Green Dragon, Sombre Warrior: Travels to China's Extremes FROM THE PUBLISHER
Liam D'Arcy Brown set out to travel to the four corners of the People's Republic in an attempt to reconcile modern China's seemingly irreconcilable extremes. His 10,000-mile journey took him from an isolated fishing community in the East China Sea, a 'steamy' tropical holiday resort on Hainan Island and a rebellious Muslim city on the Silk Road to a primitive riverside village in remote Manchuria. Along the way, he discovered many surprising aspects to life in China that the wider world seldom glimpses.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Brown traveled by plane, boat, train, bus, and on foot to the four corners of China to better understand this diverse country through its history and daily life. Armed with an outgoing personality and degrees in Mandarin and classical Chinese, Brown converses with its people and creates a vibrant living portrait of Chinese society and culture. He meets a group of middle-aged Shanghai men who keep up with Western news via BBC online (referred to, charmingly, as "bee-bee-sea-dart-calm"). In Urumchi he encounters Middle Eastern features and a Turkic language. He follows the mystical Sungari River, which "seemed to flow out of some Siberian legend and stray accidentally into Chinese territory"; in southern China, he finds that only the Chinese characters indicate that this is not Thailand or Vietnam. The conversational writing style brings Brown's China to life, enabling readers to see, feel, and, especially, smell everything. This travelog belongs in large public and all academic libraries.-Susan G. Baird, Chicago Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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