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| Named Person: | Graham Earnshaw |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Graham Earnshaw |
| ISBN: | 9789881900210 9881900212 |
| OCLC Number: | 658148840 |
| Description: | 341 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. |
| Contents: | The First Step; Into the Mountains; Drinking Games; Anhui in May; A Peasant's Life; End of Anhui; Putting Away the GPS; Red Tourism; Countryside Politics; Harvest Time; Mr. Ren; Horse Country; The Man Who Lost His Life; The Special Farm; The Casino Operator; Million Dollar Rocks; The Dam; The Gorges; How Green is Their Valley; Over the River; Across the Line; Signs of a Storm; Smoker's Cough; Environmental Nuns; The Bluest Eyes in Chongqing; Joining Isabella; Buffalo in Winter; Tobacco Road; You're Welcome. |
| Responsibility: | Graham Earnshaw. |
Reviews
Publisher Synopsis
"After so much legwork and countless chats, Earnshaw knows China better than most Chinese people do. Some of his best strolls take him past the massive Three Gorges Dam and across reform-through-labour prison-farms. Long before the final page, his readers too know China much better than before." -- Cairns Media Magazine "Earnshaw presents a first hand look at the lives and experiences of local villagers, dealing with the huge transformations of China today." -- Global Times "A ramble into a country's heart and soul... Earnshaw's deceptively simple travelogue reveals the complexities of an eternal China coming to terms with the forces of change. Lyrical, witty and wise, The Great Walk of China will rank among the great travel classics." -- Adam Williams, author of The Emperor's Bones Read more...
WorldCat User Reviews (1)
Grab the Wind!
Graham Earnshaw is a true man of the People. His 30-year tenure in China as a journalist, businessman and, most recently, publishing magnate, have made him a permanent fixture in the Shanghai...
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Graham Earnshaw is a true man of the People. His 30-year tenure in China as a journalist, businessman and, most recently, publishing magnate, have made him a permanent fixture in the Shanghai scene - which is exactly why Earnshaw makes it a point of de-fixing himself at least once a month to walk in the countryside and "speak to the Real China."
It is an ongoing journey that he has tasked himself with completing since 2004, and though not continuous, Earnshaw has thus far traversed over 3% of the earth's circumference between Shanghai and Tibet. ON FOOT!
The Great Walk of China, Earnshaw's published travelogue, is an account of just a fraction of his epic odyssey, covering the interior provinces of Anhui, Hubei, Chongqing and Sichuan. The walk is a straight line due west through some of China's most rural regions, which is exactly the serene backdrop Earnshaw, fluent in Putonghua (and at times more literate than the Chinese he meets), prefers in a concerted effort to talk to as many People as possible.
From the spontaneous hospitality of peasants whom have never before seen a foreigner in the flesh, to the paranoid reactions of low-level authorities who simply cannot grasp what he is doing venturing into the countryside, Earnshaw manages to interact with just about every class of citizen imaginable.
Earnshaw also brilliantly illustrates the ironies of modern China's identification crisis through villagers who exclaim "we are poor" out of habit despite clutching state-of-the-art mobile phones, and students, many the first in their family to be literate yet completely devoid of ambition, who vapidly waste their days away in front of televisions.
Often, the farmers he encounters hope Earnshaw is a reporter out to expose the rampant corruption of rural officials, while officials are worried that he is there to report on their corruption.
"Are you corrupt?" Earnshaw toyingly asks one cadre. "Me, corrupt? No...well...I'm not in a position to be..." A shopkeeper eavesdropping on their dialogue suddenly howls in delight: "So it's not that you don't want to be corrupt, ha-ha-ha!!!"
Englishman Earnshaw deftly manages some clever responses to his frequent confrontations with backwoods police, all the while maintaining a pleasant, non-judgmental (and at times romanticized and overly-optimistic) perspective which distinguishes The Great Walk from all the other China travelogues out there.
Our narrator is, unfortunately, reluctant to share much personal insight into Graham Earnshaw the person, and keeps his writings strictly about the Chinese. In between chatting with the proletariat, Earnshaw pauses to comment on old propaganda slogans still found on countryside walls, and muse on tiny animals crossing busy roads - a metaphor, perhaps, for the People of China's struggle to catch up with their nation's rapid progress.
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Tom Carter is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People
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Related Subjects:(4)
- Earnshaw, Graham, -- 1952- -- Travel -- China.
- China -- Description and travel.
- Shanghai (China) -- Description and travel.
- Tibet Autonomous Region (China) -- Description and travel.
User lists with this item (1)
- Best Books about Traveling in China(10 items)
by china1 updated 2011-11-27
