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Behind the Wall: A Journey Through China
Having learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron sets off on a 10,000 mile journey from Beijing to Tibet, starting from a tropical paradise near the Burmese border to the windswept wastes of the Gobi desert and the far end of the Great Wall. What Thubron reveals is an astonishing diversity, a land whose still unmeasured resources strain to meet an awesome demand, and an ancient people still reeling from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Colin Thubron
45 books432 followersColin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.
In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
June 11, 2016
Brilliantly lovely engaging travel book about China before it became the roaring supercharged capitalist success story it is today. (Or has their capitalist dream gone bust too, like ours? It's hard to keep up these days!)
Two anecdotes from me and a quote from Mr Thubron and we're done.
Now I don't often mention HF in these reviews, on the grounds that she might object, which is fair enough. But she goes to China on university business regularly (they have a campus in Ning-Bo). And once she told me that she had to go to a "banquet" (a regular occurrence) which is where you get given food, you don't get a menu, they just bring it to you. And one of the dishes looked really weird and she didn't fancy it at all. So she asked someone what it was and they said without batting an eye "shredded deer's afterbirth"
There was a BBC news guy in China I heard on the radio a couple of years ago. He said he was standing in the middle of the city of (can't remember, some place I never heard of), where
one third of the world's socks are manufactured.
that stuck with me!
My favourite passage of this splendid book:
In Cantonese cooking, nothing edible is sacred. It reflects an old Chinese mercilessness towards their surroundings. Every part of every animal- pig stomach, lynx breast, whole bamboo rats and salamanders - is consumed. No Hindu cows or Muslim pigs escape into immunity by taboo. It is the cuisine of the very poor, driven to tortuous invention. Most Chinese still eat only fourteen pounds of meat a year, and many survive at little above subsistence level. In the rowdy, proletarian Wild Game Restaurant, I interrogated the waitress for anything I could bear to eat. But she incanted remorselessly from the menu: Steamed Cat, Braised Guinea Pig (whole) with Mashed Shrimps, Grainy Dog Meat with Chilli and Scallion in Soya Sauce, Shredded Cat Thick Soup, Fried Grainy Mud-puppy ('It's a fish,' she said) with Olive Kernels, Braised Python with Mushrooms .... If I wanted the Steamed Mountain Turtle, she said, I'd have to wait an hour. And Bear's Paws, she regretted, were off. I had turned suddenly vegetarian. I played for time by ordering python broth, then glanced furtively round at the main courses on nearby tables, hoping for escape; but their occupants were bent over opaque stews where dappled fragments floated anonymously. Around us the windows were glazed with pretty pictures of the animals concerned : deer and cats wearing necklaces. The waitress tried to be helpful. 'What about Dog Meat Ready to be Cooked Earthen Pot over Charcoal Stove on Table?' I guessed in desperation: 'It's too expensive.' 'Then I recommend Braised Wildcat.' 'Well…' I glanced at a domestic tabby squatting on the veranda beside me. The waitress followed my gaze. 'It's not that.' She tried to explain it. It had nothing to do with real cats, she said. She wrote down the Chinese character for it, which I couldn't read. In the end, hoping that it was a fancy name for something innocuous, I heard myself say: 'One braised wildcat, please.'
But the soup was a meal in itself. It came in a python-sized bowl, and beneath its brown liquid lurked sediment of what appeared to be ' white chicken meat. It tasted fishy. The darker flecks might been skin. I excused myself by reflecting that pythons (although I had never known one) were less endearing than lambs, which I had eaten often. The tabby had squirmed under my table. It looked scrawny but dangerously edible. In fact I had the impression that almost everything bere was in peril. When somebody brought a warm flannel for my I was half prepared to munch it. What else was nutritional, I wondered? The mosquitoes? The curtains? It occurred to me that should I fall from the fourth-floor stair-well. The cat was still under my table when its braised compatriot arrived. I lifted the lid to reveal a mahogany-coloured flotsam of mushrooms and indistinguishable flesh. A pair of fragile ribs floated accusingly on the surface. I ate the mushrooms first, with relief, but even they were suffused by the dark, gamey tang of whatever-it-was. The meat was full of delicate, friable bones. I did not know if my faint nausea arose from the thing's richness or from my mind. Several times my chopsticks hit rounded, meat- encircled fragments, like miniature rolling-pins, which resembled legs. I smuggled them to the cat under the table, as a melancholy atonement. "You don't like your wildcat?' The waitress was peering into the bowl, disappointed. 'I'm rather full.' I smiled feebly, picking the python out of my teeth. But she seemed to understand my diffidence, and stooped down to sketch me an exonerating picture of the whatever-it-was. She drew what looked like the illustration of an Edward lear Limerick : a lugubrious, four-legged ellipse, with a face either cross or upset. But it was too late : I had already eaten it. And when later I showed an English-speaking Cantonese the word she had written, he translated it "elephant-cat" or "cat-fox", and shook his head, nonplussed..
Is that not great?
Two anecdotes from me and a quote from Mr Thubron and we're done.
Now I don't often mention HF in these reviews, on the grounds that she might object, which is fair enough. But she goes to China on university business regularly (they have a campus in Ning-Bo). And once she told me that she had to go to a "banquet" (a regular occurrence) which is where you get given food, you don't get a menu, they just bring it to you. And one of the dishes looked really weird and she didn't fancy it at all. So she asked someone what it was and they said without batting an eye "shredded deer's afterbirth"
There was a BBC news guy in China I heard on the radio a couple of years ago. He said he was standing in the middle of the city of (can't remember, some place I never heard of), where
one third of the world's socks are manufactured.
that stuck with me!
My favourite passage of this splendid book:
In Cantonese cooking, nothing edible is sacred. It reflects an old Chinese mercilessness towards their surroundings. Every part of every animal- pig stomach, lynx breast, whole bamboo rats and salamanders - is consumed. No Hindu cows or Muslim pigs escape into immunity by taboo. It is the cuisine of the very poor, driven to tortuous invention. Most Chinese still eat only fourteen pounds of meat a year, and many survive at little above subsistence level. In the rowdy, proletarian Wild Game Restaurant, I interrogated the waitress for anything I could bear to eat. But she incanted remorselessly from the menu: Steamed Cat, Braised Guinea Pig (whole) with Mashed Shrimps, Grainy Dog Meat with Chilli and Scallion in Soya Sauce, Shredded Cat Thick Soup, Fried Grainy Mud-puppy ('It's a fish,' she said) with Olive Kernels, Braised Python with Mushrooms .... If I wanted the Steamed Mountain Turtle, she said, I'd have to wait an hour. And Bear's Paws, she regretted, were off. I had turned suddenly vegetarian. I played for time by ordering python broth, then glanced furtively round at the main courses on nearby tables, hoping for escape; but their occupants were bent over opaque stews where dappled fragments floated anonymously. Around us the windows were glazed with pretty pictures of the animals concerned : deer and cats wearing necklaces. The waitress tried to be helpful. 'What about Dog Meat Ready to be Cooked Earthen Pot over Charcoal Stove on Table?' I guessed in desperation: 'It's too expensive.' 'Then I recommend Braised Wildcat.' 'Well…' I glanced at a domestic tabby squatting on the veranda beside me. The waitress followed my gaze. 'It's not that.' She tried to explain it. It had nothing to do with real cats, she said. She wrote down the Chinese character for it, which I couldn't read. In the end, hoping that it was a fancy name for something innocuous, I heard myself say: 'One braised wildcat, please.'
But the soup was a meal in itself. It came in a python-sized bowl, and beneath its brown liquid lurked sediment of what appeared to be ' white chicken meat. It tasted fishy. The darker flecks might been skin. I excused myself by reflecting that pythons (although I had never known one) were less endearing than lambs, which I had eaten often. The tabby had squirmed under my table. It looked scrawny but dangerously edible. In fact I had the impression that almost everything bere was in peril. When somebody brought a warm flannel for my I was half prepared to munch it. What else was nutritional, I wondered? The mosquitoes? The curtains? It occurred to me that should I fall from the fourth-floor stair-well. The cat was still under my table when its braised compatriot arrived. I lifted the lid to reveal a mahogany-coloured flotsam of mushrooms and indistinguishable flesh. A pair of fragile ribs floated accusingly on the surface. I ate the mushrooms first, with relief, but even they were suffused by the dark, gamey tang of whatever-it-was. The meat was full of delicate, friable bones. I did not know if my faint nausea arose from the thing's richness or from my mind. Several times my chopsticks hit rounded, meat- encircled fragments, like miniature rolling-pins, which resembled legs. I smuggled them to the cat under the table, as a melancholy atonement. "You don't like your wildcat?' The waitress was peering into the bowl, disappointed. 'I'm rather full.' I smiled feebly, picking the python out of my teeth. But she seemed to understand my diffidence, and stooped down to sketch me an exonerating picture of the whatever-it-was. She drew what looked like the illustration of an Edward lear Limerick : a lugubrious, four-legged ellipse, with a face either cross or upset. But it was too late : I had already eaten it. And when later I showed an English-speaking Cantonese the word she had written, he translated it "elephant-cat" or "cat-fox", and shook his head, nonplussed..
Is that not great?
August 17, 2020
A fascinating and beautifully written account of a journey around China, as it recovers from Chairman Mao’s policies, the Cultural Revolution. It is a book of poetry, humanity, and clear-eyed observation.
November 29, 2021
Atmospheric, moody, and of its time. Also excellent. Thubron is trying to understand, and so are we: In this process, the book becomes a discovery, an excavation almost. I will read it again when I have a better grasp of Chinese history, and I will probably enjoy it even more then.
October 23, 2017
Interesting but dated view of China as seen through the eyes of a British traveller in the 1980's. Not only has the country changed enormously since then, but also the way the West looks at China. The condescension and borderline racist statements by the author would be strange and unacceptable in a contemporary book about China.
August 1, 2008
A travelogue around China, in mid 80s, I think (annoyingly, it doesn't specify). There are some wonderfully poetic passages, and plenty of more prosaic and disjointed encounters. He does at least speak Mandarin, so was able to talk to "real" people relatively easily and seemed good at picking out interesting ones. He covered much of the tourist trail, albeit independently, and even slept in Mao's old bed.
October 2, 2014
I've been reading this book on and off, now and then, over a long period. I finally decided to just finish it. It's not that I didn't like the book. It is excellent, really. Thubron is a very observant outsider, and he is very knowledgable about China and its recent and ancient history. He reports on observed details that I know I would have missed if I had been in his place. And his writing is superb. It's just that without a continuing story, it was easy to put this one down when something more plot driven came along and caught my interest. But, everytime I'd pick this one up again, I would be amazed at how good it is.
I kept looking for something placing Thubron's China trip in a particular year, but I could not find it. It is sometime in the middle part of the 1980's (the copyright is 1987, so probably shortly before then). Thubron travels all over China, starting in the Northeast, then he travels South down the coast to Hong Kong, and winds his way through the interior of the country to the far Northwest, where the Great Wall ends. (There is a map showing his route at the front of the book, which I went back to frequently.) He travels by train mostly, sometimes a bus. He meets locals and other travelers along the way (he speaks Chinese and some locals speak English). He is primarily interested in the people, the religious sites, the natural beauty, and the effects of the Cultural Revolution and other major historical and political events.
I read another of his books a few years ago, To A Mountain in Tibet, which I enjoyed and led me to pick this book up at a library sale. I have another of his, which I also got at a library sale, but I think I'll try to read it straight through. I expect that I will get more out of it that way.
I kept looking for something placing Thubron's China trip in a particular year, but I could not find it. It is sometime in the middle part of the 1980's (the copyright is 1987, so probably shortly before then). Thubron travels all over China, starting in the Northeast, then he travels South down the coast to Hong Kong, and winds his way through the interior of the country to the far Northwest, where the Great Wall ends. (There is a map showing his route at the front of the book, which I went back to frequently.) He travels by train mostly, sometimes a bus. He meets locals and other travelers along the way (he speaks Chinese and some locals speak English). He is primarily interested in the people, the religious sites, the natural beauty, and the effects of the Cultural Revolution and other major historical and political events.
I read another of his books a few years ago, To A Mountain in Tibet, which I enjoyed and led me to pick this book up at a library sale. I have another of his, which I also got at a library sale, but I think I'll try to read it straight through. I expect that I will get more out of it that way.
June 19, 2020
This is my favorite book about China, and I've read quite a few.
Thubron is an endlessly sympathetic narrator as he travels through 'classical' China, befriending people along the way and extracting their stories. His masterly writing style is evident even in his chapter headings: Where a lesser writer might have written "To the Southwest" or "Guangxi and Yunnan," Thubron writes "In the Land of Peacocks," which is infinitely more vivid.
I read this book years ago, and yet many of the stories he tells are still lodged in my brain. A man collapsing with exhaustion in a flowerbed after having a gash treated by a local quack; a mother and daughter competing for the author's admiration with an impromptu fashion show; his visit to Mao's childhood home. One of the best stories appears very late in the book, about an indomitable, statuesque Chinese girl and her American husband. Just as he's concluded that "her husband didn't stand much of a chance," he extends the story a bit and hits us with a surprise ending.
This is a book about people, in all our sadness, joy and glory. That it happens to be set in China in the mid 1980's is almost beside the point.
Thubron is an endlessly sympathetic narrator as he travels through 'classical' China, befriending people along the way and extracting their stories. His masterly writing style is evident even in his chapter headings: Where a lesser writer might have written "To the Southwest" or "Guangxi and Yunnan," Thubron writes "In the Land of Peacocks," which is infinitely more vivid.
I read this book years ago, and yet many of the stories he tells are still lodged in my brain. A man collapsing with exhaustion in a flowerbed after having a gash treated by a local quack; a mother and daughter competing for the author's admiration with an impromptu fashion show; his visit to Mao's childhood home. One of the best stories appears very late in the book, about an indomitable, statuesque Chinese girl and her American husband. Just as he's concluded that "her husband didn't stand much of a chance," he extends the story a bit and hits us with a surprise ending.
This is a book about people, in all our sadness, joy and glory. That it happens to be set in China in the mid 1980's is almost beside the point.
August 28, 2016
When I first opened this book, I was afraid a 30-year-old tome would perhaps not be worth the effort and time. What could Colin Thubron possibly write about China and the Chinese that was still relevant today? But I was soon reassured and highly impressed - here's a man who really earns the accolade "travel writer": erudite, fearless and sensitive, Thubron patiently and poetically describes the numerous landscapes and cities he sees during his months of travel, the countless people he Encounters, and most interestingly his own nuanced reactions and feelings towards them. Being conversant in Mandarin, circling China in fourth class railway carriages or by bus and staying in run-down hostels and monasteries or sleeping rough, Thubron is slowly easing into the Chinese mind set. To the extent of beginning to accept even the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution as a given - a fascinating and somewhat chilling experience as he duly notes.
August 22, 2017
Pubblicato in lingua originale nel 1987 e in lingua italiana nel 2001 (con colpevole ritardo) è oggi un libro datato, poiché in trent'anni in Cina di cose ne sono successe, e tante.
Ho l'impressione che l'autore tenda a guardare le cose dall'alto della sua "civiltà" anglosassone, non sia riuscito a calarsi in una realtà storico-sociale così diversa e, quindi, sia un reporter discutibile. Due stelle e 1/2.
Ho l'impressione che l'autore tenda a guardare le cose dall'alto della sua "civiltà" anglosassone, non sia riuscito a calarsi in una realtà storico-sociale così diversa e, quindi, sia un reporter discutibile. Due stelle e 1/2.
August 27, 2024
The topic of this book is intriguing, a recount of a journey written by a Western man walking through China not long after the Gang Of Four had lost power. What stands out is Thubron doesn't just stick to major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, but travels deep into the heart of the country visiting places like Xining and Chengdu.
The book is at it's peak when Thubron is describing conversations he had with the locals and what he perceives the attitude of the people to be toward Maoist China and the future. I found the book to drag heavily when Thubron is reflecting to himself or describing his visitations to new sites. These passages are very magniloquent and I wish they were more concise. An interesting read but also tiresome if endless streams of adjectives, metaphors and similes annoy you.
The book is at it's peak when Thubron is describing conversations he had with the locals and what he perceives the attitude of the people to be toward Maoist China and the future. I found the book to drag heavily when Thubron is reflecting to himself or describing his visitations to new sites. These passages are very magniloquent and I wish they were more concise. An interesting read but also tiresome if endless streams of adjectives, metaphors and similes annoy you.
November 12, 2011
I was completely and utterly taken in by this book. From he first little annecdote that had me laughing aloud on the trainway to school to the end that turned me into a one-time-philosopher. Colin Thubron goes to China after the death of Chairman Mao, after the Cultural Revolution and after Deng Xiopeng has introduced new reform through out the country. Thubron tells us that he, for the purpose of this trip, has learned Mandarin Chinese and throughout the book it becomes very apperant why he did so. He wants to talk to people, wants to understand them and wants to understand the country's history, especially the Cultural Revolution. This is something he has heard a lot about at home in England, and he has his own opppinion of this, which is certainly not good, but he is constantly met my indifferent Chinese people. Well, perhaps not completely indifferent, but they have certainly accepted that this is the wayy life is for them. Though there is one Chinese woman who makes a big impression on Thubron. She tells him, that everybody in town thinks her mad, but that's only because she isn't like them. She doesn't conform, she doesn't follow the stream. Thubron himself is only sporadically visible in the book. Most of the book is made of small annecdotes about things he's seen, and retellings of conversations he's had. It's not often that he himself, his feelings, thoughts or opinions become visible to the reader. Instead he has a very unique and likable approach, I felt, anyway. In his conversations with the Chinese he often asks about the Cultural Revolution, and though his questions are careful and slightly guarded, his contant need for answers about this subject shows just how much he wishes to know about it. He doesn't volunteer any informations about himself. We know only that he is English because he is asked where he comes from. We know only that he's 46 because he's asked about his age. We know only that he's single because he 'invents' a wife at one point. Another interesting thing about Thubron is the way he travels. Alone. Many Chinese people he meets wonder about this, seeing him as almost strange. Some even offer to go with him, but he turns them down. We also never learn why he has embarked on this journey, but a good guess would be curiosity. This is just after the opening of China, so this country is virtually only a fantasy to a lot of people. At one point Thubron has a chance to sleep in Chairman Mao's bed, one of them anyway, and when he is in this enigmatic mans room he refers to him as goldlike, calling him He, and pondering over His life. To Thubron Mao is an exhaulted being. Towards the end we start to see more of Thubron. He starts one chapter with melancholy drabblings, he is tired of traveling, his tired of China, but most of all his tired of the Chinese and the 'sameness'. Before this points he has willingsly spoken to those who approach him. After this he becomes rude and even ignore certain people until they go away. A little after this, towards the end of his journey, he oversees a public trial, and it is here that we learn of his psycological journey, of his his travels have changed him. Because though he is still outraged about this public display of power and humiliation, he has finally come to accept that that is the Chinese way. In punishment and even in death the individual serves the masses. It is also very easy to tell that Thubron has an interest in China. In between tellings of his own journey he has little paragraphs of history about the places he visits og the things he sees.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 29, 2011
One thing I've noticed in the four Colin Thubron books I've read so far, all involving travel somewhere in Asia, is that he seems to have a knack for discovering the most unpleasant people in whatever country -- China, in this case -- he's touring.
He is in Nanjing, I think, on Page 101, when he makes an ill-fated call on the family of an acquaintance from Beijing. Here's a glimpse of what happens:
I had always conceived of the Chinese family as a stereotype of unity and closeness. But soon I realised that the war between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was being waged in iron silences. Compared to the old couple -- conservative parents -- Hua was the daughter of a once-discredited bourgeoisie: voluble, raw overbearing.
The Suzhou girl was unorthodox too. She could scarcely bear the sight of her own three-year-old son -- an electric urchin with a sprout of chimney-brush hair.
... The cliches of family unity were dropping dead about me -- a mother who hated her son, a niece who despised her aunt, a domineering daughter-in-law.
It gets worse. After a dreadful meal, he agrees to go to the home of Hua, the daughter-in-law. He spends the night there in the company of three females: Hua; her 88-year-old-mother; and a 13-year-old named Yulong who isn't directly related to either of the others. All three appear to be hitting on him, in one way or another. The mother is the most likable of the three, but that's not saying much:
"I don't like living here," the old woman said. "Yulong is always weeping and complaining. I hate her." The people she hated were many. Her eldest daughter had divorced, and this had rankled for years. It was proof that the world was rotting. "Such things weren't done by my generation. That man still comes to visit me at the New Year Festival. I don't know why." She stared bitterly at the window. "I hate him."
Another recurrent theme in Thubron books is that sooner or later someone asks him why he isn't married. This is refreshing for me, because in the polite culture in which I live no one asks that question, but they are thinking it. Hence, it's good to know that even a great writer like Thubron has a tough time with the question. This is from Page 242:
She began feeling sorry for me. She was boiling noodles on a little stove. "Why aren't you married?
I had not the English, let alone the Mandarin,to answer this.
The worst thing I can say about "Behind the Wall" is that it was written in 1987. Given the enormous rate of change in China, the book is unavoidably dated if you're reading it now. At least I hope it is; China doesn't come across as an inviting place.
On the other hand, the Cultural Revolution was still a somewhat fresh memory when Thubron was traveling for this book. I never realized before reading this how horrible the Cultural Revolution really was. It was unimaginably horrible.
Thubron's travel books are unimaginably good. Reading them is a delight from cover to cover.
He is in Nanjing, I think, on Page 101, when he makes an ill-fated call on the family of an acquaintance from Beijing. Here's a glimpse of what happens:
I had always conceived of the Chinese family as a stereotype of unity and closeness. But soon I realised that the war between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was being waged in iron silences. Compared to the old couple -- conservative parents -- Hua was the daughter of a once-discredited bourgeoisie: voluble, raw overbearing.
The Suzhou girl was unorthodox too. She could scarcely bear the sight of her own three-year-old son -- an electric urchin with a sprout of chimney-brush hair.
... The cliches of family unity were dropping dead about me -- a mother who hated her son, a niece who despised her aunt, a domineering daughter-in-law.
It gets worse. After a dreadful meal, he agrees to go to the home of Hua, the daughter-in-law. He spends the night there in the company of three females: Hua; her 88-year-old-mother; and a 13-year-old named Yulong who isn't directly related to either of the others. All three appear to be hitting on him, in one way or another. The mother is the most likable of the three, but that's not saying much:
"I don't like living here," the old woman said. "Yulong is always weeping and complaining. I hate her." The people she hated were many. Her eldest daughter had divorced, and this had rankled for years. It was proof that the world was rotting. "Such things weren't done by my generation. That man still comes to visit me at the New Year Festival. I don't know why." She stared bitterly at the window. "I hate him."
Another recurrent theme in Thubron books is that sooner or later someone asks him why he isn't married. This is refreshing for me, because in the polite culture in which I live no one asks that question, but they are thinking it. Hence, it's good to know that even a great writer like Thubron has a tough time with the question. This is from Page 242:
She began feeling sorry for me. She was boiling noodles on a little stove. "Why aren't you married?
I had not the English, let alone the Mandarin,to answer this.
The worst thing I can say about "Behind the Wall" is that it was written in 1987. Given the enormous rate of change in China, the book is unavoidably dated if you're reading it now. At least I hope it is; China doesn't come across as an inviting place.
On the other hand, the Cultural Revolution was still a somewhat fresh memory when Thubron was traveling for this book. I never realized before reading this how horrible the Cultural Revolution really was. It was unimaginably horrible.
Thubron's travel books are unimaginably good. Reading them is a delight from cover to cover.
December 24, 2016
I've visited China on numerous occasions since the late 90s. I've watched the downtown areas of its cities morph into malls full of Chanel and Cartier, and its inter-city travel become a network of comfortable high-speed rain links. Colin Thubron travelled the length and breadth of China in the mid-80s. He writes about another planet: a desperately poor country still putting itself back together after the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, train carriages flecked in spittle and cigarette ash, but slowly, painfully slowly, beginning to open up to the world.
As others have observed here, Thubron lets his subjects do most of the talking. He asks ordinary people simple questions about their lives and - with a bit of poetic flourish - tells their stories. He's erudite, but eager to engage with people, and not beyond self-deprecation as the towering, lumbering foreigner who is - inexplicably to the locals - traveling alone.
One of the best books I've read this year. It left a deep impression on me of what China was like in the mid-80s, and how much it's changed - except for the smog.
As others have observed here, Thubron lets his subjects do most of the talking. He asks ordinary people simple questions about their lives and - with a bit of poetic flourish - tells their stories. He's erudite, but eager to engage with people, and not beyond self-deprecation as the towering, lumbering foreigner who is - inexplicably to the locals - traveling alone.
One of the best books I've read this year. It left a deep impression on me of what China was like in the mid-80s, and how much it's changed - except for the smog.
October 2, 2007
Not cheerful book. But then, China in the '80s was not a cheerful book. If you must, Mr Thubron's travelogue is as good as any - sensitive, intelligent and well-written.
April 20, 2019
"I sat in the atrium of the Great Wall Hotel. My shoes were dirty and I felt like a spy. All around, the foyer glittered in carpeted silence, ramifying down spotlit galleries before opening on a science-fiction clearing of forty-foot chrome pillars and plate-glass walls. I was spying on my own personality; I watched it separating into layers, like something improperly cooked. I was at once childishly ogling and puritanically disgusted. I wanted one of these feelings to engulf the other, but this did not happen...The feeling never left me that Beijing was the head of a living body - the head of a confirmed warrior, racked by struggle and policy. In the frozen polemic of its squares and avenues I suddenly longed to get away. "
That's one of the more charitable quotes. By his own account, Colin Thubron had had since boyhood a fascination with a fictional China. Already flying over it and no longer a boy he had an ominous foreboding, amply substantiated on arriving in Beijing. With all the worldly savoir-faire and all the discreet charm possible, he can't prevent making it sound about the most repellent place on earth. An ancient inbred collective mentality and sly subservience had simply been replaced by the 'Cultural Revolution' with an almost exact replica, now without the saving grace of artistry and already veering towards an even more vulgar version of Las Vegas - which is of course always what happens with 'revolutions', a monster takes over from a tyrant.
In Nanking, once the capital of China: "Cockcrow Temple was built on an old execution ground to appease the ghosts which howled there at night ... Now the labyrinth had been transformed into an amusement arcade. I found its iron doors painted to resemble wood, its tunnels wall-papered and decorated in moon-gates. Outside a hoarding was advertising the 'Hindu Serpent Show'. Inside, where strip-lights shed their bleakness down miles of mildewed corridor, makeshift stalls were selling statuettes of the Buddha and Venus de Milo. Further on spread a half-abandoned maze of slot machines, miniature swings and see-saws where pampered single children dipped and swung before their nervous parents. Mao's vision had become a pin-ball alley."
And then, between Beijing and Shanghai: "I threw back the bedroom curtain from an artist's distilment of China. Before me the island-scattered lake receded into paling from mist. It was absolutely still. There was no horizon. I might have been standing on the edge of one of those Song ink-sketches which relinquish three-quarters of their landscape to the silken texture of the scroll..... Along the canals of Wuki the houses droop and peel like the lanes of some proletarian Venice. Their patchwork walls and verandas are wrung dry of colour. Around my passenger barge they drifted in watery shades of grey, their tiled roofs crumpled and dimmed like the scales of old fish. Jasmin and roses cluttered their eaves..." In Suzhu "morning revealed an old and exquisite city. Its bones were avenues of plane trees, its arteries stone-arched canals over-arched by bridges which astonished even Marco Polo, a Venetian. White-washed houses sealed the main streets in a skin of carved lintels and lattices, and along the canals the lanes became footpaths of mellow paving. And flowers bloomed everywhere, they jostled the water-lanes and blazed in the courtyards. It was a city of sweet slumbering intimacy, it had retired ...I realized how much I had missed this man-made beauty of an older China. It was part of the dream-luggage I had unconsciously carried into the country with me, and here suddenly it had materialised. I had read that the city escaped the Cultural Revolution unscathed but as I ambled along the inner canals I fell into conversation with a man whose family had been persecuted. 'The Red Guards came here all right,' he said. 'Some even came from here. They killed my grandfather and older brother. Things were smashed all over the city - temples, statues, private art collections...'
He was young but he spoke as if it had just happened.
'How do people feel now?'
'About Mao? I can't speak for everybody.' His lips compressed bitterly. 'But I hate him. Many people hate him.' It was the first time anybody had said this to me."
"Shanghai was a brutal city.... This, I thought, is what is meant by 'the masses'- something not plural at all, but monolithic. It goes in a white shirt and black trousers. It looks alike. It owns one character and one will".
The bland enigma of China: not the obedience of Islam, just the mindless conformity of totalitarian uniformity where 'equality' contrasts the grinding monotony of the poverty of the masses with the guarded menace of the elect as rigidly as the pointless hierarchies of the Imperial Court. Does China - did it ever - have any other religion than fear of demons spiritual or material? The lingering traces of India and even Egypt exist, but so degraded as to more resemble devil-worship, propitiation never exultation and if the devils have been replaced with Mammon it makes no difference.
No-one could be more elegantly diplomatic than Colin Thubron. He seems to be able to get along with anybody (so long as it's fairly briefly), put up with any makeshift discomfort, never criticizes or comments other than objectively. This is the only book of his I've read into which a personal aversion enters. Faced with the usual Oriental questioning, are you alone, why, aren't you married, how many children do you have - elsewhere nothing else than interested curiosity but here hinting at reproof - he replies almost sharply: "I'm a solitary and sad individual, not everyone wishes to have children". To the Chinese that is almost blasphemous. Idealistic certainly in his own way, it's perfectly clear, there's no need to say it, Mr Thubron does not care for Communism or Socialism or any other form of Collectivism. It's those who do who I suspect constitute his detractors, expressed as a sort of sneer at his 'condescension' (completely untrue), 'over-wordiness', superior erudition, harping on dead history and all the rest of it. But this is also his only book where he seems unable to make sense of where he is, faced every day with paradoxes which he cannot answer, one of those paradoxes being what drew so many millions of human souls to smash and destroy, murder other of their fellows, in pursuit of what could never have been more than a deranged illusion. For some reason, presumably morbid curiosity, he went to the hideous town where Mao Zedong had been born and lived when he could spare time from his murderous ravages. The 'Great Man's' house had been turned into a hostel but as no-one else was there Thubron actually spent a night in his bed. "I was touched by a schizophrenic pang of unworthiness and revulsion ... Photographs of Mao's parents hung beside the narrow bed which had thrust them together at night: the hard-faced man and the oppressed-looking woman. They reminded me uncannily of portraits somewhere else, but for the moment I could not recall where or whose. Then I remembered: photographs of Stalin's parents, hanging in his cottage museum at Gori. Mao learnt to hate his father ..." And that, I think, says it all, even if Thubron doesn't explicitly. These merciless Utopian idealists are impelled by a permanent vindictive hatred and childish spitefulness transposed onto the whole world.
Grinding miserable poverty and hopelessly dejected resignation, only worsened by the 'cultural revolution's' absurd plans for industrial development. " 'How do we stop this rotting? Somehow we must we must adapt to Western technology but refuse Western culture', an elderly scholarly man who had been briefly in America and returned in disgust told him.
'How is that possible?' You could not paddle in these waters, I thought. You either swim or drown.
He guessed my dissent. 'Perhaps it's like medicine' he said. If people are sufficiently exposed to Western evils they'll be immunized.'
'Or totally diseased'. But I laughed my words into harmlessness because I did not want to see the expression on his bowed face."
All this just repeats from diverse directions over and over again, over thousands of kilometres. One can only be astonished at the author's persistence and stamina when he confesses himself that at times he didn't think he could take any more, even in the south when the landscapes approached the surreal vaporous rockiness of Tang scroll paintings - the natural beauty disregarded by inhabitants and tourists alike. What once had been precious had been knocked down or defaced or relegated to irrelevance: "Outside a few stalls were selling handkerchiefs printed with blondes and rabbits ...Things which were previously accepted now preyed on me: the aesthetic drabness and sameness, and that pervasive smell - cooking oil, urine, stale fish, whatever it was. The people's slowness of thought and movement had irritated me at first. But now I was trudging as lethargically as everyone else: a victim of protein deficiency". This grueling journey, with scarcely a word of delight or pleasure from someone who elsewhere can find delight in anything, ends fittingly enough on the Southern rim of the Gobi Desert and north of Tibet, at one time a fortress where the Wall just peters out, the climate as fearful as the topography, the last outpost of China beyond which there was nothing other than for the silk merchants setting out on their long perilous trek towards the West.
* * * *
That was in the early 1980's, which I suppose is now rather a long time ago, or according to other readers who prefer to be dismissive on the grounds that "it's not like that anymore". Superficially no, probably it would be unrecognizable, but I think, after this - an invaluable first-hand record in itself whether changed or not - perhaps they're mistaken, few of these modern visitors have any knowledge of or interest in the historical past, which is Thubron's speciality, or ventured beyond the showy fleshpots or an organized tour of the more photogenic bits of the Great Wall have they? How often did he hear from the eternally-resigned Chinese themselves, nothing changes, except a shady affluence for some, an unholy alliance between two opposing theories of which the offspring can only be a mongrel in the form of a more slavish imitation of and towards America, a country hardly less regimented and conformist underneath the brash optimism. And not forgetting that in the meantime China has breached the Gate of Heaven and taken over and destroyed Tibet, littering that once-pristine country with the rubbish of the equivalent of a Siberian gulag. A Maoist doctrine insisted that 'mental illness' did not exist, nothing could not be cured by 're-education'. Many lunatic asylums existed in the 1980's, but they were useless except for temporary containment, that subject was too shameful to expose and always had been. "The vital relationship between child and parent was inaccessible to them, too closely guarded by ancient taboos. The Confucian concept of character had taught that men were healed by constraints imposed from the outside, not by expulsion of tensions from within." Truly Inscrutable and not reassuring, presaging a future at least as terrible as the past. Top marks for literary style, profound observation, patience and fair-mindedness, not for content, which is about the most depressing I've ever read.
That's one of the more charitable quotes. By his own account, Colin Thubron had had since boyhood a fascination with a fictional China. Already flying over it and no longer a boy he had an ominous foreboding, amply substantiated on arriving in Beijing. With all the worldly savoir-faire and all the discreet charm possible, he can't prevent making it sound about the most repellent place on earth. An ancient inbred collective mentality and sly subservience had simply been replaced by the 'Cultural Revolution' with an almost exact replica, now without the saving grace of artistry and already veering towards an even more vulgar version of Las Vegas - which is of course always what happens with 'revolutions', a monster takes over from a tyrant.
In Nanking, once the capital of China: "Cockcrow Temple was built on an old execution ground to appease the ghosts which howled there at night ... Now the labyrinth had been transformed into an amusement arcade. I found its iron doors painted to resemble wood, its tunnels wall-papered and decorated in moon-gates. Outside a hoarding was advertising the 'Hindu Serpent Show'. Inside, where strip-lights shed their bleakness down miles of mildewed corridor, makeshift stalls were selling statuettes of the Buddha and Venus de Milo. Further on spread a half-abandoned maze of slot machines, miniature swings and see-saws where pampered single children dipped and swung before their nervous parents. Mao's vision had become a pin-ball alley."
And then, between Beijing and Shanghai: "I threw back the bedroom curtain from an artist's distilment of China. Before me the island-scattered lake receded into paling from mist. It was absolutely still. There was no horizon. I might have been standing on the edge of one of those Song ink-sketches which relinquish three-quarters of their landscape to the silken texture of the scroll..... Along the canals of Wuki the houses droop and peel like the lanes of some proletarian Venice. Their patchwork walls and verandas are wrung dry of colour. Around my passenger barge they drifted in watery shades of grey, their tiled roofs crumpled and dimmed like the scales of old fish. Jasmin and roses cluttered their eaves..." In Suzhu "morning revealed an old and exquisite city. Its bones were avenues of plane trees, its arteries stone-arched canals over-arched by bridges which astonished even Marco Polo, a Venetian. White-washed houses sealed the main streets in a skin of carved lintels and lattices, and along the canals the lanes became footpaths of mellow paving. And flowers bloomed everywhere, they jostled the water-lanes and blazed in the courtyards. It was a city of sweet slumbering intimacy, it had retired ...I realized how much I had missed this man-made beauty of an older China. It was part of the dream-luggage I had unconsciously carried into the country with me, and here suddenly it had materialised. I had read that the city escaped the Cultural Revolution unscathed but as I ambled along the inner canals I fell into conversation with a man whose family had been persecuted. 'The Red Guards came here all right,' he said. 'Some even came from here. They killed my grandfather and older brother. Things were smashed all over the city - temples, statues, private art collections...'
He was young but he spoke as if it had just happened.
'How do people feel now?'
'About Mao? I can't speak for everybody.' His lips compressed bitterly. 'But I hate him. Many people hate him.' It was the first time anybody had said this to me."
"Shanghai was a brutal city.... This, I thought, is what is meant by 'the masses'- something not plural at all, but monolithic. It goes in a white shirt and black trousers. It looks alike. It owns one character and one will".
The bland enigma of China: not the obedience of Islam, just the mindless conformity of totalitarian uniformity where 'equality' contrasts the grinding monotony of the poverty of the masses with the guarded menace of the elect as rigidly as the pointless hierarchies of the Imperial Court. Does China - did it ever - have any other religion than fear of demons spiritual or material? The lingering traces of India and even Egypt exist, but so degraded as to more resemble devil-worship, propitiation never exultation and if the devils have been replaced with Mammon it makes no difference.
No-one could be more elegantly diplomatic than Colin Thubron. He seems to be able to get along with anybody (so long as it's fairly briefly), put up with any makeshift discomfort, never criticizes or comments other than objectively. This is the only book of his I've read into which a personal aversion enters. Faced with the usual Oriental questioning, are you alone, why, aren't you married, how many children do you have - elsewhere nothing else than interested curiosity but here hinting at reproof - he replies almost sharply: "I'm a solitary and sad individual, not everyone wishes to have children". To the Chinese that is almost blasphemous. Idealistic certainly in his own way, it's perfectly clear, there's no need to say it, Mr Thubron does not care for Communism or Socialism or any other form of Collectivism. It's those who do who I suspect constitute his detractors, expressed as a sort of sneer at his 'condescension' (completely untrue), 'over-wordiness', superior erudition, harping on dead history and all the rest of it. But this is also his only book where he seems unable to make sense of where he is, faced every day with paradoxes which he cannot answer, one of those paradoxes being what drew so many millions of human souls to smash and destroy, murder other of their fellows, in pursuit of what could never have been more than a deranged illusion. For some reason, presumably morbid curiosity, he went to the hideous town where Mao Zedong had been born and lived when he could spare time from his murderous ravages. The 'Great Man's' house had been turned into a hostel but as no-one else was there Thubron actually spent a night in his bed. "I was touched by a schizophrenic pang of unworthiness and revulsion ... Photographs of Mao's parents hung beside the narrow bed which had thrust them together at night: the hard-faced man and the oppressed-looking woman. They reminded me uncannily of portraits somewhere else, but for the moment I could not recall where or whose. Then I remembered: photographs of Stalin's parents, hanging in his cottage museum at Gori. Mao learnt to hate his father ..." And that, I think, says it all, even if Thubron doesn't explicitly. These merciless Utopian idealists are impelled by a permanent vindictive hatred and childish spitefulness transposed onto the whole world.
Grinding miserable poverty and hopelessly dejected resignation, only worsened by the 'cultural revolution's' absurd plans for industrial development. " 'How do we stop this rotting? Somehow we must we must adapt to Western technology but refuse Western culture', an elderly scholarly man who had been briefly in America and returned in disgust told him.
'How is that possible?' You could not paddle in these waters, I thought. You either swim or drown.
He guessed my dissent. 'Perhaps it's like medicine' he said. If people are sufficiently exposed to Western evils they'll be immunized.'
'Or totally diseased'. But I laughed my words into harmlessness because I did not want to see the expression on his bowed face."
All this just repeats from diverse directions over and over again, over thousands of kilometres. One can only be astonished at the author's persistence and stamina when he confesses himself that at times he didn't think he could take any more, even in the south when the landscapes approached the surreal vaporous rockiness of Tang scroll paintings - the natural beauty disregarded by inhabitants and tourists alike. What once had been precious had been knocked down or defaced or relegated to irrelevance: "Outside a few stalls were selling handkerchiefs printed with blondes and rabbits ...Things which were previously accepted now preyed on me: the aesthetic drabness and sameness, and that pervasive smell - cooking oil, urine, stale fish, whatever it was. The people's slowness of thought and movement had irritated me at first. But now I was trudging as lethargically as everyone else: a victim of protein deficiency". This grueling journey, with scarcely a word of delight or pleasure from someone who elsewhere can find delight in anything, ends fittingly enough on the Southern rim of the Gobi Desert and north of Tibet, at one time a fortress where the Wall just peters out, the climate as fearful as the topography, the last outpost of China beyond which there was nothing other than for the silk merchants setting out on their long perilous trek towards the West.
* * * *
That was in the early 1980's, which I suppose is now rather a long time ago, or according to other readers who prefer to be dismissive on the grounds that "it's not like that anymore". Superficially no, probably it would be unrecognizable, but I think, after this - an invaluable first-hand record in itself whether changed or not - perhaps they're mistaken, few of these modern visitors have any knowledge of or interest in the historical past, which is Thubron's speciality, or ventured beyond the showy fleshpots or an organized tour of the more photogenic bits of the Great Wall have they? How often did he hear from the eternally-resigned Chinese themselves, nothing changes, except a shady affluence for some, an unholy alliance between two opposing theories of which the offspring can only be a mongrel in the form of a more slavish imitation of and towards America, a country hardly less regimented and conformist underneath the brash optimism. And not forgetting that in the meantime China has breached the Gate of Heaven and taken over and destroyed Tibet, littering that once-pristine country with the rubbish of the equivalent of a Siberian gulag. A Maoist doctrine insisted that 'mental illness' did not exist, nothing could not be cured by 're-education'. Many lunatic asylums existed in the 1980's, but they were useless except for temporary containment, that subject was too shameful to expose and always had been. "The vital relationship between child and parent was inaccessible to them, too closely guarded by ancient taboos. The Confucian concept of character had taught that men were healed by constraints imposed from the outside, not by expulsion of tensions from within." Truly Inscrutable and not reassuring, presaging a future at least as terrible as the past. Top marks for literary style, profound observation, patience and fair-mindedness, not for content, which is about the most depressing I've ever read.
March 8, 2020
Thubron przenosi nas do Chin AD 1987. Czyni to większość jego obserwacji nieaktualnymi, ale taka podróż nie tylko w przestrzeni, ale też w czasie, mogłaby być przecież jeszcze ciekawsza, szczególnie dla zainteresowanych najnowszą historią Chin. Niestety, autor nie miał najwyraźniej możliwości bądź chęci przedstawić przekrojowego portretu kraju w tym przełomowym okresie, podprowadzającym pod wydarzenia na placu Tiananmen. Dostajemy za to szczegółowy opis wewnętrznych przeżyć i subiektywnych wrażeń Thubrona, przydługie rozważania na tematy nieistotne i wysuwanie daleko idących wniosków ze znikomej dawki faktów. Może dla niektórych czytelników będzie to miało swój urok, ale lwią część książki możnaby było napisać o jakimkolwiek innym kraju. Jako reportaż egzaminu nie zdaje.
October 9, 2020
A timeless book that perfectly captures a moment in time. The China described is fascinated and I am in awe of such an intrepid traveler. An awesome read.
February 21, 2022
My impression is that the author did not like either China or the Chinese but had already spent his advance on the trip so he wrote this anyway.
The views are very outdated, perhaps this didn't rate as racist back when it was written but it's not pleasant reading now. It's also really boring, I read his book about Siberia many years ago and really enjoyed it but this just drags on and on. You would think it would be almost impossible to write a boring travel book about China with its vast diversity of regions but this guy nails it.
The views are very outdated, perhaps this didn't rate as racist back when it was written but it's not pleasant reading now. It's also really boring, I read his book about Siberia many years ago and really enjoyed it but this just drags on and on. You would think it would be almost impossible to write a boring travel book about China with its vast diversity of regions but this guy nails it.
January 22, 2021
Colin Thubron's travelogue paints a fascinating picture of China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Obviously not averse to literary flourishes, Thubron spends a good deal of time waxing poetic about the places he visits as he winds his way across the country. He provides a bit of historic background throughout his writings, but this is not an academic analysis. Interactions with the locals seem to provide a deeper picture of the state of the country at the time, though I imagine most of them are paraphrased. Some of Thubron's descriptions may rankle a more contemporary mindset, but I think this book is not only an interesting snapshot of China in the 1980's, but also of a kind of Western view of China at the time, as well. He has many moments of introspection about his own biases, but quickly moves on as there is much to see and experience. Overall, I found Thubron to be a talented writer (as long as you don't mind his more flowery prose) and the book itself to be an interesting view of China through Western eyes, both products of their time.
December 1, 2016
To every body who like good reading and an amazing twist in travelling story telling. That's one of my loved. I shall read it on more time next year.
November 13, 2021
China is on the rise. This fascinating book takes us back to the early 1980s, the earliest time at which Westerners were allowed to travel around China under Communism. China was just recovering from the Cultural Revolution and was beginning to permit small scale trading and criticism of Mao and the Party. We now know that path has continued economically but political openness was suffocated. Material prosperity, rather than religion, being the opium of the masses.
The China presented here is much poorer. Travelling alone and light Thubron taught himself Mandarin in advance and interacts with numerous individuals who are trapped in humdrum, Party directed lives living in cramped conditions, with little prospects other than to marry. Even then families are routinely separated for job purposes and children may be shipped to grandparents.
Starting in Peking Thubron loops down in a J-shape via Shanghai, Canton, Kunming and Chengchow to the end of the Great Wall at Jiayuguan. At times reading like a series of blog posts he is particularly interested in Buddhist and Confucian sites, many ravaged by Red Guards. Travelling mostly by train often in 'hard' fourth class, sometimes in greater luxury, he is regularly the focus of local attention as the first foreigner that many have encountered. Most tourists travelled only in groups, took first class trains and ate in segregated restaurants in hotels. To his credit Thubron (amusingly rechristened Mr Tampon in Canton) tries to get behind this facade to more ordinary lives and conditions. At many hotels he hears rats scampering around at night and comments on the grubbiness of ordinary life, be it ash and spit covered train corridors or smoggy cities.
There is a loneliness to solitary travel often exhibited here by his being the only person at famous sites who goes off the main visitor trail. Chinese tourists stick to it, often in couples, and their photographs of scenery always contain pictures of them in the foreground. This difference serves to enhance Thubron's foreign view of China which seems to have little or no aesthetic of countryside or history.
The south of China seems like almost another country to the north. There is a language barrier and also a hustle and bustle in Canton, a colour and entrepreneurial spirit that differs from elsewhere. This is also seen in the food whether mountain cat stew (where poverty makes anything edible) (and yes, I think he ate a highly endangered animal) or the wet market where he buys a barn owl. He later releases this at night on a train journey north.
The people he encounters are curiously self-selecting being those who are willing to talk to a foreigner individually, often younger misfits, sometimes older intellectuals whose lives have been shattered by the Cultural Revolution. There is a curious sense of directionlessness about the youth of China. As if suffering from a hangover from their time as Red Guards they view the Party as thoroughly corrupt and only as a means to get on in life; outside of this there is no sense of purpose as the command economy stultifies ambition and hope.
Thubron has limited encounters with Christians. Perhaps not surprising at this date. But he does visit a couple of churches which are beginning to function again.
Well written, amusing and insightful, this work is highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good travel writing or has an interest in the Far East.
The China presented here is much poorer. Travelling alone and light Thubron taught himself Mandarin in advance and interacts with numerous individuals who are trapped in humdrum, Party directed lives living in cramped conditions, with little prospects other than to marry. Even then families are routinely separated for job purposes and children may be shipped to grandparents.
Starting in Peking Thubron loops down in a J-shape via Shanghai, Canton, Kunming and Chengchow to the end of the Great Wall at Jiayuguan. At times reading like a series of blog posts he is particularly interested in Buddhist and Confucian sites, many ravaged by Red Guards. Travelling mostly by train often in 'hard' fourth class, sometimes in greater luxury, he is regularly the focus of local attention as the first foreigner that many have encountered. Most tourists travelled only in groups, took first class trains and ate in segregated restaurants in hotels. To his credit Thubron (amusingly rechristened Mr Tampon in Canton) tries to get behind this facade to more ordinary lives and conditions. At many hotels he hears rats scampering around at night and comments on the grubbiness of ordinary life, be it ash and spit covered train corridors or smoggy cities.
There is a loneliness to solitary travel often exhibited here by his being the only person at famous sites who goes off the main visitor trail. Chinese tourists stick to it, often in couples, and their photographs of scenery always contain pictures of them in the foreground. This difference serves to enhance Thubron's foreign view of China which seems to have little or no aesthetic of countryside or history.
The south of China seems like almost another country to the north. There is a language barrier and also a hustle and bustle in Canton, a colour and entrepreneurial spirit that differs from elsewhere. This is also seen in the food whether mountain cat stew (where poverty makes anything edible) (and yes, I think he ate a highly endangered animal) or the wet market where he buys a barn owl. He later releases this at night on a train journey north.
The people he encounters are curiously self-selecting being those who are willing to talk to a foreigner individually, often younger misfits, sometimes older intellectuals whose lives have been shattered by the Cultural Revolution. There is a curious sense of directionlessness about the youth of China. As if suffering from a hangover from their time as Red Guards they view the Party as thoroughly corrupt and only as a means to get on in life; outside of this there is no sense of purpose as the command economy stultifies ambition and hope.
Thubron has limited encounters with Christians. Perhaps not surprising at this date. But he does visit a couple of churches which are beginning to function again.
Well written, amusing and insightful, this work is highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good travel writing or has an interest in the Far East.
December 27, 2019
I'm sure only reading this one book this month had absolutely nothing to do with getting a new laptop and playing games I've never had the graphics card for. Nothing! No!
It's hard not to read Behind the Wall without just a twinge of jealousy. Thubron travels in one long multi-month journey over a landscape it's taken me many years to traverse. Meanwhile the travel notes I have to show for this half decade of crisscrossing China, while impressive in scope, lack the literary finesse and fine brush strokes with which Thubron is able to evoke the 1980s in a country fresh out of revolution, searching for new idols and grasping for a future to call their own. Guilin, Canton, Shanghai, Chongqing, all get to share in a glamour befitting their unique identities when our author makes a visit; the idyllic Elysium, the manic marketplace, the grimy metropolis, the smoky factory. We also get unique insight into places I would never dream of going or just don't exist anymore, former Communist shrines and far out holy Buddhist mountains covered in fog, exotic animal markets and chokingly polluted cities.
If there's one thing not to like about this book it's the lack of continuity, the disjointed feeling of every encounter and episode, but in a country as diverse and wild and crazy as China is, a nice, clean, structured story just wouldn't do the country justice. Messy times deserve messy stories, but maybe I only think this because my own travel notes are so clumsily put together!
P.S. Snake soup is definitely worth a try next time you're in Guangzhou, Mr. Thubron
It's hard not to read Behind the Wall without just a twinge of jealousy. Thubron travels in one long multi-month journey over a landscape it's taken me many years to traverse. Meanwhile the travel notes I have to show for this half decade of crisscrossing China, while impressive in scope, lack the literary finesse and fine brush strokes with which Thubron is able to evoke the 1980s in a country fresh out of revolution, searching for new idols and grasping for a future to call their own. Guilin, Canton, Shanghai, Chongqing, all get to share in a glamour befitting their unique identities when our author makes a visit; the idyllic Elysium, the manic marketplace, the grimy metropolis, the smoky factory. We also get unique insight into places I would never dream of going or just don't exist anymore, former Communist shrines and far out holy Buddhist mountains covered in fog, exotic animal markets and chokingly polluted cities.
If there's one thing not to like about this book it's the lack of continuity, the disjointed feeling of every encounter and episode, but in a country as diverse and wild and crazy as China is, a nice, clean, structured story just wouldn't do the country justice. Messy times deserve messy stories, but maybe I only think this because my own travel notes are so clumsily put together!
P.S. Snake soup is definitely worth a try next time you're in Guangzhou, Mr. Thubron
September 22, 2020
I picked this book up as a curiosity due to our sudden interest in China in 2020 and instantly fell in love with Thubron’s style of non-fiction prose. This book is masterfully written, the language flows like a river, making writers like myself truly jealous at his skill. Being a travel book this really took me to China in a totally different time post-cultural revolution but pre-modern success story. I felt like I accompanied Thubron every second of his journey, the people he met old friends and the places familiar locales of which I really will never forget. Yes, it’s easy to say that this book is no longer relevant because of when it was written, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, this book isn’t an up-to-date commentary on China in 2020 but a stark reminder of where China came from, through struggle, poverty and suffering. Thubron has created a travel journey which beautifully illustrates the Chinese culture and creates a conduit in which a western audience can understand a generation of people shaped by communism, Maoism and suffering.
May 15, 2022
A fantastic, darkly-memorable, and enduring insight into the post-cultural revolution zeitgeist of 1980s China. Alternating between captivating natural metaphors and bijoux engagements with locals, Behind the Wall is a must-read for those attempting to understand China. The most stunning aspect of Thubron's travels around China was undoubtedly their personable interactions. From the young burgeoning intellectual and cultural rebels to those haunted previous Red Guards, from Behind the Wall any and all Western readers will be left with a twisted awe for the nature of historical tragedy and evil: a different sprouting banality of evil. As a brief student of psychology, it struck me that the psychology of the Cultural Revolution is rarely, if ever, mentioned in Western universities whereas Nazi examples are abundant in social psychology lecture halls. If nothing else, Behind the Wall is essential for those aiming to understand the psychological maladies imbued within the brush strokes of recent history.
December 31, 2017
I like his style of writing.
He makes the place come alive with his discriptive narratives about the scenary, the background history and the people he meets and sees.
At times, you feel like you are "part of his journey ", whilst fully aware that his experiences are more than just those of an ordinary tourist because he can speak the local language adequately and thus is able to mire easily be a solo traveller and interact with various people on his travels.
His writing style and narrative make the "trip" /journey informing and interesting.
He ends up giving you a "desire" to experience what he has or at least to travel to some of the far flung places he has seen. If you can't, he has "shared" his experiences in such a way, that at times, you can imagine what it must have be like.
He makes the place come alive with his discriptive narratives about the scenary, the background history and the people he meets and sees.
At times, you feel like you are "part of his journey ", whilst fully aware that his experiences are more than just those of an ordinary tourist because he can speak the local language adequately and thus is able to mire easily be a solo traveller and interact with various people on his travels.
His writing style and narrative make the "trip" /journey informing and interesting.
He ends up giving you a "desire" to experience what he has or at least to travel to some of the far flung places he has seen. If you can't, he has "shared" his experiences in such a way, that at times, you can imagine what it must have be like.
August 15, 2020
My 50th book this year!
And a strange one. Again, does "of its time (the 80s) give too much of a pass to the racism and misogyny? Or is it just really descriptive?
One thing I'll never know is how he put up with sitting on those train floors. Phelgm and spittle covered, with smashed pears and spat out seed husks. Ugh. It's accurate.
I found China hard to travel in. I got a bit weird. But I never "thought I was turning yellow". I got stuck y of being watched and followed and photographed, but I didn't write public comments deriding my unrequested audience.
Anyway, despite all of that, it was a well described overland journey through a China that has already disappeared.
And a strange one. Again, does "of its time (the 80s) give too much of a pass to the racism and misogyny? Or is it just really descriptive?
One thing I'll never know is how he put up with sitting on those train floors. Phelgm and spittle covered, with smashed pears and spat out seed husks. Ugh. It's accurate.
I found China hard to travel in. I got a bit weird. But I never "thought I was turning yellow". I got stuck y of being watched and followed and photographed, but I didn't write public comments deriding my unrequested audience.
Anyway, despite all of that, it was a well described overland journey through a China that has already disappeared.
August 24, 2021
4.5 stars. A marvellously written book drawing heavily on local people's stories and memories. The book is an interesting delve into the national psyche during the interlude in Chinese history between the end of the Cultural Revolution and the as yet unforeseen Tiannanmen Square Massacre of 1989. The descriptions of place and people are vivid and stark, while the real-life tales of the revolutionary era display an anger and a disillusionment that isn't often heard from the East, for obvious reasons. The author's own knowledge of those historical events lends a nuanced viewpoint from the West as counterbalance. I look forward to picking up another Thubron travelogue in due course.
July 24, 2023
The 36 years that have passed since this was published have put a fascinating perspective on this book. My knowledge of China was flimsy at best and this certainly helped me understand much better. The author’s ability to suffer such discomfort to travel fully immersed in the country is astounding (from my perspective) but he still was unable, despite speaking Mandarin, to get many people to see beyond his strangeness to fully open up to him but boy did he try. Beautifully written with lyrical descriptions of the landscape.
The progress and change in China would astound many of the people he spoke do who did not believe the country would catch up with the West, ‘even in fifty years’.
The progress and change in China would astound many of the people he spoke do who did not believe the country would catch up with the West, ‘even in fifty years’.
February 28, 2022
This book, along with "Among the Russians," made Colin Thubron famous in the world of travel writing, but I think it might be one of his weakest, overall.
Thubron spent about four months moving across China country in the mid 1980s, when the effects of the Cultural Revolution were still quite evident. To some extent it seems to lack the scholarship and erudition of his earlier books and leans more into a depiction of the strangeness of the country. That makes it dated and occasionally uncomfortable. Consider, for example, his trip to the sauna in one of the opening chapters.
August 11, 2018
I gave up after three chapters. There is a lot if interesting information about China's history and society but the author's writing prevents me from continuing reading the book. Not only does he use incredibly pretentious and complicated language to describe simple things, he also projects feelings and thoughts on people he talks to. I wish I would be able to finish this book since I love reading about China.
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