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Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation Review

Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation Feature

• ISBN13: 9780767922012
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Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation Overview

The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.

Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.

Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself.

Maarten Troostbrings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.

Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation Specifications

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: Maarten Troost is a laowai (foreigner) in the Middle Kingdom, ill-equipped with a sliver of Mandarin, questing to discover the "essential Chineseness" of an ancient and often mystifying land. What he finds is a country with its feet suctioned in the clay of traditional culture and a head straining into the polluted stratosphere of unencumbered capitalism, where cyclopean portraits of Chairman Mao (largely perceived as mostly good, except for that nasty bit toward the end) spoon comfortably with Hong Kong's embrace of rat-race modernity. From Beijing and its blitzes of flying phlegm--and girls who lend new meaning to "Chinese take-out"--to the legendary valley of Shangri-La (as officially designated by the Party), Troost learns that his very survival may hinge on his underdeveloped haggling skills and a willingness to deploy Rollerball-grade elbows over a seat on a train. Featuring visits to Mao's George Hamiltonian corpse and a rural market offering Siberian Tiger paw, cobra hearts, and scorpion kebabs (in the food section), Lost on Planet China is a funny and engrossing trip across a nation that increasingly demands the world's attention. --Jon Foro

Maarten Troost's Travel Tips for China

1. Food can be classified as meat, poultry, grain, fish, fruit, vegetable and Chinese. Embrace the Chinese. If you love it, it will love you back. True, you may find yourself perplexed by what resides on your plate. You may even be appalled. The Chinese have an expression: We eat everything with four legs except the table, and anything with two legs except the person. They mean it too. And so you may find yourself in a restaurant in Guangzhou contemplating the spicy cow veins; or the yak dumplings in Lhasa, or the grilled frog in Shanghai, or the donkey hotpot in the Hexi Corridor, or the live squid on the island of Putuoshan. And you may not know, exactly, what it is you’re supposed to do. Should you pluck at this with your chopsticks? The meal may seem so very strange. True, you may be comfortable eating a cow, or a pig, or a chicken, yet when confronted with a yak or a swan or a cat, you do not reflexively think of sauces and marinades. The Chinese do however. And so you should eat whatever skips across your table. It is here where you can experience the complexity of China. And you will be rewarded. Very often, it is exceptionally good. And when it is not, it is undoubtedly interesting. And really, when traveling what more can one ask for. So go on. Eat as the locals do. However, should you find yourself confronted with a heaping platter of Cattle Penis with Garlic, you’re on your own.

2. To really see China, go to the market. Any market will do. This is where China lives and breathes. It is here where you will find the sights, sounds and smells of China. And it is in a Chinese market where you will experience epic bargaining. The Chinese excel at bargaining. They live and breathe it. It is an art; it is a sport. It is, above all, nothing personal. If you do not parry back and forth, you will be regarded as a chump, a walking ATM machine, a carcass to be picked over. And so as you peruse the cabbage or consider the silk, be prepared to bargain. The objective, of course, is to obtain the Chinese price. You will, however, never actually receive the Chinese price. It is the holy grail for laowais--or foreigners--in China. Your status as a laowai is determined by how proximate your haggling gets you to the mythical Chinese price. But you will never obtain the Chinese price. Accept this. But if you’re very, very good, and you bargain long and hard, and if you are lucky and catch your interlocutor on an off day, you may, just may, receive the special price. Consider yourself fortunate.

3. Travelers are often told to get off the beaten path, to take the road less traveled, to march to a different drum. You don't need to do this in China. The road well-traveled is a very fine road. The French Concession in Shanghai is splendid. The Forbidden City is a wonder of the world. So too the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an. Indeed, the Chinese say so themselves. There is much to be seen in places that are often seen. And yet... China is not merely a country. It is not a place defined by sights. It is a world upon itself, a different planet even. And to see it--to feel it--means leaving that well-traveled road. And China is an excellent place for wandering. From the monasteries of Tibet to the rainforests of Yunnan Province and onward through the deserts of Xinjiang to the frozen tundra of Heilongjiang Province, China offers a vast kaleidoscope of people and terrain unlike anywhere else on Earth. This may seem intimidating to the China traveler. Will there be picture menus in the Taklamakan Desert? (No.) Is Visa accepted in Inner Mongolia? (Not likely.) Still, one should move beyond the Great Wall. And if you can manage to cross six lanes of traffic in Beijing, you can manage the slow train to Kunming.

4. Hell is a line in China. You are so forewarned.

5. Manners are important in China. How can this be, you wonder? You have, for instance, experienced a line in China. Your ribs have been pummeled. You have been trampled upon by grandmothers who are not more than four feet tall. You have learned, simply by queuing in the airport taxi line, what it is like to eat bitter, an evocative Chinese expression that conveys suffering. This does not seem upon first impression to be a country overly concerned with prim etiquette. But it is. True, hawking enormous, gelatinous loogies is perfectly acceptable in China. And a good belch is fine as well. And picking your teeth after dinner is a sign of urbane sophistication. But this does not mean that manners are not taken seriously in China. It’s just that they are different in China. And so feel free to spit and burp, but do not even think of holding your chopsticks with your left hand. You will be regarded as an ill-mannered rube. So watch your manners in China. But learn them first.

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Customer Reviews

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Check Out Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal for $10.99

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Review

I finally have learned what I am really eating! This book is as relevant today as it was when it was published back in 2002, probably more so! Fast Food Nation traces the history of the fast food industry from hotdog stands to the multi-billion burgers sold as corporate America spreads its gospel of a quick-and-easy (and cheap) "western diet" around the globe. To promote mass production and profits, the industry has to keep labor and material costs low. "Flavorists" in laboratories along the New Jersey turnpike concoct the "natural flavors" found in almost every processed food product. To witness the gruesome business of meat-processing, Schlosser visited slaughterhouses. What he discovered was both repugnant and hazardous. Every day more than 200,000 Americans are made sick by contaminated food AND over 300,000 are hospitalized for a food-borne illneess. Kudos to Eric Schlosser for jump starting our awareness of cheap food vs. safe food and the large corporate producers who virtually monopolize the food system. If you want to better educate yourself about how the fast food culture has undermined our health over the past 30 years and is slowly but surely shortening our life span, start with this book. After you're done reading Fast Food Nation, pick up a Michael Pollan book if you want updated evidence that the "western diet" is making this nation sick with multiple diseases. Please don't rely on most MDs to figure it out for you, think for yourself, you may be amazed to find out that your grandma was right, you are what you eat.

Below is an excerpt from a 2010 Michael Pollan article (May 20, 2010 New York Review of bookss)
"But although cheap food is good politics, it turns out there are significant costs--to the environment, to public health, to the public purse, even to the culture--and as these became impossible to ignore in recent years, food has come back into view. Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of food safety scandals opened people's eyes to the way their food was being produced, each one drawing the curtain back a little further on a food system that had changed beyond recognition. When BSE, or mad cow disease, surfaced in England in 1986, Americans learned that cattle, which are herbivores, were routinely being fed the flesh of other cattle; the practice helped keep meat cheap but at the risk of a hideous brain-wasting disease.

In the wake of these food safety scandals, the conversation about food politics that briefly flourished in the 1970s was picked up again in a series of books, articles, and movies about the consequences of industrial food production. Beginning in 2001 with the publication of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, a surprise best-seller, and, the following year, Marion Nestle's Food Politics, the food journalism of the last decade has succeeded in making clear and telling connections between the methods of industrial food production, agricultural policy, food-borne illness, childhood obesity, the decline of the family meal as an institution, and, notably, the decline of family income beginning in the 1970s.
Besides drawing women into the work force, falling wages made fast food both cheap to produce and a welcome, if not indispensible, option for pinched and harried families. The picture of the food economy Schlosser painted resembles an upside-down version of the social compact sometimes referred to as "Fordism": instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as Henry Ford proposed to do, companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food. The advent of fast food (and cheap food in general) has, in effect, subsidized the decline of family incomes in America.
But perhaps the food movement's strongest claim on public attention today is the fact that the American diet of highly processed food laced with added fats and sugars is responsible for the epidemic of chronic diseases that threatens to bankrupt the health care system. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that fully three quarters of US health care spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers. The health care crisis probably cannot be addressed without addressing the catastrophe of the American diet, and that diet is the direct (even if unintended) result of the way that our agriculture and food industries have been organized"

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Overview

Six Cassettes, 9 hrs.

Read by Rick Adamson

FAST FOOD NATION - the groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats - and spent nearly four months on the New York Times bestseller list - now available on cassette!

Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelling the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths - from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains' efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization - a phenomenon launched by fast food.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Specifications

On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.

Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed

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Customer Reviews

Glued to the book from beginning to end - W.K. -
Schlosser could not have done a better job describing Americas's fast food industries and meat-packing plants. A must read for all ages. This is one of the best non-fictions I've ever read.



Eye-opening report that will make you think twice about eating out again - Joseph Copeli - Forest Hills, NY
Not just a great book, but a life-changing book. It's been several years since I've read it, but I still cannot bring myself to eat at a McDonald's-type fast food place, for health as well as moral reasons.

Schlosser describes in great detail just what it is you support every time you give your money to a corrupt company as influential as McDonald's. They engage in a number of unhealthy and unethical practices to keep their profits at record highs. I don't want to name all of the bad policies facilitated by the fast food industry, but here are a some of the most important ones we contribute to every time we eat fast food:

* The unhygienic and inhumane treatment of cows and chickens - Animals kept in tight, enclosed spaces don't get the exercise or fresh air they need to be healthy. The natural food source of cattle is grass, yet they are fed a low quality corn meal mixed with hooves, horns, stomach lining and other cattle remains from previous slaughters. Similarly, chickens get fed some grain and the stuff left at the bottom of the cages of earlier chickens (shredded newspaper and feces) mixed with feathers, claws, beaks and other unused chicken parts. Schlosser notes that feeding animals feces and the remains of other animals have been linked to the spread of diseases like Mad Cow Disease and E. Coli.

* A substandard quality of food - Animals eating the trash mentioned above plus being pumped full of anti-biotics and hormones (to create the semblance of health) creates low quality food eaten by millions of Americans, which contributes to poor health, food poisoning and spread of disease. Not to mention that random tests at fast food places found that there are feces in your hamburger.

* Dangerous and unsanitary working conditions at meat factories and slaughterhouses - The safety standards and worker's benefits are very low at the factories where meat is processed, creating an environment with a high number of work-related injuries and little help for the injured employees. A number of meat factories bus illegal immigrants in from Mexico to work in these factories, who are provided with even fewer benefits and compensation than American workers. These unskilled laborers are frequently injured and contribute to the contamination of meat because of their low training.

* Pressure from food corporations on Congress to keep worker wages down, and consequently, profits high - Fast food companies seek to make food preparation more and more automated, to be able to hire workers and train them as little as possible. This creates an "expendable worker" and nearly unlimited supply of employees who can be easily and cheaply replaced.

Reading this book made me realize how much damage I was causing in supporting fast food restaurants and the infrastructure that uses poor people and forces low-quality and unhealthy food on us. McDonald's and the like will never get another dollar of my cash to damage this country further.

I haven't given up on meat by any means, I just make sure that I'm eating animals that were treated well, fed real food, not pumped full of antibiotics, and handled properly when slaughtered to avoid contamination. To eat any other way is just too scary to comprehend.

[Disclosure: This review also appears on FingerFlow.com, a site for review and discussion of creative works.]



After reading this you won't eat those cheap cherry pies anymore! - J. Johnson - Gainesboro, TN USA
I bought this book one day at the Cookeville, Tennessee Goodwill store. The cover art was what caught my eye and I flipped through it. It's one of those books that you can't put down if you've ever worked at a restaurant or a grocery store and really wondered where the food comes from and how it gets there.

Very interesting history of the t.v. dinner and frozen foods in here (I'm not joking!) If you are easily grossed out this is not for you but this is not a gross out kind of book either. It's very well researched. A whole lot of stuff about McDonald's in here.

After reading this book I will never eat one of those cheap cherry pies you see in the grocery stores. I used to love those! I can never eat one again after I found out how they made that artificial cherry flavor smell and taste.

I didn't need to eat anymore cheap cherry pies for the rest of my life anyway so I'd like to thank Eric Schlosser for writing Fast Food Nation. I'd also like to ask him to never investigate, report on or write anything about Shoney's Hot Fudge Cake.




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