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Road Trip Across China: Ten Best China Travel Memoirs

China has always been big, but today it is big like never before. No matter where you are in the world, if you turn on the TV or open a newspaper you’re almost guaranteed to come across another top story about the Middle Kingdom. The subject might have to do with 2008′s Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo or China’s phenomenal economic boom and the huge challenges that come with it. It might be the growing prestige of Chinese art and film or the latest architectural marvel to make the scene in Shanghai or Beijing. It could be wilderness treks in Tibet and Yunnan or the joys of Sichuan hot pot or Beijing’s Imperial Cuisine…. The list goes on and on.

Fortunately, it has never been easier to visit China and see for yourself how this ancient land—famous in the annals of history for its sages and wandering poets, humble peasants and powerful emperors, golden dynasties and periods of upheaval and rebellion—is transforming itself into a modern nation squarely in the center of twenty-first century global affairs. And China’s people are eager to welcome you and share their pride in both the ancient traditions and the contemporary achievements that make today’s China one of the most talked-about and fascinating places on earth.

Given all that media exposure, if it seems cliché to cast China as a land of contrasts—the old versus new, the capitalist and the communist, the third-world rural village and the high-tech metropolis—it’s only because it’s true. China is a land of astonishing contrasts, ones that must be seen firsthand to be appreciated. From within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City or the majestic heights of the Summer Palace you’ll see Beijing’s gleaming new towers stretching toward the heavens. You can reach the once remote Tibetan capital of Lhasa via a new high-tech and high-altitude train, passing in comfort through harsh yet beautiful terrain only recently accessible to foreign travelers. Shanghai’s colonial-era Bund architecture is dwarfed by the looming space-age skyline of Pudong. If you wander through the classical Chinese landscape of Guilin, with its green mist-shrouded limestone peaks towering above fertile rice paddies and you’re as likely to come across a robed monk as a mobile-toting businessman. Again, the list goes on and on.

All this adds up to amazing adventures for visitors willing to set aside preconceptions—whether they come from history books or yesterday’s headlines – and meet China and its people face to face.

Following are the ten best China travel memoirs, written by authors – both foreign and Chinese – who know China (its geography AND its culture) better than anyone else.

1) Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip by Peter Hessler

In his latest feat of penetrating social reportage, New Yorker writer Peter Hessler again proves himself America’s keenest observer of the New China. Hessler investigates the country’s lurch into modernity through three engrossing narratives. In an epic road trip following the Great Wall across northern China, he surveys dilapidated frontier outposts from the imperial past while barely surviving the advent of the nation’s uniquely terrifying car culture. He probes the transformation of village life through the saga of a family of peasants trying to remake themselves as middle-class entrepreneurs. Finally, he explores China’s frantic industrialization, embodied by the managers and workers at a fly-by-night bra-parts factory in a Special Economic Zone.

2) Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux

Theroux’s penchant for train travel is well knownhis Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express are modern travel classics. On his latest jaunt he takes almost a year to crisscross China, traveling on 40 trains from the southern tropics to the wastelands of the Gobi in western Xinjiang to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton. What emerges is a curious melange of ancient and modern: while some things are literally changing overnight, the Chinese still manufacture spittoons and steam engines. For Theroux, traveling is both about peopletheir thoughts, customs, and peculiaritiesand a form of autobiography, and here we learn as much about his own quirks and fancies as we do about the intriguing world of contemporary China.

3) CHINA: Portrait of a People by Tom Carter

There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Besides the majority Han Chinese, the population includes 56 ethnic groups numbering over one hundred million. Over the course of 2 years and 35,000 miles, photojournalist Tom Carter captured it ALL on film. Carter’s anthropological-like study of China stands apart in its genre, as it focuses expressly on the PEOPLE of China. In addition to documenting the everyday life of “ordinary” people, Carter also backpacked to the most remote areas of China to observe reclusive ethnic minorities. From Inner Mongolian nomads to newlyweds in Hong Kong, from the teenage girl living in Chengdu dressed like an American punk rocker to the soot covered coal miner in Southern Shanxi, Carter’s camera documented the complexity and diversity of China like no other book ever has.

4) The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze by Simon Winchester

British born author Simon Winchester lived in Hong Kong before setting off on a journey up the Chang Jiang or Yangtze River as it is most often referred to in the West. In The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time, he chronicles his adventures across China along the 3,964-mile River. Employing nearly every mode of transportation–including boat, train, jeep and shoe leather–Winchester recalls his passionate exploration of the countryside, while providing important and engaging historical information. His recollections of the Chinese people are often less complimentary, as he exudes an air of disgust at the country’s apparent disregard for pollution, its awkward modern architecture and decaying historical monuments.

5) China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford

National Public Radio China correspondent Gifford journeyed for six weeks on China’s Mother Road, Route 312, from its beginning in Shanghai for nearly 3,000 miles to a tiny town in what used to be known as Turkestan. The route picks up the old Silk Road, which runs through the Gobi Desert to Central Asia to Persia and on to Europe. Along the way, Gifford meets entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on China’s growing economy, citizens angry and frustrated with government corruption, older people alarmed at changes in Chinese culture and morality, and young people uncertain and excited about the future. Gifford profiles ordinary Chinese people coping with tumultuous change as development and commerce shrink a vast geography, bringing teeming cities and tiny towns into closer commercial and cultural proximity; the lure of wealth is changing the Chinese character and sense of shared experience, even if it was common poverty. Gifford notes an aggressive sense of competition in the man-eat-man atmosphere of a nation that is likely to be the next global superpower.

6) Lost on Planet China by Maarten Troost

In his latest, veteran traveler Troost (The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Getting Stoned with Savages) embarks on an extended tour of “the new wild west,” China. Troost travels from the megalopolis of Beijing to small, remote trails in the hinterlands, the fabled Shangri-La and all points in between, allowing for a substantive look at an incredibly complex culture. He does an admirable job of summing up the country’s rich history, venturing to Nanjing to learn about China’s deep-seated animosity toward Japan; he also visits the Forbidden City, and the tomb of Mao Zedong, still very much revered despite his horrific record of human rights abuses. Gross disparity in wealth, omnipresent pollution and the teeming mass of humanity that greet Troost at every opportunity wear on him and the reader alike; the sense of claustrophobia only relents when he gets into more remote areas. Throughout, Troost is refreshingly upbeat, without a hint of ugly American elitism; he often steps aside to let the facts speak for themselves, and rarely devolves into complaints over the language barrier or other day-to-day frustrations.

7) The Great Walk of China: Travels on Foot from Shanghai to Tibet by Graham Earnshaw

What kind of people would you meet if you decided to walk across the world’s most populous country? The Great Walk of China is a journey into China’s heartland, away from its surging coastal cities. Through surprisingly frank conversations with the people he meets along the way, the Chinese-speaking author paints a portrait of a nation struggling to come to terms with its newfound identity and its place in the world. Earnshaw’s writing passes through characters and commentaries in much the same rambling fashion as the vehicle for his tale. We join him on a walk due west from Shanghai to Tibet, reliving his encounters with energetic youth, old men who reminisce about the times of Chairman Mao and police who still think that it’s illegal for foreigners to be in China. The strength of the book is not in the characters or the descriptions of the road he treads, but in Earnshaw’s insights from decades of living in China, which he uses to weave these encounters into a meandering tapestry of the various aspects of modern China.

Behind the Wall: A Journey Though China by Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is one of the most prominent living travel authors and his journeys through Asia are justly praised by fans of the genre. He has a peculiar approach to travel writing, by generally going to one country only and then trying to visit as much of it as possible while talking to the maximum amount of people, unlike for example Paul Theroux, who generally writes about travel across many societies. In this book, “Behind the Wall”, Thubron takes us on a tour of China as it was when he visited it in 1987. The result is an interesting overview of Chinese society as it was just opening up to foreigners after the long periods of war and revolution.

9) Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian

In 1983, squirming under constant government scrutiny and mourning a failed marriage, writer and photographer Jian abandons his home in Beijing to journey to China’s western border with little more than a change of clothes, two bars of soap, a notebook, a camera and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is the beginning of an arduous three-year voyage that takes him not only through little-traveled regions of China, Myanmar and Tibet, but through a careful examination of what it means to be a Buddhist, to live in post-Mao China and to exist in his own skin. A skilled storyteller, Jian narrates in prose that is spare and often beautiful his encounters with people who live in a region that “even today… is a place of banishment, populated by political prisoners, descendents of Turkic migrants, and the ghosts of buried cities.” From the night he spends crammed under a bus seat next to a pile of dirty socks and clucking hens to his escape from Chinese militiamen who mistake him for a Burmese spy, Jian tells a powerful story that is no mere travelogue. Indeed, his journey exposes him to so many risks getting bitten by sheepdogs in the grasslands along the Yellow River, drinking foul lake water that knocks him unconscious that the sheer number of life-threatening incidents begins to dull their impact. Still, Jian offers a revealing, riveting portrait of a Chinese citizen who seeks truth and honesty in a society in which such a quest can be grounds for punishment.

10) Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud by Sun Shuyun

Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud is a beautifully written account of Sun Shuyun’s journey to retrace the steps of one of the most popular figures in Chinese history — the monk Xuanzang, who travelled to India searching for true Buddhism. Xuanzang should be known as one of the world’s great heroes. His travels across Asia to bring true Buddhism back to China are legendary, and his own book provides a unique record of the history and culture of his time. Yet he is unknown to most of us and even to most Chinese, whose knowledge of Buddhist history has been eradicated by decades of Communist rule. Sun Shuyun was determined to follow in his footsteps, to discover more about Xuanzang and restore his fame. She decided to retrace his journey from China to India and back, an adventure that in the 8th century took Xuanzang eighteen years and led him across 118 kingdoms, an adventure that opened up the east and west of Asia to each other – and to us.

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The Lost World of Tibet (rare footage of Tibet in 1930s) Part 1/5

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Tibet $16.42 The BiblioGov Project is an effort to expand awareness of the public documents and records of the U.S. Government via print publications. In broadening the public understanding of government and its work, an enlightened democracy can grow and prosper. Ranging from historic Congressional Bills to the most recent Budget of the United States Government, the BiblioGov Project spans a wealth of government information. These works are now made available through an environmentally friendly, print-on-demand basis, using only what is necessary to meet the required demands of an interested public. We invite you to learn of the records of the U.S. Government, heightening the knowledge and debate that can lead from such publications.

To a Mountain in Tibet $18.15 Colin Thubron, one of our greatest living travel writers, offers a haunting and beautiful account of his journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one-fifth of humankind.

Born in Tibet $12.18 Chogyam Trungpa–meditation master, scholar, and artist–was identified at the age of only thirteen months as a major "tulku," or reincarnation of an enlightened teacher. As the eleventh in the teaching lineage known as the Trungpa tulkus, he underwent a period of intensive training in mediation, philosophy, and fine arts, receiving full ordination as a monk in 1958 at the age of eighteen. The following year, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, and the young Trungpa spent many harrowing months trekking over the Himalayas, narrowly escaping capture. Trungpa’s account of his experiences as a young monk, his duties as the abbot and spiritual head of a great monastery, and his moving relationships with his teachers offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of a Tibetan lama. The memoir concludes with his daring escape from Tibet to India. In an epilogue, he describes his emigration to the West, where he encountered many people eager to learn about the ancient wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Bradt Tibet $4.07 Exploring ethnic Tibet independently is a challenge. The proverbial "land of snows," it possesses some of the wildest and roughest road routes in high Asia, and so trekking, motoring, and mountain biking are all covered in this new edition. Political and cultural issues make Tibet a sensitive destination for Westerners to visit; Michael Buckley’s advice includes guidelines on cultural etiquette, local customs, and traveling with minimum impact on Tibet’s environment. Michael Palin, the renowned television personality ("Himalaya"), described the first edition as: "The most thumbed of all my books on Tibet. I might have had some trouble with the yak butter, but Buckley made everything else about Tibet wonderfully palatable. A must-read." Features include: *Knowledgeable insight into Tibetan culture and history*The holy city of Lhasa in depth, Buddhist monasteries, and pilgrimage sites*Routes through the northern and eastern areas of Kham and Amdo*"Star treks"–high altitude trekking, including the Everest region

Peace in Tibet $27.99 On 13 December 1903, Colonel Francis Edward Younghusband, Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire, British Commissioner for Tibet Frontier Matters, once more crossed over from Sikkim to Tibet, this time over the Jelap (Dzelap) La. True to his Edwardian heritage, his personal luggage alone filled 29 containers and included 67 shirts, camp suit, camp dinner suit, an assortment of coats and hats, a prodigious supply of underwear, an umbrella and a campaign bath. This is the story of the British invasion of Tibet, the negotiations with the Tibetan government and the eventual signing of a peace treaty on 7 September 1904, told through excerpts from official correspondence between the Commission and India and from diaries kept by Colonel Younghusband and Captain O’Connor. The transliteration of names, in the text and in the maps, follows the usage of the period.

Tibet: A History $25.83 Situated north of the Himalayas, Tibet is famous for its unique culture and its controversial assimilation into modern China. Yet Tibet in the twenty-first century can only be properly understood in the context of its extraordinary history. Sam van Schaik brings the history of Tibet to life by telling the stories of the people involved, from the glory days of the Tibetan empire in the seventh century through to the present day. He explores the emergence of Tibetan Buddhism and the rise of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s entanglement in the "Great Game" in the early twentieth century, its submission to Chinese Communist rule in the 1950s, and the troubled times of recent decades. "Tibet" sheds light on the country’s complex relationship with China and explains often-misunderstood aspects of its culture, such as reborn lamas, monasteries and hermits, "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," and the role of the Dalai Lama. Van Schaik works through the layers of history and myth to create a compelling narrative, one that offers readers a greater understanding of this important and controversial corner of the world.

Tibet Tibet $9.99 Tibet Tibet

Women in Tibet $34.25 Filling a gap in the literature, this volume explores the struggles and accomplishments of women from both past and present-day Tibet. Here are queens from the imperial period, yoginis and religious teachers of medieval times, Buddhist nuns, oracles, political workers, medical doctors, and performing artists. Most of the essays focus on the lives of individual women, whether from textual sources or from anthropological data, and show that Tibetan women have apparently enjoyed more freedom than women in many other Asian countries. The book is innovative in resisting both romanticization and hypercriticism of women’s status in Tibetan society, attending rather to historical description, and to the question of what is distinctive about women’s situations in Tibet, and what is common to both men and women in Tibetan society.

Buddhismus in Tibet $24.93 Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2008 im Fachbereich Politik – Int. Politik – Region: Ferner Osten, einseitig bedruckt, Note: 2,0, Universit t Rostock (Institut f r Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaften), Veranstaltung: Herrschafts- und Gesellschaftsstrukturen in Tibet, 23 Quellen im Literaturverzeichnis, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Die neuesten Entwicklungen in Tibet, in denen Aufst nde der buddhistischen M nche gewaltsam durch die chinesische Volksarmee niedergeschlagen werden, zeigen immer wieder die enormen Einfl sse, die der Buddhismus auf das tibetische Volk hat. Nicht zuletzt aufgrund der charismatischen Pers nlichkeit des 14. Dalai Lamas konnte die religi se F hrung in Dharamsala, Indien, ihr Ansehen in Tibet erhalten, wenn nicht noch ausbauen. Der tibetische Buddhismus wird in den westlichen Medien oft als eine sehr friedvolle Religion dargestellt. Dieses Bild wird mit einer genaueren Betrachtung der Geschichte des tibetischen Buddhismus zu korrigieren sein. Um die Inhalte des tibetischen Buddhismus darzustellen, ist ein R ckblick auf die Urspr nge der Religion unumg nglich. Diese finden sich im Indien des 6./7. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. und nat rlich mit dem Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, dem Religionsstifter selbst. Im Anschluss werden die Charakteristik der buddhistischen Religion und ihre verschiedenen Schulen erkl rt, um sp ter R ckschl sse auf Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zum Urbuddhismus herausstellen zu k nnen. Das Hauptaugenmerk dieser Arbeit liegt auf dem tibetischen Buddhismus, auch Lamaismus, Vajrayana, Diamant-Fahrzeug, Tantrismus oder tantrischer Buddhismus genannt. ber die Unterscheidung dieser Bezeichnungen kann sp testens nach der Betrachtung des vierten Kapitels ber den Buddhismus in Tibet Klarheit geschaffen werden. Dieser Teil ist in die Unterkapitel Die Entwicklung der buddhistischen Religion in Tibet," Die Institution des Dalai Lama" und Die religi se Praxis" untergliedert. Schlie lich folgt eine kurze Analyse der Frage Was ist brig g

Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land $17.33 At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty. The Dalai Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of agnostics. Patrick French has been fascinated by Tibet since he was a teenager. He has read its history, agitated for its freedom, and risked arrest to travel through its remote interior. His love and knowledge inform every page of this learned, literate, and impassioned book. Talking with nomads and Buddhist nuns, exiles and collaborators, French portrays a nation demoralized by a half-century of Chinese occupation and forced to depend on the patronage of Western dilettantes. He demolishes many of the myths accruing to Tibet–including those centering around the radiant figure of the Dalai Lama. Combining the best of history, travel writing, and memoir, Tibet, Tibet is a work of extraordinary power and insight.

The Struggle for Tibet $13.83 China’s decades-long repression of Tibetan independence continues on as its global economic power continues to grow. In response to the former and despite the latter, the independence movement persists, represented here through the voices of Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya. Born into the repressive one-party regime, both writers now seek for Tibetan cultural and political autonomy, and although each writer theorizes this goal differently, both are in agreement about what must now be done. The result is this milestone exchange. While Wang suggests the complicity of a fear-stricken religion in perpetuating Chinese imperialist rule, Shakya interprets recent Tibetan history as a history of colonialism, against which the independence movement struggles for autonomous rule. These differing and sometimes opposing lines of thought finally climax in the present struggle for independence, ending upon a joint statement regarding Tibet’s future: true autonomy is the only way.

Art of Tibet $14 With the spread of Buddhism among Westerners and the controversy over its status, interest in Tibet has never been greater. This mysterious land, now a province of the People’s Republic of China, has produced some of the most fascinating and creative art in the world. From silk embroidery and textiles to painting, sculpture, and manuscripts, Tibetan art has striking qualities that set it apart from other Buddhist and Asian art. Robert Fisher takes the reader through the history of Tibetan art, starting from its origins in the early days of the Tibetan kingdom. From a bleak and often inaccessible landscape arose a religious and artistic world so vibrant and sophisticated that even China’s emperors commissioned works. The art and spiritual life of the region are inextricably intertwined, and Dr. Fisher explores the distinctive character of that relationship. Careful attention is also given to ritual objects, which comprise some of the most important works of art in Tibetan culture.

Tibet: Writings on History and Politics $50.87 Drawing from a wide range of scholarship from mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century, this book looks at the history and politics of Tibet from a fresh perspective. Addressing the current debates on Tibet with intense academic rigour, Parshotam Mehra is able to focus on the issues of autonomy, the exodus of Tibetan refugees both to India and across the globe, human rights, and India’s role vis-a-vis Tibet. He juxtaposes contemporary literature on Tibet against analyses of its history and politics and examines both the institutions of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama as well as Tibet’s ties with Imperial China, Communist China, the former British rulers of India, and the Tsars of Russia. In doing so, Mehra uncovers the various complexities of the current debates on Tibet. This volume is crucial as it boldly takes up the question of Tibetan sovereignty and the possible direction of conflict resolution in this disputed land.

Seven Years in Tibet $14.63 The astonishing adventure classic about life in Tibet just before the Chinese Communist takeover is now repackaged for a new generation of readers. In this vivid memoir that has sold millions of copies worldwide, Heinrich Harrer recounts his adventures as one of the first Europeans ever to enter Tibet and encounter the Dalai Lama.

The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics $10.99 The status of Tibet has been at the core of the Tibet-China conflict for all parties drawn into it over the past century. China maintains that Tibet is an integral part of China, while Tibetans maintain that Tibet has historically been an independent country. In reality the conflict over Tibet’s status has been a conflict over history. When Chinese writers and political figures assert that Tibet is a part of China, they do so on the basis of history. The People’s Republic of China has pointedly accused the Dalai Lama of duplicity, stating that his unwillingness to recognize that Tibet has been an integral part of China for centuries renders his attempts to compromise on the Tibet issue unacceptable. The centrality of history in the question of Tibet’s status could not be made clearer. This paper is a guide to the historical arguments made by the primary parties to the Tibet-China conflict. It draws on the key assertions about the issue as they have been framed in Chinese and Tibetan to examine the extent to which positions on the Tibet issue that are thought to reflect centuries of popular consensus are actually very recent constructions, often at variance with the history on which they claim to be based.

White Python: Adventure and Mystery in Tibet $28.79 This adventurous novel takes the reader to the mystical lamasery in Tibet where the white python is worshipped by underworld creatures and the high priestess Gynia. It is another saga by Mark Channing where our hero is the British Secret Service Agent Colin Gray. General Dalziell of the British Foreign Office sends our hero to Tibet to defeat an outlaw called Choijieff. Choijieff plans to take over Tibet, kill the Dalai Lama and make himself the king of Tibet to fulfill an ancient prophecy. Will our hero succeed?