Shanghaiist: Book Review: Undress Me In The Temple Of Heaven

James Creegan

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:20:06 +0800

Yes my Mum always used to tell me to judge a book by its cover. Or something like that anyway.

EL JEFE

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:07:43 +0800

The whole front cover: title, image, sunglasses, pose, etc., is offensive. That's how I judge that book. And Hahaha, The Beach. Drugs.

T

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:48:47 +0800

Wow. Both praise for pap, trite airport novel like the Beach AND condemnation for a well written memoir that is a good look at China in the 80s. I have to question your reading tastes. I'm just sorry there was no dramatic shoot-out with Chinese pot farmers in Iron and Silk. Sheesh. River Town is Hessler's personal account (i.e. NOT A NOVEL) of his two years in Sichuan as a Peace Corp volunteer.

Andy Best

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:13:35 +0800

@T Iron and Silk is horrific and the movie, that he stars in himself, is worse. Isn't River Town the novel he wrote without going there? As in imaginative fiction? Does it read like a memoir? I haven't read it. I saw a lot of parallels to 'westerner travels to exotic land' memoirs, when I read The Beach. On another note, I was surprised to see how much things had been moved around for the movie version of The Beach.

armie

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:08:06 +0800

Lol. "Foreign Babes in Beijing" is certainly a disastrous title. Any shred of interest I would ever have in reading such a book vanished once I saw that one.

Derek Sandhaus

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:08:07 +0800

My favorite hands down is "Red Dust" by Ma Jian if that counts.

T

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:18:31 +0800

I'd argue that there's lots of bad .. . and lots of good China memoirs. Just because there's a lot of them. Off the top of my head, the best ones by foreigners I think are Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk, Red China Blues by Jan Wong and of course Peter Hessler's River Town. How does "The Beach" - a work of abject fiction - fit into the discussion here?

Andy Best

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:07:14 +0800

This genre of book does occasionally rise up and above into something more rewarding. I just read 'The Beach'across a few Sunday's in Boonna. It's a typical find yourself/go nuts tale of traveling into an exotic land where the locals barely register as independent intelligent voices, but it has a clear philosophical goal or area to explore. China memoirs seem to lack that and just list up a bunch of 'isn't it all amazing/crazy stories'. Hmmn, I read another one lately that was about a girl in Japan who ended up working in bars as a hostess. It was interspersed with stories about not dealing with her brother back home who was mentally ill. It's a classic in the genre. Ah I can't remember the title right now.

Ada Fredelius

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:41:31 +0800

...well, I think "Foreign babes in Beijing" has a nice ring ;)

Rebekah Pothaar

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:41:30 +0800

Ada, thanks for the review. Now I don't need to read it... Although, one can't always be turned off by bad book titles. I really thought the title "Foreign Babes in Beijing" was so atrocious that I didn't want to read it until my managing editor told me it was actually a decent read.