This is my first of two travel writing reads
publisher labeled it "travel"
ok, pg 1 and I already see I'm in the presence of a master - the PC books were child's play, workshop submissions
opens by saying he's in China out of curiosity - pg 1: "It was like discovering a new room in a house in which you'd lived your whole life."
in his youth the country puzzled him
is Thubron's mission to meet the people and discover who they are?
amused but unimpressed by Beijing
alludes to Marco Polo
seems to be bashing the city, calling it "motley" and "decrepit improvisations" pg 5
pg 6, smelly - he is describing the surroundings clearly, as he sees them, though they are unfavorable
Thubron is giving us his first impressions here - they are negative but I expect them to change - perhaps it is easier for travel writers to write this way than it is for a PCV - since PCVs become attached and dependent on the people they are writing about
he learned Mandarin! - uses research often - pg 6 - "Old-Hundred-Names", I imagine much more than PC memoir but just a fraction less than ethnography
history of Tienanmen Square
uses dialogue, scenes to propel the story
style and language reminds me of George Plimpton
hires bikes as he goes
goes into underground tunnels/shelters, explains history, then he says he is "struck into numbed credulity" when he thinks of this and other monumental tasks of the people
analyzes nude men in showers
Thubron tells a man the West sees China as a country of worker ants - pg 19 - man says no
discovers couples work apart, only child at boarding school at 2 yo
uses anthropological terms - pg 28 - "guilt cultures" and "shame cultures"
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