That's the subtitle of the book Walt's reading, Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost (Broadway Books, New York, 2008). It's part travel adventure, part history, part political commentary, and well worth reading.
The author is half Dutch, half Czech, was raised in Canada now makes his home in the USA. His previous books include The Sex Lives of Cannibals, and Getting Stoned with Savages. The bizarre titles made me pick them up off the library shelf, and I was hooked after just a couple of pages.
Mr. Troost gives the lie to those who say that China is becoming more like the west every day, thanks to the pressure of international business and economics. Tain't so! The author travelled through parts of China not long after I came home, and what he writes is what I saw. China is still very much a world apart.
Some of you, if you haven't been to China, may think that Mr. Troost is a fabulist -- making it all up. Tain't so! Anyone who has spent even a couple of days in the Middle Kingdom will agree with his observation that "much of life in China is essentially a flirtation with anarchy".
The Houston Chronicle calls Lost on Planet China "at once breezy, funny and edgy, with enough good reporting to make your feel what it's like to Walk China's real streets". Yes. Read it!
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