although some readers may see humor in Theroux's attitude, and others may find the information about travel conditions worthwhile. Theroux is a very experienced traveler, and he makes a point not to mention minor ailments such as belly-aches, although he must have had quite a few, considering the food he ate. The text finally comes alive in the last chapter, where Theroux gets off the trains at last and has a real adventure. Die-hard Theroux fans may get a kick out of this book, but others may find Theroux's negative attitude simply dreary.

It has become a clich¨¦, but nonetheless true, to remark "how much China has changed", be it in the past year or month or decade.

Reading "Riding the Iron Rooster" in 2003 Shanghai highlights that truism while calling to mind another: "The more things change, the more they stay same." Theroux's China of twenty years ago is an alien world, yet oddly, unsettlingly familiar.

Travelogues by definition focus on the details, at risk of missing the forest for the trees, but those details are valuable for illustrating changes in a society. Every single writer to address China in the 1980s made the tired observation of how the blue and gray Mao suit monotony gave way to a cacophony of color in the average Chinese wardrobe. Yet such minutiae, such as the currently popular extrapolation on the proliferation of cellphones and Starbucks and everything else, while not providing the substance of change, are the stylistic curlicues that can represent so much.

Theroux's appeal and success lies in his witty, vivid descriptions, and he continues the tradition in this particular tome. However, in the one other book of his I read, "The Great Railway Bazaar", he created a much better sensation of traveling, and captured the senses of place much more vibrantly. In "Iron Rooster", he visits so many different places that they all start to blend together, and he makes little effort to explore their differences. One suspects he was trying so hard to get his mind and pen around the whole of China and its changes and society and people that he forgot to stop and smell the chrysanthemums.

When he does give himself over to capturing scenes, the wry witticisms make the long slog though the long book worthwhile. Little gems like, "The girls even had to have a fancy brassiere, probably the most superfluous garment in China" make you wish he had spent more time on said chrysanthemums and less on "whither modern China". The book also gets bogged down by describing excessively the author's annoying encounters, such as the American tour group at the beginning and his government escort Mr. Fang.

Nonetheless, it makes for an intriguing social snapshot of the China that was, and provides an interesting benchmark against which to compare the present day. I wouldn't recommend it for someone who hasn't been to China; it would create false impressions and expectations, especially given how most western readers woefully fail to take into account datedness in regards to other countries. But if you've already been, it makes for an amusing and at times provocative blast to the past.

Train after train after train! A most fascinating, thorough narrative of travel through China in the mid-eighties, which, by the way, is the only reason I did not give this book five stars. It is old-more time has past since Paul Theroux took this trip than the time that had passed since the cultural revolution when Theroux wrote this book.

But I still recommend this book. There is really nothing else like it available, and it does give a wealth of information about the lay of the land. The physical geography of China has not changed that much since the mid-eighties. But I would not have you think that this books only value is its descriptions of scenery. There is plenty to learn about China, and the Chinese mindset, as long as you are able to transpose it a bit to the present time. For example, I don't think you would be followed around quite so much as Paul Theroux was on this trip.

Theroux is a novelist by profession, and a good storyteller. This book contains a lot of interesting anecdotes, such as a delightful description of the few days he spent in the city of Dalian with a travel guide who was obsessed with American idioms.

Kipling said, "East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet." In the years since World War II, several countries in the Pacific Rim, starting with Japan, have seemed to defy this adage, and have really become western democracies. What is the future of China? Will this proud culture become more western? Will it become more democratic? Although this book is not a political tretise by any means, it is very useful as a post Cultural Revolution look at China. Nobody can predict what China will become, but surely the most casual observer would have to take note of the major paradigm shift represented by recent changes.

This book was written before Tiananmen, hence its weakness. However, I still think the book would be very useful for anyone who has at least a modicum of understanding of the events surrounding the Cultural Revolution. I found it to be a very useful addition to the body of literature I have been reading over the past few years to gain a better understanding of the tremendous changes that have taken place in China since I first saw the pictures of the Red Guards on the cover of my Weekly Reader when I was in elementary school. Get a cup of coffee, put your feet up, and enjoy.

For many travel writers, the point is more in the journey than the destination. That is especially true with Paul Theroux here. Whether it is the rubble of the Great Wall, the desolate wastes of Inner Mongolia, or the awe-inspiring vistas of Tibet, Theroux uses the various places of China he encounters by rail as a backdrop for what interests him most, the people.

Published in 1988, as China emerged from the darkness of the Cultural Revolution and just before the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, "Riding The Iron Rooster" captures the world's most populous nation catching a wave of democratic sentiment, embracing materialism and such symbols of Western decadence as Jan and Dean. Whether government handler or fellow rail passenger, most everyone Theroux meets has regrets about the country's hardline past and doesn't mince words expressing it, in the process challenging his (and our) expectations of encountering a continent of doctrinaire Maoists.

"We can always fool a foreigner" is a Chinese proverb Theroux quotes right off the bat, and he takes it as his job proving otherwise. Better equipped than most Westerners, he has not only been to China before but speaks the language, enough so he can distinguish genuine laughs from politeness or insecure warning, while asking questions that would have gotten him in trouble ten years ago but now evoke amusement and curiosity.

The result is a highly subjective, idiosyncratic blast, of a self-admittedly rude foreigner pushing boundaries in an attempt to uncover deeper truths from a populace unaccustomed to giving them. His admiration of the Chinese is not without frustration. "I hated sight-seeing in China," he writes. "I felt the Chinese hid behind their rebuilt ruins so that no one could look closely at their lives."

Score this one China 1, Theroux 0, but he does put up a noble fight, and provides you with an entertaining glimpse at a country that engages your deeper interest, and admiration for an author always willing to go the extra mile, even in a cold and filthy railcar.

The book does lack some sense of geography; even consulting the map on the flyleaf doesn't help as Theroux expands and contracts the reader's sense of time and space. He may dismiss the terra-cotta soldiers' ranks of Xi'an with a couple of paragraphs, while spending pages on the quality and universality of public spitting. But you wind up with a journey that tells you as much about the complexity of Theroux, a dyspeptic but very talented observer in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, as it does about the great land he visits here.

"Travel is frequently a matter of seizing a moment," he writes. "It is personal. Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine." Here, you sort of are traveling with him, and the result is a literary journey as intoxicating as it is educational.

I have become hooked on Theroux travel narratives. This is the third and the best of his narratives I have read so far. And this one is also the most funniest and engaging of them all.

The book deals with Theroux's travels through China in the late 80's. He decided to travel the bredth of the country by trains and in the process comes to appreciate the birth of a new mighty industrialized China. He was able to interact freely with the Chinese and his conversations are funny, insightful and engaging. The Chinese comes across as a rational people who knows what they want from life, even though the goals presented by Theroux deals exclusively with consumer goods. A slight annoyance is Theroux's attempt to define all the Chinese by how they responded to cultural revolution.