Comrades!

Comrades!, originally uploaded by iHeartDimSum.

I'm reading 'Lost on Planet China' by J. Maarten Troost. It's a witty and hilarious first hand account of a gwai-lo's trek through China. The stories remind me so much of my own first experience with the motherland. Would highly recommend this book. Especially for you Dean. I think you would dig the style that it's written in. The author (a white dude from Sacramento) attempts to get a local to teach him how to say "Hu Jintao is sexy".

"Nineteen eighty-nine played out a little differently in China, of course. When thousands of students converged upon Tiananmen Square in Beijing to demand a little democracy - Hey hey, hey ho, Maoism has got to go - they were greeted with a decidedly old-school response. Deng Xiaoping, the chain smoking gnome with the twinkling eyes who then ruled China, simply reached for his totalitarian rulebook, flipped toward the index - Democracy protesters, suitable response - and followed directions. He shot them. And that was that."

The whole book is written in this decidedly blunt, but humorous take on the author's observations about Chinese society. And having seen it myself, I'd say he's pretty spot on with his musings. Check it out.

-G