Book Review: "Big in China: My Unlikely Adventure Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing" by Alan Paul

This month ex-pat reads takes us to China. 

Our author is a (for lack of a better word) "trailing spouse". His wife is offered the job of bureau cheif in Beijing for the Wall Street Journal. Alan is a freelance writer for Guitar World, and other magazines and can work from anywhere, so after a lot of though they pack up their kids and move to China. 

After being there for a little while Alan finds himself in need of a guitar repair, which sets off a whole series of unexpected events. He meets up with a Chinese musician who also loves the Allman Brothers, and he knows an American who works for the Treasury Department who plays the sax and they start a super casual little bluesy band. But then it gets more serious and they have an actual band on their hands, that's actually doing really well!

The book is about how Alan balances parenting, the expat experience, work, and being in Beijing's premier English and Mandrain singing blues band, Woodie Alan (haha).


The downside to this book was that I wasn't particularly well informed about the music that they were playing. I mean, the Allman Brothers yes, but they mention a lot of the songs they play just by name and it seems like people are just supposed to know what it is. Though, if you are picking this up you are a blues fan and DO know all of these songs. It doesn't take away from the appeal of the book, but it might have added something to be able to hear the music in my head when they talked about the songs. (Author should make a Spotify/Pandora list and put the address in the front so you can listen while you read.)

My favorite parts of this book was the interesting insights to the expat life in a foreign country especially in their little expat compound. I'm glad that they got out and experienced all the different times of China (rural, urban, poor, wealthier) because it seems like it would be pretty easy to stay in the comfortable expat zone with all of the other Westerners coaching what sounded like, the most multicultural little kid soccer team ever). 

Book review: "Finding George Orwell in Burma" by Emma Larkin

For this month's Ex-pat read, our ex-pat is a famous one. George Orwell. You may know him from such incredibly classic books like "Animal Farm" and "1984". I have to say that after reading this book my fingers are itching to get a hold of and reread those two. What you might not know about George is that he lived for a time in Burma, and though it wasn't a topic of many of his writings (though there are some) it effected his writing, and life, a lot.

For the sake of continuity I will call Burma Burma and not Myanmar, because that's what it was called when it was under British colonial rule. Burma is really the centerpiece of the story, a whole character unto itself. I should also note that this book was published in 2004 and that some changes have happened with Burma taking tiny steps closer to freedom but it remains a very closed off place with a staggering history of  human rights abuses. (Examples: imprisoning anyone who protests the government, censoring of press, basically no free speech. Please see here , here  and here for more information). 

Ans just in case someone doesn't know where Burma is....

Our author travels to Burma to see the places that Orwell had lived and worked and to see if there are people reading Orwell. Orwell was, basically a British policeman during his time in Burma and there seems to be a lot of differences between how he felt about Britain's colonization of Burma and how other British officers felt. He sounds like he was kind of a loner, not much of a party animal like some of his compatriots could be. Author Emma goes to some of his old haunts but they totally have the Miss Havisham vibe going on -  if they are still around they are decrepit and empty but you can see how beautiful they used to be. Mostly there is nothing there. And sometimes she gets followed around and watched by government spies basically. 

I think the most interesting parts of the book is her interaction with the Burmese. Whenever they talk about Orwell and his writings it has to be in very hushed tones because his books are pretty subversive. I don't want to give too much away but to a lot of the Burmese, Big Brother isn't some frightening dystopian fantasy, it's their everyday life. I wonder how Orwell would feel if he saw Burma now.

This book made me want to reread some classics that I haven't read since mmy early teens,and it educated me immesnly on a country that I knew very little about. It's worth reading just for a short little Burmese parable about the knights and the dragon (page 107 in the paperback). I give it 3.5 stars!

Book Review: "A Week at the Airport" by Alain de Botton

The "fish out of water"/expat book of the month for March is a little bit different then the others before it. It takes place completely in the airport - so maybe it's technically a pre "fish out of water"/expat book.

In 2008, Terminal 5 opened in London's Heathrow airport. It was designed to handle 35 million people a year. It's huge. It's opening was a cause for celebration , and in a unique twist our author was invited to spend a whole week as the "writer in residence" and to write about the people he met, the things he saw and the inner workings of this huge production.

It's honestly a bit of a struggle to not just make this whole book review just a series of quotes. Our author has a lot of beautifully crafted sentences, and I found myself putting my little sticky notes in many pages. (As an aside, this author has written several other books and I look forward to picking up one or two in the future, and hopefully finding more beautifully crafted sentences).

So let me drop some examples on you:

Alain gets to stay in the ariport's hotel and has these thought's while perusing over the room service menu:

"There can be few literary works in any language as poetic as a room-service menu...the verse composed by the anonymous master at work somewhere within the Sofitel's catering operation

Delicate field greens with sun-dried cranberries,
Poached pears, Gorgonzola cheese
And candied walnuts in a Zinfandel vinaigrette"

(Poetry doesn't usually make me hungry like this does!

On a couple that gets reunited at the airport, but then has to do what everyone else does - actually get out of the airport

"It seems curious but in the end appropriate that life should often put in our way, so near to the site of some of our most intense and heartfelt encounters, one of the greatest obstacles known to relationships; the requirement to pay for and then negotiate a way out of a multi-storey car park".

Getting out of the car park (parking garage) is bad, but probably still not as bad as going to IKEA together, potentially.

I also thought that the "chapter" (they're really more like bulletin points broken down into 3 bigger sections) on how and where they make the different airline's food is also really interesting. 

This was a fast, easy, short read but it had heart and was really interesting and lovingly written. 3.5 stars out of 5!

Also, yay cool cover!