Lost on Planet China: The Strange & True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation
J. Maarten Troost (2009)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

Lost on Planet China is the third travelogue by the witty J. Maarten Troost, recapping his travels through one of the world’s largest and populous nations.  He writes from the perspective of an average American traveler, experiencing China’s extremely different culture for the first time, and not holding back his true feelings.  He starts in the massive city of Beijing where he gets a little perspective on Chairman Mao, on China’s death-defying driving habits, and on the mind-blowing assortment of food options on the Chinese menu.  He spends a number of weeks touring all around the country, learning to appreciate the importance of haggling and on the glory in finding a clean bathroom.  His time in Tibet was particularly interesting.  All in all, it is an authentic and very funny look into a country whose influence on the world is growing rapidly.
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ABOUT J. MAARTEN TROOST

Born in the Netherlands but raised in Canada and Washington DC, J. Maarten Troost has emerged as a prominent and popular travel writer.  Besides his travelogue on his journey through China, he has three funny travel books that all center around the South Pacific: The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2003), Getting Stoned with Savages (2006), and Headhunters on My Doorstep (2013).  

GREAT QUOTES:

"How can then this author, who neither speaks Chinese nor has any particular expertise regarding their history or culture, write a book, a biggish book, about China?  This is the question that the author mulled inside the coffeehouse that day.  He pondered the matter, turned it over, approached it from every angle.  And finally he decided there was only one way he would do it.  He would write honestly about China.  He would write from the perspective of a guy who neither speaks Chinese nor has all that much knowledge pertaining to things Chinese, a guy who spent month after month just wandering around this massive and rapidly changing country, without a plan, learning and experiencing life there."
- J. Maarten Troost, Lost on Planet China

INTERESTING LINKS:

MAP OF CHINA