Richard Loseby's experiences give a different view of China, reviewer Mike Crowl finds.
A BOY OF CHINA:
In search of Mao's lost son
Richard Loseby
HarperCollins
Richard Loseby lives in Auckland, but has spent a good deal of his life on the move, travelling in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and European countries as well as China. He has a talent for learning and speaking other languages, and has written two other travel books.
While in China in 1989 he heard the story of how one of Mao Zedong's children was left behind at the beginning of the ‘‘Long March''. While this abandonment was no doubt for practical reasons, Mao never made any subsequent attempt to find his child. Such behaviour would be unusual for a Chinese father.
The mystery of what happened to this boy is the backbone of this book, and Loseby's attempts to find him decades later also allow him to write about modern China and its new and old attitudes, as well as the strangeness of the country itself.
His search involves a kind of ‘‘Long March'' in reverse, and is rewarded with all manner of encounters along the way - and some success at the end. Many of the human interactions are amusing; some are ugly. The intriguing thing for me is that in spite of Mao's brutal domination of Chinese life in the 20th century, the Chinese (and Tibetans) continue to practise hospitality in a way that puts many Westerners to shame.
Time and again people Loseby has only just met will pay for his meal, or help him find accommodation. Almost invariably when he looks for a lift from one place to another there's a passing vehicle (of some kind) to get him there. People ‘‘adopt'' him and show him around.
His book offers a varied and mind-opening perspective on a country we often only know as dark and dangerous.
Mike Crowl is a Dunedin author, musician and composer.
Win a copy
• The ODT has five copies of A Boy of China, by Richard Loseby, to give away courtesy of HarperCollins. For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email, and ‘‘China Book Competition'' in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, May 24.
LAST WEEK'S WINNERS
• Winners of last week's giveaway, Much Ado about Shakespeare, by Donovan Bixley, courtesy of Upstart Press, were: Jennifer Atkinson, Noelene Johnstone and Garth Johnstone, all of Dunedin, Doreen Edwards, of Balclutha, and Diane Glennie, of Crookston.
