Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (Atlantic Monthly Pr)

Rating:
Summary: Witty and a quick read
Review: A quick and entertaining read, this book is woth buying. The descriptions of the transportation woes do drag on a bit, as another reviewer noted, but not so much that I wanted to put the book down. This work certainly leaves you with no illusions about what it's like to travel in the remote parts of China. Witty and poignant in places.

Rating:
Summary: Probably his best
Review: As I have stated in other reviews, I do not like the author's personality too much(favorite quotation from another review: "Stu's a jerk, but...") But this book takes an unlikely premise and turns it into a very gripping account of a travel through Asia. I also highly recommend the book written by one of the other travellers here, Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk.

Rating:
Summary: Probably his best
Review: As I have stated in other reviews, I do not like the author's personality too much(favorite quotation from another review: "Stu's a jerk, but...") But this book takes an unlikely premise and turns it into a very gripping account of a travel through Asia. I also highly recommend the book written by one of the other travellers here, Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk.

Rating:
Summary: It is better to travel than to arrive.
Review: Especially if you are *not* travelling in a metal tube at thirty thousand feet, rebreathing used air and eating microwaved pap. If you travel by the same means as the local people, you will not only meet normal people, you will experience actual life. Remember the anecdote "Solipsism? I refute it thus!" (kicking a stone). In a bus bouncing along a chinese road you will have reality pressed upon you for hours, and you'll notice and remember. Train travel is far more comfortable but not always possible. I had read the book, and arrived at Golmud remembering what he said about the pit toilet (confirmed at a similar site, though no dead rats seen), and the Golmud hotel (hot water available and friendly staff for me) as was the confusion when trying to extract clear statements. His descriptions are accurate, and although seeming a little intemperate from the armchair viewpoint, they are the common currency of those who have actually struggled with the reality of being there. Yet the area is worth the journey, fascinating to anyone hopelessly romantic enough to go there. Those who have to live at Golmud have other views, very understandable ones.

Rating:
Summary: It is better to travel than to arrive.
Review: Especially if you are *not* travelling in a metal tube at thirty thousand feet, rebreathing used air and eating microwaved pap. If you travel by the same means as the local people, you will not only meet normal people, you will experience actual life. Remember the anecdote "Solipsism? I refute it thus!" (kicking a stone). In a bus bouncing along a chinese road you will have reality pressed upon you for hours, and you'll notice and remember. Train travel is far more comfortable but not always possible. I had read the book, and arrived at Golmud remembering what he said about the pit toilet (confirmed at a similar site, though no dead rats seen), and the Golmud hotel (hot water available and friendly staff for me) as was the confusion when trying to extract clear statements. His descriptions are accurate, and although seeming a little intemperate from the armchair viewpoint, they are the common currency of those who have actually struggled with the reality of being there. Yet the area is worth the journey, fascinating to anyone hopelessly romantic enough to go there. Those who have to live at Golmud have other views, very understandable ones.

Rating:
Summary: The virtues of traveling by arm chair.
Review: Fewer travel subjects come complete with greater promise of adventure, intrigue, local color and mystery than the Great Silk Route, extending from China to Turkey. Ideally, a contemporary travel book should offer a wealth of description combined with a profound historical knowledge which is communicated in an entertaining fasion; e.g., Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts or The Ends of the Earth, or several of the Paul Theroux books. Unfortunately, Stevens focuses almost exclusively on the discomforts of public transit in a developing country. Although the book is entertaining, humorous at times, even grisly in its unwashed detail of life on board dirty buses and trains, it seems the author could be talking about travel anywhere in the third world. Stevens' vision doesn't extend far enough beyond the bus or train window, past the ugliness of contemporary Chinese politics and architecture. The book left me convinced, rightly or wrongly, that there is little or nothing left of the original mystique of the Great Silk Road.

Rating:
Summary: Honest, refreshing, funny
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: ...those who liked Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Very funny, but lightweight.
Review: Stevens and three friends (including author Mark Salzman) follow the route of Fleming and Maillart, a 1930s adventure couple from Beijing to Kashgar, the capital of Chinese Turkistan. This is a fun little book, at times truly hilarious, as Stevens blithely recounts the squalid horrors of traveling in a Third World country, or is challenged again and again by mendacious, obstinate bureaucracy who will say anything to prevent them from traveling. But there's not much history or anthropology to speak of, other than a few comments about the Tibetans or Uighurs, or passages from Fleming's book. Nor does Stevens come to any novel or shrewd insights about China, other than the Cultural Revolution must have sucked, although no one will talk to him about it, and its bureaucracy is like an army in its cold homogeneity. It even dismisses the Tienanmen Square riots at the end! A lightweight, amusing travel piece; it could have bean more meaningful, such as Salzman's books or Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy.

Rating:
Summary: Very funny, but lightweight.
Review: Stevens and three friends (including author Mark Salzman) follow the route of Fleming and Maillart, a 1930s adventure couple from Beijing to Kashgar, the capital of Chinese Turkistan. This is a fun little book, at times truly hilarious, as Stevens blithely recounts the squalid horrors of traveling in a Third World country, or is challenged again and again by mendacious, obstinate bureaucracy who will say anything to prevent them from traveling. But there's not much history or anthropology to speak of, other than a few comments about the Tibetans or Uighurs, or passages from Fleming's book. Nor does Stevens come to any novel or shrewd insights about China, other than the Cultural Revolution must have sucked, although no one will talk to him about it, and its bureaucracy is like an army in its cold homogeneity. It even dismisses the Tienanmen Square riots at the end! A lightweight, amusing travel piece; it could have bean more meaningful, such as Salzman's books or Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy.