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|  | |  | | | Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid | | | | | SKU:
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Usually ships in 1-2 business days | | Only 1 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.
Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.
Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself.
Maarten Troost brings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | J. Maarten Troost | | Hardcover: | 382 pages | | Publisher: | Broadway Books | | Publication Date: | July 08, 2008 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 076792200X | | Package Length: | 8.4 inches | | Package Width: | 5.4 inches | | Package Height: | 1.4 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.1 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 107 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 107 customer reviews )
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56 of 61 found the following review helpful:
 Loved his earlier work, but this is a bit of a disappointment Aug 02, 2008
By World Traveler
I like Maarten: he's half Czech, I'm half Czech; he's actually lived in Port Vila Vanuatu with his wife, I've actually lived in Port Vila Vanuatu with my wife. In addition, he is much funnier than I am. His books about the South Pacific ("The Sex Lives of Cannibals" [SLC] and "Getting Stoned with Savages" [GSWS]) were hoots, and very accurate from what I can attest to from having spent time in some of the same places (Vanuatu and Fiji).
In "Lost on Planet China" (LPC) Maarten is still funny, but much less so in this book than in his two previous works. I counted five personal "laugh out louds" from LPC, as opposed to the dozens and dozens of "laugh out louds" I experienced from both SLC and GSWS. I found his personal opinions usually reasonable (having spent some time in China, I disagree with some of those other reviewers apparently offended by Maarten's honesty), but some of his jokes began to become repetitious (example: by the time he is blaming George Bush for not getting served meatballs in Xian I actually closed the book for a day - this was approximately tenth time a similar "W" attempt at humor was clumsily inserted). But mostly, the editing of LPC is horrible. He mentions at the end (in his Acknowledgements) that his editor was giving birth during the time she was editing one of his chapters. Actually, it reads as if she was giving birth during the last 1/4 of the book. This end section is disjointed, confusing (example: a reference is made to something that apparently happened earlier during Maarten's trip, but which seems to have been redacted out of an earlier chapter), and frequently just plain boring.
This book is like we've started on a very interesting trip of discovery together with a person you know with a reputation for being funny. Things start well, as time goes on you have some minor issues, but you are still enjoying yourself and learning. Then things begin to get disorganized and you actually start to wonder why you are still going along. It's not just that China is complex (as the author keeps pointing out), it's because the trip itself is beginning to seem pointless. You keep thinking it's got to get better, and despite a few brief respites, it does not get better. Even though the first 250-300 pages are good, the last 100 pages are a chore and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Or maybe it's the live squids.
One final thought: although I doubt that Maarten had anything to do with the map, it is rather interesting. Taiwan appears to be a province of the PRC - Broadway Books does not apparently consider the ROC as a separate country - yet Tibet appears (judging by the typeface) to be some sort of separate country. Complex indeed.
55 of 63 found the following review helpful:
 Traveling With Maarten...Nothing Better! Jul 13, 2008
By Tamela Mccann
"taminator40"
J. Maarten Troost has taken us to a small atoll in the South Pacific and to the volcanic Vanauatu in his previous books, Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned With Savages. Now he turns his wit and observational skills on that great unknown,China, in his latest endeavor, Lost on Planet China, and what a marvelous travelogue it is!
Told with his trademark wry humor, Lost on Planet China follows Troost as he starts off in the big cities of Beijing (which has given me a whole new perspective on the 2008 Summer Olympics), Shanghai, and Hong Kong. I was flabbergasted at the amount of pollution in China; it seems its entry into the twenty-first century is coming at a very high price. But like Troost, it was the western travels through Tibet, Leaping Tiger Gorge, and Dunhuang that I found the most informative and interesting. Troost's writing is such that I could feel the thin air and experience the death-defying trails seemingly first hand; his interactions with the peoples of China were fascinating glimpses into lives that I doubt I'll ever experience. I love that Troost chose to visit not just the obvious tourist stops such as the Terra Cotta Warriors and the Great Wall, but also smaller islands like Putuoshan. I came away with a real flavor for the history and the feel of China.
I enjoyed this book immensely, though I do wish Troost had told me two things that continually popped into my mind throughout the reading: Where did he get the money for such an extended trip (not that it's actually my business, but I'm curious), and what was his reunion with his wife and two young sons like once he finally left Planet China? Other than those two minor points, I have to say that this is another engaging entry in Troost's repetoire, and I'll be eagerly looking forward to seeing where we'll be traveling next.
As an aside, do watch the short films on the homepage of this book on Amazon. Not only are they funny, they give a bit of insight into the scenery and conditions experienced in Lost on Planet China.
54 of 68 found the following review helpful:
 A Condescending and Exaggeratedly Negative Picture of China Mar 12, 2009
By Steve Koss
Let it not be said that Maarten Troost is not an entertaining, humorous guy who's seemingly willing to try almost anything for the adventure, if not for laughs. Unfortunately, the price for trying so hard to be glib in travel writing is that it can too easily devolve into exaggeration and a (perhaps unintentional) condescendion toward the people and places the writer encounters.
Thus it is with LOST ON PLANET CHINA, reportedly Troost's third travel book and the first I've read. This book regrettably comes across as half dabble, half slumming, and all for effect. Troost begins his journey in Beijing, where he repeatedly insults his translator tour guide Miao Miao by spelling her name Meow Meow and suggesting her name is that of a Bond girl). He then moves in a more or less circular fashion around the country to Tai Shan, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Putuoshan Island, Hong Kong/Macau, Guangzhou, Dali, Lijiang, Lhasa, Lanzhou, Dunhuang, Chengdu, Xi'an, Harbin, and finally Dandong at the North Korean border. Troost samples a number of China's most famous sites and places on the cheap, as it were. This of course affords him the opportunity to travel on ultracrowded trains, sleep in crummy hotels, and generally experience a bit of the country's less fulsome underbelly.
All of this adds up to what we might call, with full ironic intent, a "pretty picture." China isn't just dirty, it's a veritable pigpen of dirt, dust, human and animal feces, and garbage. Chinese people don't just spit, they shower each other and Western visitors in a continuous barrage of what Mr. Troost charmingly calls "loogies." Chinese people aren't just without manners, they're positively animal-like in their incivility. The country isn't just heavily populated, it's a nightmare of human gridlock that would have confirmed Malthus's worst imaginings. The air isn't just polluted, it's visible, it's brown or gray or both, and it can kill you in a matter of weeks.
While these extreme representations serve a peculiar form of disparaging, Animal House-like juvenile humor, they hardly serve the reader who really wants to learn about or understand China. Yes, these behaviors and problems exist, and many are pervasive if not tragic, but they hardly make the country the tourist nightmare Mr. Troost would have us believe. Having traveled moderately extensively in China, lived in the Shanghai area (in Suzhou) for most of three years in a standard apartment block building, visited a number of the same cities and locales Mr. Troost describes, and ridden on trains in several parts of the country, I barely recognized the China I know in this author's descriptions. I've seen and experienced all the same things this author disparages, but they pale in comparison to the warm, positive experiences I've had with Chinese people and culture. If all I had to go on were LOST ON PLANET CHINA, I would never want to visit the country he describes. To the extent that this book's readers might reach that unhappy conclusion, the loss would be theirs. Shame on you for that, Mr. Troost.
Imagine for a moment that an educated, culturally jaded Chinese citizen spent the better part of the year mimicking Mr. Troost's travels, only in the United States. That individual could then sit down and pen a travel book about traffic jams, fundamentalist churchgoers, strip malls, professional wrestling and car-crushing events, people weighing 350 pounds and carrying 75% of it in their hips and posteriors, dirty streets in major cities, gun-slinging NRA'ers, decaying roads and falling bridges, a train system that is the embarrassment of the industrialized world, fanatical, hate-spewing political talking heads, and the like. New York City could be reduced to its dirty streets and aging subways, Washington D.C. to its crime rate and failing schools, and so on. That, in a nutshell, is what Mr. Troost gives the reader about most of China - a view through dirt-streaked (as opposed to rose-colored) glasses.
Curiously, for all his close-to-the-people travel experiences, Mr. Troost has very little to offer from individual Chinese people beyond a few tour guides. We never really meet China through it people or experience its culture except through the cynical, Seth Rogen eyes of the author. And that's not the real China any more than the description above is the real America. Elements of truth yes, but exaggerated for negative, albeit perhaps humorous effect. It's a sad type of humor though, one that has numerous ugly predecessors in American history - the colonialist attitude of nineteenth century Westerners in Shanghai, treatment of Chinese coolies as little more than slaves, the buck-tooth caricatures, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and much more. Mr. Troost travels the very edges of this prejudice, stopping just short of calling out 1.3 billion people as little yellow monkeys. Humor through gross exaggeration and racial condescension is really not very funny. It's just hurtful and unfortunate.
15 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Lost is Right Jun 12, 2009
By Joye Ashby
While Mr. Troost is certainly a talented writer and an amusing personality he fails miserably in his attempt to "understand the world's most mystifying nation." Perhaps if he had tried to get to know some Chinese people rather than just wandering around and complaining about the polluted air he might have come closer. In fact if you took out all of the references to the air in China this book would have been reduced to a rather shortish magazine article. Troost covered a lot of ground in China - Beijing to Hong Kong to Tibet and beyond but I cannot find where he records a single instance of a more than cursory encounter with a Chinese person. The Chinese are what's incredible about China. This book would have been infinitely more informative and entertaining if he had slowed down a little and gotten to know them a little better.
37 of 47 found the following review helpful:
 A Disappointing Read May 19, 2009
By Jamie L. Dea
"jld2148"
I would only recommend this book to someone who is already well-versed in Chinese culture, historical events, and the political, social and economic situation developing in the world's newest superpower, and only then as an example of misinformation available in popular media. While reviews in The New York Time and others have remarked upon the success of Troost's style as neither travel writing nor journalism, they overlook the rather blatant fact that he relies entirely upon sensationalism and misconception, resulting in a skewered and often derogatory description that misleads the reader.
While he attempts to engage the reader through self-defacing humor at his own inaptitude, this just adds insult to injury. Troost is essentially taking all of a Westerner's fears about foreign travel and China, and magnifying them. His occasional insightful observation is undermined by his relentless disparaging comments and poor understanding of Chinese culture and history. At every turn, Troost affirms Western values, beliefs, policies and lifestyle at the expense of what China may have to offer. As a Westerner who has extensively studied and lived in Asia, I can tell you that China has many faults, which must be address with all due seriousness. But Troost lacks in the necessary cultural sensitivity, focusing solely on the negative. This influences the reader in a negative way, especially if that reader is, as the inside flap of the book suggests, an "armchair" traveler. Troost is the type of tourist I have encountered, both abroad and at home, whose attitude reflects poorly on himself and the nation he is supposed to be representing as a guest in another country. He is the type I have been tempted on a number of occasions to tell to simply go home. Imagine if someone came to America and only wrote about the obesity epidemic, the mass hysteria encouraged by the media, and our rampant commercialism?
I would go so far as to label this book a work of Orientalism, a term defined by the academic Edward Said. He wrote about how cultures will choose an Other against which to compare themselves. Everything that is good about us can be reflected as a negative aspect of them. We are clean and progressive; they are dirty and backwards. In Lost on Planet China, Troost establishes the whole of China as the Other of the West. His paltry attempts at humor through self-mockery hardly make up for his off-hand, uninformed and usually dismissive remarks about a rich, vibrant nation. Despite all its faults, China deserves better. The author's note in the beginning of the book, which states Troost knows nothing about China other than the same random bits of common knowledge as most Westerners, should really read as a disclaimer, a warning to potential readers.
If you are looking for a book to read about another culture and laugh at their shortcomings, and feel better about your own, this is the book for you. If you are looking for travel writing about China that is informative, well-written and entertaining, I would suggest Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones.
See all 107 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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