The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up

by Michael Meyer

Overview

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, introducing a fascinating cast of characters while 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632869371
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

A two-time winner of a Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing, Michael Meyer has also won a Whiting Writers' Award for nonfiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and on This American Life. He is the author of The Last Days of Old Beijing and In Manchuria. Meyer teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. The winner of a Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing, Meyer has also won a Whiting Writers' Award for nonfiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of The Last Days of Old Beijing, which became a bestseller in China, and he divides his time between Pittsburgh and Singapore.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xv

Chapter 1 A Plunge into the Middle Country 1

Chapter 2 On the Stall-for-Time River 21

Chapter 3 Every Village Faces the Sun 39

Chapter 4 Sinking In 58

Chapter 5 Parting the Cloud of Compassion 70

Chapter 6 Far and Away in Tibet 86

Chapter 7 Tomorrow Will Be Even Better (but Today Things Will Just Get Worse) 99

Chapter 8 Thought Liberation 110

Chapter 9 Beijing Spring 126

Chapter 10 Meet the Parents 149

Chapter 11 Signposts 169

Chapter 12 Three Protests 179

Chapter 13 Arrivals and Departures 194

Chapter 14 Digressions on the New Frontier 209

Chapter 15 Countdown Clocks 229

Chapter 16 Defending the Ghosts 240

Chapter 17 Learning to Speak Olympics 250

Chapter 18 The Road to Sleeping Dragon 264

Chapter 19 "One World, One Dream" One Year Later 270

Chapter 20 A Trans-Siberian Exit 277

Acknowledgments 285

Notes 287

Editorial Reviews

…Meyer is an amiable narrator, and he introduces the reader to some of China's greatest paradoxes, notably a pride in history that coexists with a compulsion to destroy the past.

The New York Times Book Review - Hannah Beech

"Meyer is an amiable narrator, and he introduces the reader to some of China's greatest paradoxes; notably a pride in history that coexists with a compulsion to destroy the past." - New York Times Book Review

"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. . . . [Meyer] delineates his experiences with a great verve and a light hand." - Kirkus Reviews

"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." - Booklist

"Meyer continues to present his fascinating and worthwhile impressions of China. . . . Those planning an actual trip to China as well as armchair travelers will be enlightened and entertained by this exceptional book." - Library Journal

"A captivating book that tells wonderful stories, both about the China Meyer witnesses and the China that has vanished." - Minneapolis Star Tribune

"The Road to Sleeping Dragon is an invaluable resource for anybody determined to engage with today's China. Rather than telling readers what to think about China, Michael Meyer’s lively memoir shows them how to think — how to embrace new experiences, new perspectives, and the ever-changing new incarnations of this incredible country." - Peter Hessler, author of ORACLE BONES and RIVER TOWN

"I've been an admirer of Michael Meyer since his first book, and this, his third, only makes me more so. It's hard for me to think of anyone who can dive into another culture with such infectious zest and curiosity, and who gets in so deep, so fast." - Adam Hochschild, author of KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST

"China has never had an explicator and enthusiast like Michael Meyer. His story of how he got to know the country is exciting, sometimes hair-raising, and always fascinating. This is a terrific book and I recommend it highly." - Ian Frazier, author of TRAVELS IN SIBERIA

"A compelling work of narrative nonfiction about the city itself." - Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal on LAST DAYS OF OLD BEIJING

"A haunting portrait of the interaction between change and changelessness in China." - Slate on THE LAST DAYS OF OLD BEIJING

"Meyer writes from the appealing perspective of an American outsider who can tell a Chinese story from the inside, as it were, by plunging into the private lives of people he came to know intimately . . . As an historian, and especially as a guide to Chinese museums, memorials, and monuments, Meyer is superb . . . [He] is not only a connoisseur of patriotic monuments, but also a wonderful explorer of the relics of a past that is rubbed out, overlooked, or largely forgotten." - Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books on IN MANCHURIA

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2017
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

Library Journal

2017-08-22
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.

Kirkus Reviews