Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road (TRAVELER)

Exciting with every turn of the page. Wonderfully written.

Takes you right into the heart of China! Realistic and enthralling account of an actual journey across China. A mix of graphic details and humorous anecdotes. If you liked Steven's Malaria Dreams, you'll like this!

Travellers come in many flavors, just like ice cream. Some try to "get in" with the natives of the places they go in order to learn more about foreign ways and perceptions. Others prefer to challenge themselves with tests of strength and endurance, paddling up jungle rivers or scaling giant peaks. There are innumerable variations. However, there is one type of traveller whose tales tire me very quickly. That is the type who likes to regale their readers (or listeners) with the total awfulness of everything, to impress (?) people with what they had to put up with, and to tell how ___________ the people were. (choose from among....greedy, stupid, venal, tricky, persistent, dirty, lying, impossible) Occasionally they meet one or two different individuals who only prove the point about the rest.Stuart Stevens did not know anything about China. His attitude seems to hover most of the time around the level of "frat boy goes China". He managed to recruit two other babes in the woods, plus Mark Salzman, who did know Chinese, had spent a couple years in China already and had written a decent book about it. It would be interesting to hear Mark's opinion of this trip. That travelling rough in Third World countries tends to be difficult is hardly news. Of course, it all might not have been nearly as bad as Stevens says because he is so securely fastened into the "vomit, spit, and urine everywhere" school of travel writing. Stevens had the idea to contact a famous solo traveller from the 1930s, Ella Maillart, a Swiss lady, who had journeyed with a British man along the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Xinjiang province (once known as Chinese Turkestan). He tries to retrace their steps, but fails totally and completely. He is forced by Chinese bureaucracy to take the usual tourist route around the north of the desert, winding up in Kashgar, almost to Pakistan. This is an interesting part of the world, and when Stevens can get away from his lightweight moaning about the primitive conditions, the cold (who told him to go in December ?), the bad food, and duplicitous, intransigent Chinese, he writes a nice description. In fact, I would say that this is a well-written travel book with nice flashes of humor, but focussed mostly on the negative. The author takes a leaf from Carlos Castaneda in his "Conversations with Don Juan". He just repeatedly fails to get the message. If he had only decided early on that Chinese hate to tell others "NO" directly, but prefer to give some excuse which may sound lame to Westerners, but which indirectly tells the recipient that "what you are asking is not possible", we could have been spared all the incredulous, open-mouthed astonishment at the Chinese bureaucrats' "lying ways". What we have here is a failure to communicate. I'm sure this is all part of a non-organized trip to Turkestan, but it is not the major part, nor is it a very interesting part. If you are into the Yuck School of Travel Writing, this work is just up your alley. If you would like some sort of perspective on Xinjiang, its people, history and problems, give this book a miss.

Like another of his books, ("Malaria Dreams"), this one is hilarious, interestingly informative, & keeps the reader riveted to the extent of staying up LATE, addicted & unable to stop reading & go to bed. Also good reading for teenagers.

Stevens provides a humorous recounting of a romp through Western China attempting to follow the trail of 1936 travelers Fleming an Maillart along the ancient Silk Road. Night Train to Turkistan is entertaining for its quirky characters including infuriating bureaucrats, reluctant Chinese interpretor (Mark Salzman, author of Lying Awake and Iron and Silk), a six foot female athlete who draws a crowd of suitors and gawkers everywhere she goes, and proprietors of various roadside establishments.The four travelers are just outrageous and creative enough to actually make their way from Beijing to Kashgar and back, despite a multitude of bureaucrats that seems hellbent on prohibiting them from doing just that. The book starts out with the quartet delivering skis to a national ski team in a country with no ski areas, in the hopes of obtaining a vaguely official-looking reference letter that might unlock some door somewhere. It goes on from there.This was a fairly quick read, and, as other reviewers have noted, it's not heavy on anthropological or historical insights. But I don't think the intent of the book was to provide these insights. This is a case where getting there is all the fun. The book is all about the journey, and those who have attempted to journey through bureaucratic developing nations are likely to recognize the types of frustrations and seemingly inexplicable events and policies recounted here. The book is all about crammed unheated buses and trains and low-flying planes and various other conveyances. It's about imperfectly built Russian hotels and incomprehensible bus stations and greasy roadside noodle stands and scheduled group pit stops and increasingly implausible explanations from government workers, desk clerks, and pencil pushers. This all sounds like an incredible bore, but Stevens' entertaining descriptions take you there and hold your attention to the end. If you are looking for an anthropological or historical treatise on Western China, you will be happier looking elsewhere. But as a humorous recounting of a journey through Western China, this one fills the bill. It is primarily from the perspective of a traveler, and the insights are limited, but the observations of a traveler are well worth the price of the book.As an aside, several of the other reviewers suggest that this book was set in 1989 or around the time of the protests in Tiananmen Square. In fact the book was published in 1988, and the journey occurred in 1986, both prior to the protests in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. It is unfair to suggest that the author was minimizing the events of that spring, as they had not yet occurred.

ok

Racist and sexist drivel. The author comes across as deeply unlikable in their own book. The author is remarkable in his lack of intellectual curiosity and respect for others. Why write a travel book about China if you don't like traveling, China or Chinese people?I finally stopped reading when the author shared that Chinese people who want to practice their English conversation skills are "language rapists" according to his (also deeply annoying) interpreter because they ~take advantage~ of the foreign traveler. This seemed like a clever thing to share? There were numerous racist observations and complaints in the first few chapters that I was able to struggle through.Don't waste your time on this insufferable book.