I have read this book because I wanted to know what is happening in China. Michael Smith is a north Asia correspondent of Australian Financial Review and he is currently based in Tokyo. I am grateful for him reporting his experiences in China. I like to visit China if I have a chance after this pandemic.
I have been to China three times in my life, the first time is sometime maybe 20 years ago in Beijing for a high school trip. I remember I brought some Chinese yuan and that was big money for Chinese people at that time. I enjoyed negotiating what to buy at shops in the street for souvenirs which I could not do in Japan. I remember several places I visited and friends I was with. Also, there is a picture of me being with my friend. I remember I wore a Chinese dress, it was a boys school, we were kidding around. The 2nd time is for an international conference in Beijing in 2011. I was a PhD student at that time. I enjoyed going there. I remember on the first day, my laptop was broken and I went to some Sony shop somewhere in Beijing to get it fixed. I went to Macdonald there to eat my lunch. I was lucky I had the laptop fixed by the end of the day. I am grateful to the hotel manager and the sony engineer for helping me out. The third time, I went to Shengyang for a workshop that my friend hold in his institute in 2019. It is supposed to have the workshop every year after that, but it does not happen because of the pandemic.
In this book, Michael Smith writes about his experience especially in 2018 – 2020. He writes about Xingjian, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the beginning of the pandemic, how he left China and so on. The western media and Chinese media could have their stories as always. The information in this book could be getting old since the book is published. However, writing like his personal memoir helps me to feel better about what happened there. I enjoyed his writing. To be honest, he didn’t write much about his view or opinion on that book, I see he writes his observations based on his experiences. So you don’t get more information you can get from the news however if you want to get the feeling of a journalist being there, you can get it from this book. I will recommend reading this book.
China is a big country it is hard to grasp at a glance. I want to travel there to see more. I am especially interested in going to Chongqing sometime in near future. It looks very beautiful there. Now, Michael Smith is in Tokyo, I want to expect him to write something more about Japan.