East Meets West
It all started with Richard Lloyd Parry’s The People Who Eat Darkness. Parry, as a foreign correspondent for the London Times, gives a thorough account about the disappearance of a British National in the famous pleasure district of Japan: Roppongi. He weaves the main narrative with facts about post-war Japan and the modern Japanese criminal system. But, through it all, the focus was on the 20 year-old girl who vanished without a trace. I wanted to know more and read more about Westerns in Asia. How would you adjust? What would it be like to be so far from home in a completely foreign land?
The answer came to me from Peter Hessler, who has written a series of books about his experiences in a rapidly changing China. His first book, River Town, recounts his experience as a member of the Peace Corps, teaching English at a small provincial college. Over the course of the book, he begins to learn the language and experiences the changes sweeping the country partly through interaction with his students. Hessler followed River Town with Oracle Bones which weaves together the tumultuous past and the exploding future of China. In Country Driving, Hessler gets a Chinese driver’s license and drives the length of the Great Wall as well as a newly rising boomtown in the south. All three of Hessler’s books are masterful, funny and informative. In short, they are perfect.
There is an amazing range of stories by and from Westerners in Asia. You can read about a Missouri native who learns Japanese well enough to work as a crime reporter at a Japanese language newspaper (Tokyo Vice) or an Italian-American G.I. who, during the post WWII occupation, opens the first pizza restaurant in Japan with the help of certain underworld connections (Tokyo Underworld).
Maybe you’d like to read idiosyncratic travelogues created by graphic artists who sketch their way through Japanese cities and towns (Tokyo on Foot and A Year in Japan).
Or you can always try one of the books listed below.
Amazon Says: An incisive and compelling account of the case of Lucie Blackman. Lucie Blackman -- tall, blonde, and 21 years old -- stepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2...
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Amazon Says: A New York Times Notable BookWinner of the Kiriyama Book PrizeIn the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote to...
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Amazon Says: From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.A century ago, ...
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Amazon Says: “Hessler has a marvelous sense of the intonations and gestures that give life to the moment.” —The New York Times Book Review From Peter Hessler, the New York Times best...
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Amazon Says: From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from...
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Amazon Says: "A fascinating look at some fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."--Mario Puzo In this unorthodox chronicle of the rise of Japa...
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Amazon Says: Florent Chavouet, a young graphic artist, spent six months exploring Tokyo while his girlfriend interned at a company there. Each day he would set forth, with a pouch full of ...
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Amazon Says: The Land of the Rising Sun is shining brightly across the American cultural landscape. Recent films such as Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha seem to have made every...
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Amazon Says: Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, the symbolic heart of China pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. ...
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Amazon Says: It had never been done before. Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had an...
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Amazon Says: Inside the Red Mansion is a suspenseful, slyly entertaining journey into the heart of the new China. Due to a mix-up on a routine reporting assignment, Oliver August stumbles ...
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Amazon Says: Learning to Bow has been heralded as one of the funniest, liveliest, and most insightful books ever written about the clash of cultures between America and Japan. With warmth ...
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YouTube Says: "The New Yorker" Beijing correspondent Peter Hessler discusses his book about everyday life in China, "Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip." Presented by Harvard Book Store. ...
- Japan National Tourism Organization
The official tourism site of Japan - China National Tourist Office
The official tourism site of China