The road to Sleeping Dragon : learning China from the ground up / Michael Meyer.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Author's Note (p. xv)
• Chapter 1 A Plunge into the Middle Country (p. 1)
• Chapter 2 On the Stall-for-Time River (p. 21)
• Chapter 3 Every Village Faces the Sun (p. 39)
• Chapter 4 Sinking In (p. 58)
• Chapter 5 Parting the Cloud of Compassion (p. 70)
• Chapter 6 Far and Away in Tibet (p. 86)
• Chapter 7 Tomorrow Will Be Even Better (but Today Things Will Just Get Worse) (p. 99)
• Chapter 8 Thought Liberation (p. 110)
• Chapter 9 Beijing Spring (p. 126)
• Chapter 10 Meet the Parents (p. 149)
• Chapter 11 Signposts (p. 169)
• Chapter 12 Three Protests (p. 179)
• Chapter 13 Arrivals and Departures (p. 194)
• Chapter 14 Digressions on the New Frontier (p. 209)
• Chapter 15 Countdown Clocks (p. 229)
• Chapter 16 Defending the Ghosts (p. 240)
• Chapter 17 Learning to Speak Olympics (p. 250)
• Chapter 18 The Road to Sleeping Dragon (p. 264)
• Chapter 19 "One World, One Dream" One Year Later (p. 270)
• Chapter 20 A Trans-Siberian Exit (p. 277)
• Acknowledgments (p. 285)
• Notes (p. 287)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Former Peace Corps volunteer Meyer (The Last Days of Old Beijing) continues to present his fascinating and worthwhile impressions of China. He explains that, unlike his first book, this latest work is mostly chronological impressions of lessons learned over time. Readers have an additional treat here in that Meyer shares his charming and challenging courtship of Frances, his wife whom he met while living in China. Frances's story brings further depth and insights to Meyer's observations and experiences of the country. For example, her mother used to tell her to finish what was on her plate because there were starving people in America. Meyer's comments are priceless; when his apartment was as cold as an icebox, he reported, "I called Frances and asked her how to turn on the radiator. She laughed. 'You can't. Beijing turns it on for you.'" VERDICT Those planning an actual trip to China as well as armchair travelers will be enlightened and entertained by this exceptional book.-Susan G. Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

China hand Meyer, whose nonfiction The Last Days of Old Beijing (2008) and In Manchuria (2015) have won universally high praise, along with travel-writing awards, details his beginnings in then-tiny Neijiang, China in Sichuan Province in 1995 as a Peace Corps volunteer so callow that he must implore his mother in an early letter to send him boxes of Stridex acne pads. After his requisite two years, Meyer would make his way to Beijing, where the news was made and where he would meet his future Chinese wife. Their charming, twisting story proceeds all the way to the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. Meyer has a sharp eye both for the details of two such contrasting cities, but also for the seismic changes China would undergo in a mere 20 years. There's neither outsize pride, nor false modesty, here, but instead a humility gained from an immersion that finds him continually off-balance, which creates its own sort of wisdom.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Impressions of China from an experienced guide.From 1995 to 1997, Meyer (In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China, 2015, etc.) was stationed in a small town as a Peace Corps teacher of English. He later went on make bilingual travel journalism his livelihood, and here, he provides a humorous, detailed chronicle of the kind of bewildering, bracing contact impressions between him and the Chinese that illustrate both the huge divide between the two countries as well as the shared humanity. What he underscores throughout is how rare seeing a white person was for most Chinese at this transitional time and the curiosity of the Chinese students about Americans. Many admitted outright that they had been taught to distrust America, yet they liked him, whose name transliterated in slang as "Sold Son" or "Heroic Eastern Plumblossom." Speaking Chinese that sounded like a Sichuan farmer's, Meyer had many delightful and appalling adventures, and he delineates his experiences with a great verve and a light hand. He recalls the trepidation he felt when locals menacingly shouted their word for "foreigner" at him. But he also experienced a curious opening of the Chinese mind, a process that had begun some years earlier when Deng Xiaoping famously declared, "we have nothing to fear from the West." As a teacher, Meyer was urged to "teach the Beatles," which turned out to be "sound pedagogical advice." The author posted many of his early writings to publications in the U.S. as well as to his family via letters. Eventually, love intervened, in the form of a fellow teacher at his new school in Beijing; Frances was a bright student thwarted in her ambitions until she met Meyer. The author depicts many moving moments, such as the wonder of one student when he brought them (for "extra credit") to Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1999: the 10th anniversary of the famed clash. Some of the impressions are dated, but the majority are charming and revealing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.