Fried Eggs with Chopsticks: One Woman's Hilarious Adventure into a Country and a Culture Not Her Own

by Polly Evans

Book Overview

Polly Evans's itinerary for China was simple: travel by luxurious high-speed train and long-distance bus, glide along the Grand Canal and hike up scenic mountains. Instead, the linguistically impaired adventurer found herself on a primitive sleeper-minibus where sleep was out of the question; perched atop a tiny mule on a remote mountain pass; and attempting a dubious ferry ride down the Yangtze River. Polly was getting to know China in a way she'd...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385339933
• ISBN13: 9780385339933
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Bantam Dell
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Wacky! A good laugh, great airplane reading.

While the catchy title of this latest China travel book should make you want to grab it off a shelf for a quick browse, the concept behind the book should make you want to buy it and keep on reading. Polly Evans established herself as a new breed of travel writer with her first book, It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels. In Spain she experienced more than her share of humorous happenings by attempting to cover one thousand miles in just six weeks, as a lone woman on a bicycle. In her second book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, Evans comes up with an equally wacky idea: capture for herself this unique moment in China's history, viewing the country's key sites, using only public transportation. Are you laughing already? Or gasping in shock at her naiveté? The book's title itself sums up a universal foreigner-in-China experience: things that should be simple and easy are often complicated, difficult, and surprisingly time consuming. And sometimes even impossible. The premise of Evans' Chinese adventure seems very simple: travel through China like the locals do. Like her attempt to gracefully eat fried eggs with chopsticks, the author discovered what a challenge seemingly easy things can become here, especially if you come to the journey ill prepared. Naturally, she finds herself in many situations we expats will recognize and appreciate. Though the ride was wild, as Evans reached her targets by plane, boat, taxi, train, and even by mule, she was still able to find the humor in many frustrating situations as she attempted to absorb the country's history and culture. "Eating a fried egg with chopsticks, I thought as I sat on the bus to Nanjing some hours later, bears small-scale similarities to the greater trials of traveling around China as a foreigner. It is frustrating and frequently ludicrous. Sometimes it is funny. Small tasks take infinitely longer than they should. You look ridiculous, often. But in the end, pride shattered, patience tried, and seemingly against all odds, you do in fact arrive. And then somebody comes along, smiling, and points out the easier route you should have taken." China is fascinating and wonderful, but hard work, she concludes. Given all of the wacky things that happened to her, I sometimes wondered if the only thing keeping her going was knowing that she would get a book out of the trip, if she survived! This book offers a fast frolic through some Chinese history and culture, one woman's travel experiences in the Middle Kingdom, and a healthy dose of with humor. It makes good airplane or beach reading.

Scrambled Aches

Author Polly Evans mentions in passing that when Ernest Hemingway was in China in the 1940s, he took a trek where guests were issued miniature horses to ride. Hemingway took one look at his little horse, scooped it up in one arm and carried it with him. Evans may have read about this in Martha Gellhorn's excellent book Travels With Myself and Another. Also in that book is Gellhorn's observation that people are dreadfully bored by stories of your travels, unless they were disastrous. Evans takes this advice to heart, lurching from one unpleasant situation to another, never encountering actual disaster, but telling of discomfort, disgusting sights, nauseating experiences, and cultural misunderstandings. It's great fun!

Culture Shock

This is a good, fast, and informative read. Be prepared to be shocked and perhaps a bit disgusted because of the graphic explanations of what is done in public. I've never had a great desire to travel to China. Now that I have read the book, I'm not ever going there. The book is filled with great and very interesting historical information. If you want a really great read by the same author get: It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels

The way NOT to see China

Polly Evans travels by bus, train, plane, boat and taxi all over China. She learns how hard it is to move about a nation when you don't know how things work, when you don't know the language and when you're not smart enough to bring rolls of your own toilet paper. I mean, half the book is interesting points of hard won knowledge about the Chinese culture but the other half is full of whining complaints about the food, the filth, the yak-butter tea, the crowded trains, the dirty restrooms and so on. The list seems to go on forever. And sometimes she seems to be more insulting than funny. I think, what happened, is that she thought that mainland China would be like the Hong Kong she had lived in - but just a little less. She thought she would find cities kind of like Hong Kong but not as rich or as clean. What she failed to understand was that the People's Republic of China is HUGE. Over three MILLION square miles. She is going to find layers and layers of history and dirt, educated people and ill mannered ones, nice towns and muddy slums. And as she seemed to go without planning, figuring out things day to day, of course she's going to have a rough time of it. Of course most of the tour information for Chinese sites is outdated - the information in tour guides are outdated for museums in DC! A great book for people who think they can pack up, buy a ticket and head over there without any planning, common sense or language classes. I loved it.