Review

Down and Out in China
Red Dust by Ma Jian

RED DUST is one you'll not soon forget ? a fabulous adventure. MA JIAN spent 3 years bumming his way around China, scrounging, stealing, swindling, sleeping in flophouses and by the roadside. Theroux, Seth and many others have written memorable travel books about China, but never anything like this.

The trip spanned 1983-86, an era when letters of introduction still allowed cadres to visit government work units far from home and stay at little or no cost. Forged letters from friends met in his travels were MA JIAN's primary tool enabling him to travel for 3 years with very little income. Fortunately, he also had some talent as a graphic artist, and friends and connections were able to secure short term jobs for him painting advertising hoardings and the like. Even so, he was often reduced to eating filthy food and was frequently ill.

Foreign travellers in those days were limited to a list of open cities and counties, and Westerners' tales of China travel invariably featured mid-night run-ins with the law in which they were roused from their beds and run out of town. Non-Chinese readers will be heartened to learn that the police in those days hassled Chinese travellers as badly as they did foreigners. MA JIAN was often asked for his papers, and spent some of his trip actively on the lam. But his forged letters of introduction always got him through. Certainly, his confrontations with thieves, pickpockets and fellow swindlers were more harrowing than anything foreign tourists typically encounter.

MA JIAN justifies his peregrinations as a quest for spiritual enlightenment: "I came here hoping to see man saved by the Buddha, but in Tibet the Buddha cannot even save himself." I found this religious gloss less than convincing and difficult to understand. In fact, many of China's famous tourist sights have some sort of religious history, and the bare facts of Ma's itinerary strike the Western reader as simply a Chinese version of the typical Western backpacker's odyssey. But it's that Chinese perspective that makes all the difference. Ma writes well, and his account gives a perspective on Chinese society not otherwise available in English. RED DUST's not to be missed.

Bill Purves
21/08/2002

Last Updated: September 7, 2004