Preparation: Read Your Way Into China

One of the most satisfying aspects of traveling is the reading you do before you pack your bags. I've got a great reading list for a would-be China traveller. The following books, written from diverse points of view, draw almost identical conclusions about the character of China and its culture:

• Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost (he also wrote "The Sex Lives of Cannibals"). If you're a Republican, this book might not work for you. This is an audacious little book, written by a Canadian whose heritage is half Czechoslovakian, half Dutch. I'm half Czechoslovakian, half Danish, so we are relatives of sorts. This is a very funny book written by a perceptive young writer. Start your reading with this book; however, I do not recommend that you take this book with you to China. Being seen with this book in your lap in a "hard seat" train car might not work.
• Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays by Bill Holm. The author was a college friend of mine, but that's not why I recommend this book. Bill died unexpectedly this year upon returning from a book signing in Arizona. He was a professional musician, poet, and published author of numerous books. He was from Minneota, Minnesota (don't you love the sound of that), and you may have heard him on The Prairie Home Companion. If you're a Midwesterner, this is the China book for you. The contrast between middle America and the Middle Kingdom could not be more profound.
• Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China and River Town, both by Peter Hessler. Hessler, a product of Princeton and Oxford, was a Peace Corps teacher and freelance writer in China. River Town is a product of his teaching years, and Oracle Bones was written during his years as a "clipper" for the Wall Street Journal and freelance writer in China. He tells the complex story of China's past and its transition to a very different modern industrial/technological future from the point of view of average Chinese citizens. He follows the lives of several of his former students as they move out of the education system into the workforce. One of his more intriguing friends is Polat, a money changer / trader who is a Muslim dissident from Xinjiang. Polat is a Uyghur (one of the 55 minority groups in China). Americans have heard the word "Uyghur" recently because some detainees in Guantanamo are Uyghurs. About 91% of the 1.3 billion people in China are Han Chinese; the remaining 9% are members of the 55 minority groups. These books are slower reads than the first two, but provide an amazing introduction to China.

I'm also going to "recommend" two other books that have come to my attention. I have not read either one yet.

• Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. This is a personal memoir about the author, her mother and grandmother in the period 1911-1976. The book describes their lives from the end of Imperial China, through the Japanese occupation, the Nationalist movement, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, Mao's Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Mao Zedong's death. Numerous people have recommended this book to me.
• The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester. My son Christian gave me a signed, first edition of this book for Mother's Day this year. Winchester is the author of 18 books including Krakatoa, The Professor and the Madman, and The Meaning of Everything. I've read Winchester before, and am sure this will be interesting. The Man Who Loved China tells the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, a brilliant Cambridge scientist who fell in love with a visiting Chinese student in 1937. She persuaded him to visit China where he embarked on a series of expeditions to the farthest frontiers of the empire, searching for evidence to support his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundred of mankind's innovations like printing, explosives, and suspension bridges.