The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up

Amazon.com Price: $17.86 (as of 10/11/2019 13:09 PST- Details)

Description

From the highly praised writer of The Last Days of Old Beijing, a brilliant portrait of China today and a memoir of coming of age in a country in transition.

In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was once sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean’s orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China’s changes as he was once.

Thus started an impassioned immersion into Chinese life. With humor and insight, Meyer puts readers in his novice shoes, winding across the length and breadth of his adopted country –from a terrifying bus attack on arrival, to remote Xinjiang and Tibet, into Beijing’s backstreets and his future wife’s Manchurian circle of relatives, and headlong into efforts to offer protection to China’s vanishing heritage at places like “Sleeping Dragon,” the world’s largest panda preserve.

In the last book of his China trilogy, Meyer tells a story both deeply personal and universal, as he gains greater – if never complete – assurance, capturing what it feels like to be told a language, culture and history from the ground up. Both funny and relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is very important reading for any person interested in China’s history, and how day by day life plays in the market today.

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