Archive - January 30, 2018

This is an edited version of a long review appearing this Sunday, February 4, 2018 in The New York Times Book Section. JCoyne China From the Ground Up By HANNAH BEECH  Southeast Asia bureau chief of The Times. – THE ROAD TO SLEEPING DRAGON Leaming China From the Ground Up By Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) 296 pp. Bloomsbury. $28. Michael Meyer, a Minnesotan who went to China as one of the Peace Corps’ first volunteers there; and Xiaolu Guo, a writer and filmmaker who grew up in a salt-spattered Chinese fishing village, explore the meaning of home in a nation perpetually in transition. The China they describe in their memoirs no longer exists, covered by layers of concrete, glass and fiber-optic cables that have tethered even the most isolated farmer to the modern age. Still, it is the journey through heady, whiplash times that helps us understand where the nation . . .