Dragon's Pupils: China Odyssey-91

by Kenneth Starck

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813812674
• ISBN13: 9780813812670
• Release Date: January 1867
• Publisher: Iowa State Press
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Academic happiness in the lair of the dragon

The hustle and bustle of busy Beijing must present a startling contrast to the corn fields of Iowa. The similarities and surprises that another culture can provide are described in this book by University of Iowa journalism professor Kenneth Starck who spent a year in China teaching journalism to Chinese students in the mid 1980s. Besides the differences in the U.S and Chinese news media and the perplexities they cause in teaching, Starck also describes his forays into China with his wife and daughter. Besides the obvious (a visit to the Great Wall), there are also little delightful episodes; one such is when an inspector on a train demanded that Starck's daughter hand over her Walkman cassette player, and slipped on the headphones to check what kind of music the American girl was listening too. While Starck sweated ('we could be in real trouble'), the inspector started to bop to the music and handed back the equipment to them with a smile. "We passed," Starck writes. "So did the Eurythmics."