Paul Theroux - Riding the Iron Rooster

My second Paul Theroux book, after The Great Railway Bazaar. 

Compared to Railway Bazaar, there's a lot more dialogue here. I'm not sure Theroux is the naturally chatty journalist type. Maybe he had to talk to people to get some local colour, the better to paint a "portrait of contemporary China" with. Some of the conversations seemed to go nowhere - I guess that was the point, to show how guarded the Chinese were. I did like, however, moments like when he talked to a bunch of students in another train compartment - the student "frisked like kittens".

Some stuff about Singapore made it into this China book:

"It is an economic miracle," he said, and smiled, adding, "and a cultural desert. They have nothing but money. Their temples are like toys to us. They are nothing - they are not even real. Their Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew is an Oriental posing as a Westerner. But he is not all bad. For example, he has a Confucian idea of the family in politics. In Singapore if you take an old person into your household you get a reduction in taxes. There is something Confucian in that. It's a good idea."

Another guy:

"I was offered a job in Singapore," he said. "It was also oil related. I probably should have taken it, but that place is too strict. I can't stand Lee Kuan Yew. He's a shit. They can have him. I'll take Deng any day." [...] "Know what we call Lee Kuan Yew? Hitler-with-a-heart. Har! Har!"

I wondered if Singapore's culture is determined by the Southern Chinese that make up the bulk of its population, so here are descriptions of Southerners:

Southerners were yokels, in his view. They were greedy. That was why so many of them had left China. [...] "In Shanghai we are sick for knowledge," Mr. Ni said. "But these Amoy people are only interested in making money. That is their main characteristic. They don't like reading or education. Just business."

And:

"Northerners are very tough. North of the Chang Jiang they are loud and muscular. They use violent language. That's why the demonstrations in the north were large and noisy. But we [Southerners] are thin and small and very gentle."

There are echoes of Singapore in a description of Hong Kong:

The Hong Kongers were either overweight or else stylishly skinny. They yelled a lot and wore brand-new clothes and trendy eyeglasses. They fancied themselves up-to-date, and they believed in the myth of their modernity. [...] A great number of their traits were the result of being British colonials. The colonial system really is paternal in an almost literal way. By treating the people like children it turns into a messy family, and some of the children are favored, others become spoiled brats, and still others delinquents and rebels. 

Anyway, I can summarise Iron Rooster in a few lines: Theroux spends a year taking the train around China, and his conclusion is that China kinda sucks. The place is like something out of 1984 (which no one has read), the Chinese abuse animals and intellectuals and Muslims. China's national hobby is nagging. Their laughter is mirthless and their attempts to scam foreigners pathetic. Theroux's favourite place in China is Tibet, largely because Tibet has resisted the Chinese while laughing at them.

Theroux's reports on the Chinese landscape scared me. Apparently there were no wild birds in China except in the deepest Xinjiang and Tibet, and even rural areas were stripped, bald, reduced to farmland for production. It made me want to visit Tibet, Qingdao and maybe Xian (for the terracotta army) though.