Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, September 1, 1999
I found this quite an excellent description of China in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is more interesting than many books on China which tend to be heavily academic and a bit of a drag. Theroux is quite entertaining, while not neglecting Chinese history, politics, culture and the daily realities of modern China. The best part is that he is very perceptive of people and writes a lot the Chinese people whom he meets, interacts with and observes, which makes his book stand out from other travel books which tend to be quite boring, stressing too much on the place. People are what make life interesting after all. Its a good read and I am amazed that he travelled all around China literally. I was in China in the late 1980s, taking a train myself and visiting Beijing, Quingdao, Shanghai, Yantai, and Dalian, and Canton, and find his descriptions quite accurate. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to get to know China better. End
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, April 2, 2000
I find Paul Thoreaux to be an excellent writer, even though he seems a little pessimistic sometimes. He has way of looking beyond the glittering surface of things and telling it how he sees it. There is nothing fake about his work. He captures the concept and the depression of the poverty of Warsaw and Moscow wonderfully, and depicts China's issues and complaints wonderfully. He is perfect at seeing through culture and gender to the pain that lives underneath. He is a wonderful, honest writer, and so far I am loving his book. I could almost believe that I had been to some of the places he traveled.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Travels With Paul, September 6, 2004
Paul Theroux is one of those authors that I find myself returning to again and again over the years. Though my own days of careless travel seem to be largely behind me, it is pure pleasure reading Theroux's cynical and insightful views on foreign travel and culture and his encounters with fellow travelers and locals never fail to amuse. RIDING THE IRON ROOSTER does not disappoint.
As in all of his travel books, the most interesting and engaging character often is Theroux himself. Fussy and pretentious at times and never romantic, he is also refreshingly judgmental, while generally avoiding the chauvinism common with Western writers and travelers. Like Somerset Maugham, he is a man of the world, yet unlike Maugham, his biases and complaints are personal rather than nationalistic. We can usually identify with his trials and frustrations and share in his annoyances.
The Chinese are a curious and foreign people and I have always found them difficult to relate to and inscrutable. Theroux perfectly captures the feeling of strangeness that being amongst them evokes, though oddly enough it is the Americans and Europeans he encounters who come off seeming like the representatives of the truly alien culture. Theroux spends an entire year traversing China and immersing himself in the local culture, and by the end of the book I find myself understanding, or at least tolerating the Chinese more and the Americans less. I have found out during my own travels that the most severe form of culture shock comes from returning to your own country after a long absence.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
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