Riding the Iron Rooster : By Train Through China

Rating:
Summary: Travel writing as theater review
Review: As a reporter, Paul Theroux is a great novelist. He treats his subjects as though he's reviewing their lives as performances. I've never read such a distant account by someone who spent so much time in a place. There are lots of stories of train meals. Where are the stories of family life, of children, of education, and health care? This is China from the dining car window, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't go on for 400+ pages.

Maybe he doesn't write those stories because he seems contemptuous of everyone he meets, whether Chinese or not, from his fellow travelers to dinner companions. Perhaps interacting with such persons distracts him from all the magnificent books he's reading on the train (we get to find out about them all, it seems). Hey, Paul, if you wanna read in peace, stay off Chinese trains.

This is also a period piece, which is odd, considering the book is only 11 years old. I grew weary of the post-Cultural Revolution discussions, for example, and the constant references to Mao's thoughts (Hey, I read some of the book--lookit!). With the luddite's love for steam engines (the Chinese stopped building them the year his book was published) and quill pens, Theroux seems unable to imagine a modern China flexing its military muscles and engaged in the World Trade Organization. For all his accounting of Chinese history, he seems only able to grapple with the past two decades with much authority.

This is a highly descriptive and most unhappy account of a long and arduous journey. I can't imagine Theroux enjoyed the work. I can't say I much did, either.

Rating:
Summary: I love travelling with P. Theroux!
Review: I do not travel much (unfortunately), except in my lazy chair, with P. Theroux. I love the way he describes the people he meets, the way he critisizes local authorities etc. He's not an xenophobic, but neverthless, stays American. He travels by train, and describes the scenery, the other travellers, the landscape, the buislings etc.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: typical egotistical american
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Travels With Paul
Review: 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