Customer Reviews

The Travels of Lao Can

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

China has had few relations with Spain excepting for the Catholic priests, as Spanish Church has reached the whole world. This book remembers to me the stile of storytelling that can be found in Thousand and One Nights: an Oriental stile that seems infantile if you're accustomed to Occident novels from Sweden to Italy.
The adventures of the Dr. Can, so named as he's a wise and good man even cultivated in the Confucian philosophy and other humanities, has however only a precarious formation in medicine, Chinese or occidental. He travels here and there as an ambulant physician and many times he succeeds as, if no real medicines, he's plenty of common sense. The novel reveals the disastrous and demoralized state of China at the beginning of twentieth century and his terrible governmental corruption, deplorable state of the roads, river floods, attacks of tigers and wolfs in the country, selling of women as slaves, pirates, and many other catastrophes, and how the doctor must act sometimes as a detective in a case of murder by poisoned cakes, and it's curious, as it's named Sherlock Holmes as an example to follow, a proof that even in the China of these times this hero was yet translated and known. Also the doctor posses a wristwatch, an object I think no very common by 1903 between Chinese people.

I heard this book many times before reading, thus I read it very seriously when I got it. However, the book is really disappointing although it seemed to reveal some social aspects in China 100 years ago.

What I dislike in this book is that the author consistently says how he is powerful because he by chance knows the head of region. By this power, he tries to do some good things. Anyway he could do nothing without knowing powerful people.

I can imagine that he would do more bad things if he would have power according to his behavior in this book.