Book Suggestions

China is a country haunted, and nourished, by its past. Old fears and antiquated habits hold great power. Chinese culture, for all its glorious achievements, is burdened with a tendency toward caution and a wariness of anything that threatens the established authority. Conforming, relying on old teachings, and controlling youthful impulses are staples of the Chinese way. Although Chinese architecture and poetry and cuisine have attained illustrious heights by mixing tradition and innovation, China's society is also riddled with conventions that breed close-mindedness and privacy. People are circumspect. Even in times of rapid change, much remains hidden.

China is a land of secrets. Political decisions are still made behind the thick walls of secluded compounds. Social intercourse relies on elaborate rules, and allusion and suggestion are preferred to directness or confrontation. Friends and colleagues often keep significant aspects of their lives secret from eachother. Sex lives are practiced with discretion. Spiritual traditions are elusive and hard to pin down. Outsiders trying to describe China often circle back to the same word: inscrutable.

As a young man, I saw China as many Westerners do: an endless sea of indistinguishable faces. I knew China was an ancient civilization and the world's most populous country, but I had a hard time discerning any sense of humanity in the people I saw in newspaper photographs. When I was 25, casting about for direction, China had just begun to opening its doors to Westerners after decades of seclusion. I had grown up in a comfortable home in Brooklyn, New York, and my Waspy youth was a safely predictable sequence of schooling, summers at the beach, and orderly dinner table conversation. I wanted a challenge. Going to the far side of the world to learn a difficult language fit my bill. China looked secretive, and that attracted me.

There was something more that drew me, too. China looked like a feminine culture. Chinese women were delicate, lithe and small-breasted, while Chinese men appeared somewhat effeminate. Social interaction in China seemed soft and gentle, and averse to confrontation. Growing up surrounded by sisters, I was a friendly and gentle boy, not tough or strong. I never felt particularly masculine. In China, I sensed that my soft side would be an asset, not a drawback. Once I got there, I felt safe and unthreatened among Chinese people. I knew innately how to talk to them. I felt at home among Chinese people in the same way I was usually more comfortable around women than around men. I could sympathize with how uncomfortable many Chinese people felt with the rougher edges of Westerners, just as I was uncomfortable with macho men. I knew without thinking how to assure a Chinese woman or man that I was not threatening. It gave me a sense of power. In China, my Western appearance made me feel masculine in a way I had not felt in the West. Among Chinese, I looked tall and strong. I was more of a man, without trying.

Westerners often carry misguided notions about China. Today, some see China as a serious military power that might threaten the United States. Others see a country on the brink of dissolution, torn by the strains of over-population and corruption. Those views are invariably alarmist of wishful thinking, or some combination. Over the years, I came to see that China is so big and complicated that anyone can find evidence for any argument one wants to make: China is friendly, China is threatening, China is reserved, China is expansionist, China is masculine, China is feminine. Those arguments say more about the arguer than they do about China.

When I first went there in 1984, China was still recovering from the nightmare of leftist rule, a period known as the Cultural Revolution. Many people were afraid to speak to a Westerner, much less befriend one. State-run stores had surly clerks and empty shelves. Telephones were scarce. Travel was an ordeal. Still, I found myself drawn to the hidden sides of this beguiling nation. As I spent years there, learning how to speak and find my way through Chinese idiosyncrasies and cultural habits, I gradually became able to probe more deeply. I pursued Chinese women. I became a journalist and used my calling card to peek into the mysteries of Chinese politics, the netherworld of underground business and remotecorners of the vast countryside. Uncovering secrets became my domain.

As a journalist, I had another mission: writing about China as a nation of individuals, not a monolith. In newspaper articles, I wanted to tell stories that captured the flavor of people's lives. I was determined to show how China's growing economy was bringing openness and diversity, and not fueling a consolidation of Communist power, as many in the West mistakenly believed. I tracked the way the authorities were reluctantly relinquishing control over the lives of Chinese citizens. I watched China undergoing a transformation from a stagnant and tightly restricted police state in the early 1980s into a chaotic and semi-modern country at the turn of the century, an immeasurably freer place to live.

When I sat down to write a book, 16 years after I had arrived, I wanted to tell the story I knew best: my own. I wanted to convey how China came alive in my moments of interaction with those willing to show me a hidden realm. A cute cafeteria worker introduced me to nightlife in Xian. A gregarious policeman told me about murder in the countryside. A political activist guided me through the hidden drama behind Tiananmen Square. A sleazy businessman in Guangzhou tried to snow me, but instead went to jail for saying too much. A voluptuous executive in Shanghai taught me about the secret sex lives of married women. A transgendered choreographer opened my eyes to my own true nature.

All through my travels I was searching, for what I was not sure. I intuitively honed in on secret aspects of Chinese culture, as though the act of uncovering them would satisfy my intellectual and emotional yearnings. I came to see that my ultimate quest involved a spiritual issue I had to encounter all on my own. And I found my answer on a hilltop in the most secret land of all, Tibet.