Lost on Planet China made me laugh. Sometimes, it made me laugh hard. But it also made me want to strangle Maarten Troost, its author.
Troost embarked on a several-months-long journey in China as, admittedly, no expert on China. He is supposedly considering moving his children to China so that they will be prepared for the future. After reading Lost on Planet China, I’m quite sure he rejected that idea.
The book reads like a greatest-hits list of criticisms of China and the Chinese, written by someone who is funnier — but not necessarily more sympathetic — than most tourists. Traffic, pollution, strange food, spitting on the streets, the One Child Policy: Troost approaches all of them with an incredulity that is not quite believable in someone who has written two previous books about living abroad.
Troost on spitting:
I stepped out and watched the doorman do his morning ritual, which consisted of purging an immense, glutinous loogie from somewhere deep within his innards, followed by the expulsion of a dribble of snot from first one nostril and then the other, and then, apparently satisfied with this ousting of liquids, lighting up a cigarette. And good morning to you, I thought, as I made my way through the acrid smoke, delicately stepping around a millpond of phlegm and mucus that had gathered at the hotel’s entrance. I couldn’t decide what was more disturbing—the splattering loogie or the dribbling snot—but as I wandered through the early-morning haze toward the mausoleum, it soon became apparent that somehow I’d have to come to terms with the interesting methods the Chinese use for expelling the contents of their noses and lungs. The Chinese have invented many things, but the handkerchief is not among them.
Does anyone really come to China anymore without being warned in advance that people spit on the street? I’m certainly not above a joke or three about Chinese hygiene, but Troost never moves past the sarcasm for any sort of authentic revelation about modern China, or about himself. The closest he comes is in Lhasa, itself the subject of plenty of Western stereotypes.
A good travel narrative pushes the reader to view its subject in a new way. Troost just pats us on the back for having the good sense not to be Chinese.
Visit my reading list for more reviews of books on China, including histories, memoirs, novels and guidebooks.
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