Customer comments on this selection.
 Not Funny
This is an odd travel book. At the bottom of it, the author doesn't seem to like the Chinese very much. Page after page, she complains about the food, accommodations, the transportation, the people. She brings to mind the outdated attitudes of the colonial British, holding their noses as they looked down upon the natives, confident in their smug superiority. In addition, her sense of humor is rather tiresome, always at another's expense, arch and acerbic. I would expect a bumpy trip if I didn't speak the language, and had done zero advance planning to a country as large and diverse as China. Seems like an opportunistic book, superficial, and wholly at the expense of the Chinese.
 An honest account of independent Chinese travel!
There's many a fool who would criticize this book for TELLING THE TRUTH! If ever a book rang true, it's this woman's account of trying to get around China independently, without prior planning. I know it all to be true because I foolishly tried it myself. Yes, I and a Finn bumbled our rocky way through China in October 1990, as so-called "backpack travellers", using the same guidebook as all the other silly unprepared and unaccompanied foreigners. LONELY PLANET guidebook is the Bible this author used, and refers to, in choosing accommodations, restaurants, and transport. We also relied exclusively on our well-thumbed 1990 Lonely Planet, just like this determined young Englishwoman, but she in 2002.
Our author is good-hearted in her goodwill efforts to do China herself. She is flexible, has experience from other countries and adventures, and doesn't give up when discouraged. These are the most important qualities of any visitor to China, even those with professional, pre-paid upscale itineraries. The official tourist traps are well arranged and therefore, theoretically, presenting no worries. The Chinese are a proud people, wishing to show you their best. It is in their own stubborn determination to keep a foreigner out of trouble, and out of ugly and dirty situations, that visitors find themselves irritated by the pushing and pulling, the MeH-YO's! (NO's) that surround them when they propose anything spontaneous. The Chinese are willing to show you anything for a price, but they feel a lot better about it if some authority has sanctioned your presence in a muddy village, on a decrepid bus, etc. Their fear of "getting into trouble" is not as bad as in the Cultural Revolution, but it's still latent and serious.
So, she proceeds to tell us exactly what a person can expect: strange foods that can only be identified by pointing (that's what we did!!!); filthy toilet systems outside of Western hotels and restaurants; greedy taxidrivers, confusion and loneliness when surrounded by a language and culture so different from the Westerner's. She is disgusted by the hygiene, amazed that the population rate could be so high in such a soup of dirty places and toilets, male spitting and unclean public places. I often commented on this myself back in 1990! The rates of TB are about 1 in 5, while the spitting (male habit) never stops. The current preparations for the Olympics are full of beseeching propaganda to STOP SPITTING and STOP LITTERING (No toss). Well, such injunctions were in place in 1990, too! Didn't seem to make an impact!
However, why a person goes to China makes the book. Apparently, our author went out of a mild curiosity, a sense of adventure, and the intent to write about her experiences. All in all, a quite honest endeavor - not a travel guide to historical places, not a deep analysis of the Chinese mentality, just observations of what happens around her. Her straightforward accounts of discouragement, followed by good-luck sunshine, amused me. I, too, had fallen into lethargy and indifference by the second week, wondering if I were insane to attempt my journey, yet I didn't want to give up after so much effort to get there. I gave it four weeks total, had some good times, a lot of dubious times, and some very bad experiences.
What any reader can get out of this book is a no-punches-pulled reality trip through modern China, WITHOUT PRE-TRIP PLANNING and WITHOUT THE LANGUAGE. That people will stare at you, at first a novelty, becomes a monstrous aggravation, as she does write, yet it is good that she writes it. Wouldn't you WANT to know in advance that these things will happen to you, too, rather than becoming disconcerted on the first day, the hard way?
This author admits that she was foolish not to have prepared for her journey, that she didn't even learn the word for RICE, that she was out of her depth as soon as she left her acquaintances in Beijing. But in the depths of her loneliness, on top of a holy mountain soaked in fog, she did the smart thing - which we two also did: she simply approached any WEsterners and joined them. We did this habitually and enlivened our trip enormously, because they knew more than us and could help us, or even let them join in on their little side trips, etc.
So this is a great travel book because it DOES whine! Telling the truth is a dying art in PC-America! One has to dig up old travel books sometimes to get the real sense of life somewhere. For armchair travellers, this book is also great - it saves you all the unsavory parts of Chinese encounters (e.g. toilets), while keeping an amused tone. She plays jokes on the female callers looking for business (yes, that kind of business) on her hotel telephone, changing her voice to a man's! There's plenty of Chinese girls "selling hot water" everywhere, once you look around! What would Mao say? Can't they work in sweatshops as he said?
[...]
I hope all of you thinking of going there read this book & my epinion! Plus get to the library and START STUDYING everything about China. YOu may even decide not to go, more's the pity, but it's an informed choice, at least. Finally, if you get back in one piece, not too sick, then you can really begin the plunge into Sinology. In spite of your almost inevitable disgust with some primitive parts there, and male customs, you will slowly read more, see more films, and take an interest in China because of the trip. Easy way - don't go; or pay a fortune and be guided.
 Horrible book!
Like another poster, I really wanted to enjoy this book. It wasn't even remotely funny. I found the author to be sarcastic, and very arrogant. She painted a very bad picture of China (its culture and its people). The author is so narrow minded, that I'm afraid to read any more of her work. For someone who is supposed to be funny...I found the book to be offensive.
If I could give this book ZERO stars, I would. Don't waste your time reading this piece of trash.
Beware!!
I bought this book because I am planning a trip to China and like to read anything I can get my hands on about the country I'm planning to visit. I was so excited to find a travel account by a woman traveling alone in China. I looked forward to funny anecdotes, ideas about what to see and a general sense of life in China.
Instead I found a 300 page rant about anything and everything Chinese. Frankly I'm confused as to why the author went to China in the first place and even more confused as to how she managed to get the book published. She complained about everything. She didn't like the food (unless it was McDonalds), the people, the transportation, the accomodations (unless it was the Grand Hyatt), or the sites/entertainment (unless it was the HBO in her room at the Grand Hyatt). She seemed not to understand that she was a guest in the places she visited or that the most valuable trait of a traveler is open-mindedness. She took almost every situation personally, as in when she described a bus journey to Kunming, "The road surface was unspeakably bad....we hurtled over holds and leapt from the crests of little jumps that seemed to have been laid out solely to test the resiliance of our bones." Page 237. Moreover she was almost insulted that few people could speak English and, ever unprepared, seemed to expect others to go out of their way to help her. At the same time, she complained each time anyone tried to speak with her. Evans would do better to stay put in her native England and spare the inhabitants of any other country from having to put up with her.
This book is frustrating mainly because it has the potential to deter readers from a trip to China. I will be looking for a more open-minded and curious account of the country and it's people.
Wacky! A good laugh, great airplane reading.
While the catchy title of this latest China travel book should make you want to grab it off a shelf for a quick browse, the concept behind the book should make you want to buy it and keep on reading.
Polly Evans established herself as a new breed of travel writer with her first book, It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels. In Spain she experienced more than her share of humorous happenings by attempting to cover one thousand miles in just six weeks, as a lone woman on a bicycle. In her second book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, Evans comes up with an equally wacky idea: capture for herself this unique moment in China's history, viewing the country's key sites, using only public transportation. Are you laughing already? Or gasping in shock at her naiveté?
The book's title itself sums up a universal foreigner-in-China experience: things that should be simple and easy are often complicated, difficult, and surprisingly time consuming. And sometimes even impossible. The premise of Evans' Chinese adventure seems very simple: travel through China like the locals do. Like her attempt to gracefully eat fried eggs with chopsticks, the author discovered what a challenge seemingly easy things can become here, especially if you come to the journey ill prepared. Naturally, she finds herself in many situations we expats will recognize and appreciate.
Though the ride was wild, as Evans reached her targets by plane, boat, taxi, train, and even by mule, she was still able to find the humor in many frustrating situations as she attempted to absorb the country's history and culture. "Eating a fried egg with chopsticks, I thought as I sat on the bus to Nanjing some hours later, bears small-scale similarities to the greater trials of traveling around China as a foreigner. It is frustrating and frequently ludicrous. Sometimes it is funny. Small tasks take infinitely longer than they should. You look ridiculous, often. But in the end, pride shattered, patience tried, and seemingly against all odds, you do in fact arrive. And then somebody comes along, smiling, and points out the easier route you should have taken." China is fascinating and wonderful, but hard work, she concludes. Given all of the wacky things that happened to her, I sometimes wondered if the only thing keeping her going was knowing that she would get a book out of the trip, if she survived!
This book offers a fast frolic through some Chinese history and culture, one woman's travel experiences in the Middle Kingdom, and a healthy dose of with humor. It makes good airplane or beach reading.
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