Cover image for The road to Sleeping Dragon : learning China from the ground up
The road to Sleeping Dragon : learning China from the ground up
Title:
The road to Sleeping Dragon : learning China from the ground up
Author:
Meyer, Michael J., 1972- author.
ISBN:
9781632869357
Publication Information:
New York ;

London ;

Oxford :

Bloomsbury

2017.
Physical Description:
xvi, 296 pages : maps ; 24 cm.
Contents:
A plunge into the Middle Country -- On the Stall-for-time River -- Every village faces the Sun -- Sinking in -- Parting the cloud of compassion -- Far and away in Tibet -- Tomorrow will be even better (but today things will just get worse) -- Thought liberation -- Beijing spring -- Meet the parents -- Signposts -- Three protests -- Arrivals and departures -- Digressions on the New Frontier -- Countdown clocks -- Defending the ghosts -- Learning to speak Olympics -- The road to Sleeping Dragon -- "One world, one dream" one year later -- A trans-Siberian exit.
Abstract:
From the highly praised author 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 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. Thus began 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 family, and headlong into efforts to protect 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 learn a language, culture and history from the ground up. Both funny and relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is essential reading for anyone interested in China's history, and how daily life plays out there today.
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