A BOOK REVIEW----《China》BY Neil Leach

My friend sent this book to me as a gift.

The book is named, China. On the webpage of an online bookshop, it's said that the author gives decisive and contemporary portraits of popular icons through short, thematic texts, accompanied by photos taken by Gutierrez + Portefaix. Subjects include Mao, the Great Wall, video games, karaoke, etc., and their relation to Chinese culture. It portrays China as the new America - not only a leading industrial nation, but also a dynamic center of world culture.

There are several sentences impressed me.

Even with a lifetime experience in China, nobody could say he knows China. I don't really know China, just understand it.Moreover, I don't know the whole world, even can not understand it.

It's same to many foreigners who are interested in China. This book full of his questions of china and opinions of the world. No flattery and bias.

Several year before, gossip faned the fantasy of the perfect west and the ignorance east. Once we are in the east or west, as he said, we notice that there are so many layers beneath the surface level of a society, even just a single person.

Unfortunately it's become such a trend for something to be the new something else these days. People are always trying to take a short-cut in explaining their point. Unfortunately, it also works. Especially for Americans (who would also be unaware that comparisons of one Asian country with another need first to consider their histories together, at the very least).

In the apparent chaos, there is a certian order. All the produce is carefully graded and divided into separete piles. Everthing has its place. Patterns of self-organisation, it seems, emerge within any complex system."

Regaring the bicycles and open-markets in China, regulations are not tight. A foreigner can hardly riding in Beijing cos it's too dangerous. In an open-market, the acrid smell of veges and the pungent perfume of dies fish fill the air. There are pink mountains of dried shrimps and piles of crabs. They suffered terribly before their death. However, people have getting used to it. "Patterns of self-organisation, it seems, emerge within any complex system".Uh-hha, a very smart piece of comment!)

I recommend this book here because it's thin but comprehensive, it's full of questions but holds a neutral point of view, it not very expensive but ....