Fried Eggs With Chopsticks

Review by Philip Blazdell

When she learnt that the Chinese had built enough new roads to circle the equator sixteen times, Polly Evans decided to go and witness for herself the way this vast nation was hurtling into the technological age. But on arriving in China she found the building work wasn't quite finished. Squeezed up against Buddhist monks, squawking chickens and on one happy occasion a soldier named Hero, Polly clatters along pot-holed tracks from the snow-capped mountains of Shangri-La to the bear-infested jungles of the south. She braves encounters with a sadistic masseur, a ridiculously flexible kung-fu teacher, and a terrified child who screams at the sight of her.

This might sound like your stereotypical Chinese travelogue and it often seems to the casual book store browser that there are as many books on China as there are Chinese people. However, Polly Evans has produced a rare joy amongst travel books in that she has produced a memoir which is both honest, immensely amusing and very well informed.

Although she is a total wimp (she begins her trip sitting in bed with a cold) and is plagued by loneliness (which starts more or less the second she is away from her own personal comfort zone of friends and banana pancakes) and finds China a difficult and frustrating place she seems to transcend these problems and does her best to immerse herself in all that China has to offer and travels widely from Xian, home of the terracotta warriors, to Shanghai and even to the edge of Tibet. She also ponders the life long question of how can one eat a fried egg using chopsticks.

Evans must also be one of the sweetest people you could hope to meet. Everyone she meets is described as 'happy', 'sweet', or cheerful. Her guides (including the wonderfully named Number 6) are as honest as the day is long, complete strangers engage her in meaningful conversation and she never, ever resorts to writing snide comments or taking cheap shots at the locals like so many other writers might have been tempted to do. To read this book is to travel to a place which almost seems beyond this world. Evans' descriptions are hardly poetic (for example, she describes a girl smiling like 'a sun kissed peach') but stripped of inappropriate hyperbole and flowery descriptions her text gives probably one of the truest pictures of China I have ever read.

The author is also a great story teller and in-between bouts of tea-pot shopping and riding Mag-Lev trains she spins many a good yarn such as the seven foot high eunuch commander who sailed the globe in search of treasure and the empress that chopped off her rivals hands and feet and boiled them to make soup.

Overall this is a lovely book. It gives a portrait of China which is realistic, affectionate and honest. Evans is a warm, compassionate writer and has managed to produce a travel book which is both amusing and well written. This should be on the reading list of anyone looking to learn more about this fascinating country.

• Fried Eggs With Chopsticks by Polly Evans