=Books recently read=

I Went To China. I Wrote Things Down by Jon Foster. There have been entire books that I haven't enjoyed as much as the two-sentence title of this 'zine (and you can tell how much I love the title by how many times I'm going to repeat it throughout the course of this review). In this case, you can judge a book by its cover. The flat, declarative announcement that is this 'zines title is an exact reflection of what you'll find on the 30-odd pages inside. And it's all written in the same offhand, deadpan style that just dares you to ask, "so what? Why should the minutiae of a visiting teacher in Beijing be of any interest to anyone? Why should anyone read this?"

Simple answer: "Because I fucking wrote it down, that's why."

This tautological raison d'etre informs Foster's utterly random and meandering musings that begin with his observation, just after takeoff, of "a man who has already gone to the toilet three times" who is "reading a Chinese newspaper with a picture of a plane crash on the front. Allowing a passenger to read something like this should be illegal." 

Foster went to China to teach for a few weeks in the summer of 2011 and this little 'zine is an adaptation of the journal he kept of the experience. The long and the short of it: nothing happened. So much for the "plot" of "I Went To China. I Wrote Things Down". As for the wisdom he culled from his trip to this ancient and culturally rich land, here is a summary of some of the highlights:

The Chinese think I'm fat. I've been called fat a lot; their codeword is "strong."

There's no toilet paper in the bathrooms nor is there any paper towels.

Only ramen noodles come with forks, otherwise it's chopsticks and tiny spoons. 

Chinese rice wine tastes like gasoline and may or may not be made in bathtubs.

In the late 70s a Chinese official went to see John Denver live and brought back one of his records to China...creating a lot of Chinese John Denver fans. Many of the songs sung in the singing competitions are John Denver ones.

Buicks seem to be the most popular American car.

The Chinese do not wear sunglasses.

The Chinese eat bread with chopsticks and watermelon with a spoon.

Look, if I want a learned book about Chinese history, art, politics, and culture I'm sure the Brooklyn Public Library has a wall or two of shelves loaded to the rafters with them, all penned by noted Sinologists with many high falutin' accreditations to their name. But where else am I going to learn that toddlers have small slits in the back of their pants which allow them to shit directly on the street while held by their parents? This is the kind of information that only Jon Foster can provide. This is why you're reading "I Went To China. I Wrote Things Down"!

Dammit, Jon Foster is practically like the Marco Polo of the 21st century!

Okay, not exactly; he didn't bring back anything as valuable as macaroni. But the sort of anecdotal barstool view of cultural history that he offers certainly has a contribution to make.I really do feel like I understand a bit more about the "real" China than I did before reading this text. For instance, Foster draws a verbal portrait of the "typical" Chinese student that is actually a brilliant compact piece of journalistic sociology. He could have been writing for the CIA. 

Come to think of it, maybe he was. He'd make the perfect spy. I doubt anyone would suspect him of nefarious purpose. 

As it is, he doesn't entirely ignore the delicate matter of politics. For instance, did you know that the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square are officially called "traffic incidents"? Foster's visit happens to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in China. It's an event to which the Chinese exhibit a surprising indifference. "At some point," Foster opines, "I imagine the people will forget they're a communist country and one day they won't be." On several levels, this strikes me as a brilliant political and social observation and the more I consider it, the more I'll bet he's right.

But Foster doesn't dwell on stuff like that for long and rightly so. Instead he returns to the quotidian observations that make "I Went To China. I Wrote Stuff Down" so unique, and therefore, so necessary. He talks about the novelty of feeling exotic, which, as a regular guy back in North Carolina, he finds something of a hoot. He talks a lot about beer and drinks even more of it. He talks about food. Hot pot meals that leave his face feeling scalded as if with radiation burns. A lamb cooked tabletop on a spit from which he and his friends tear off by the hunkful like a gang of Mongolian barbarians. Chicken feet skins that "looked like little socks." Strips of roasted duck bill. And some sort of delicious mystery meat (Damn, Jon eats an awful lot of meat!!) that may or may not have been donkey. Perhaps, it was better that Foster inquired no further. As Confucius say, What you don't know won't make you vomit. At least none of Foster's party went "missing" and no one found an earring in their bowl. 

And, of course, Foster touches on the teaching that he did, his ostensible reason for visiting China and what led to his writing this 'zine in the first place; but he doesn't touch it much and I can't resist thinking that in itself is ultimately both the point and the genius of "I Went To China. I Wrote Things Down." It's the stuff you do while doing the stuff you do that is often the real stuff, the stuff that makes for a story worth telling. And "I Went to China. I Wrote Things Down." most certainly is a story worth telling—and reading. 

You can get your very own copy of "I Went To China. I Wrote Things Down." It'll go perfect with your Moo Goo Gai Pan the next time you order take-out. Apparently, you can write to Jon himself to request a copy  at:

jonwfoster@hotmail.com