The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's
Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid~ Click here to purchase Lost On Planet China at Barnes & Noble
This author writes travel books, not really guidebooks, more along the lines of a really long essay. :) I have read his other two books and have enjoyed them immensely.
For someone who has never wanted to go to China, I found the book very interesting and funny. He starts off in Beijing and has nothing but "wonderful" things to say about the air quality (I guess it's really bad). He is just a man wandering around this very interesting country, going everywhere from Shanghai to Tibet to the coastal areas to, yes, the Great Wall of China. He writes about the culture of every town/city he visits and is surprised by the fact that some of them are very different, in the sense that in one town he was beat up for what he understands to be no apparent reason, to another town where he was offered an orange (the best orange he has ever had).
He does add historical facts, and acknowledges them at the end of the book, on things from Chairman Mao to Tiananmen Square and all points in-between.
I still have no desire to visit China, but I did find the book informative and pleasurable. Check it out.
His other two books are "Getting Stoned with Savages" and "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" (I can't remember which one he wrote 1st, but you should read them in order as his family is eventually involved.) - reviewed by Dawn H.
Also available in a paperback version titled “Lost on Planet China: Or How I Learned to Love Live Squid” (available May 12, 2009)