Chris Dombrowski is the author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water . He is also...
Coming Home Crazy
A captivating book about what happened to an American in China, his adventures of daily life and on the road, and what the United States looked like after he got home.
Arranged by letter of the alphabet, with at least one entry per letter, these short pieces capture the variety of daily life in contemporary China. With Bill Holm as companion, one learns what it is like to travel by “hard-seat” train to a remote village, to smuggle Chinese classics back into China, and to experience Mickey Mouse-mania in the Middle Kingdom. Writing about traditions that endure in rural areas as well as the bureaucratic absurdities an American teacher and traveler experiences in the 1980s, Holm further covers such topics as dumpling making, night soil, and banking.
This edition also includes an afterword about the country since Tiananmen.
ISBN:
9781571312501 Publish Date:
08/14/2000
Pages:
264
Size:
6 × 9 × 0.5 in
Weight:
13.9 oz
Like this book? Sign up for occasional updates
Praise and Prizes
“Entertaining . . . Bill Holm clearly loves the Chinese people and their traditional culture.”
Los Angeles Times
“[A] fantastic expedition into the whims, absurdities, smells, tastes and wonders of modern Chinese life . . . Bill Holm provides a warm, wise and unrelentingly witty guide to surviving China.”
San Diego Magazine
“Entertaining, thought-provoking and touching. After reading his book, you won’t look at the United States or China the same way.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“I love it. It is the best book on China I have read for a long time.”
Nien Cheng
author of Life and Death in Shanghai
“The warmth, courage and enduring spirit of the Chinese people permeate the pages of Coming Home Crazy.”
Charleston News and Courier
You Might Enjoy
Based on this book, we recommend you try…
A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, the author’s travels have taken him all over the world. Here he repairs to Brimnes, his fisherman’s cottage on the shore of a fjord in northern Iceland. Looking west from this place of seemingly endless and...
This collection reflects on the author’s time in Iceland (his ancestral home), his ongoing love affair with music, a friend’s death from AIDS, and his bold reactions to the world around him. Moving from Oregon forests to the deserts around Tuscon...
Part traveler’s journal, part philosophical exploration, this book considers the idea of islands and asks whether they encourage eccentricity and grandeur in human beings. Along the way, it introduces beguiling characters and cultures, from the...
Growing up, the author could define failure easily; it was “to die in Minneota.” But when he returned to his hometown twenty years later, he began to discover more of himself and of our time. This books investigates—through the lens of small-town...
Musician. Curmudgeon. Trailblazer. Prairie populist. Teacher. World traveler. Cultural critic. Humanitarian. Scholar. Skeptic. Insightful humorist. Charismatic speaker. Firebrand. Seer. This collection of new and selected poems paints a portrait...