Fried Eggs with Chopsticks

July 24, 2006
Evans reprises the light, kooky formula she adopted with her debut travelogue (It's Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels
) in this account of her solo trip across China. Armed with Wet Wipes, a smattering of Mandarin and tips from friends in Beijing, she travels by bus, train and even a mule from Beijing to the polluted Mongolian city of Datong before zigzagging south to Shanghai, then on to Tibet and ending in Hong Kong. Attracting attention along the way as a waiguoren
, or foreigner, she marvels at the "alluringly foreign... but also... hellishly frustrating" country while vigilantly rubbing her hands with antibacterial lotion, a habit that doesn't prevent a nasty cold. In restaurants, she orders by pointing to others' meals; in squalid public restrooms, she holds her breath. She learns a little kung fu and calligraphy, eats stewed dog and drinks yak-butter tea. Though Evans beefs up the story with historical nuggets on the Mao regime and more, her jaunty style often verges on the cartoonish, as with her impressions of unintelligible Mandarin: "gobbledy gook." Evans's sophomore effort will make an entertaining companion for armchair travelers who enjoy women's magazine–style travel writing.

October 1, 2006
British travel writer Evans ("Its Not About the Tapas: A Spanish Adventure on Two Wheels") takes an extremely courageous solitary trip around the Peoples Republic of China, traveling by train, bus, boat, airplane, automobile, bicycle, and mule. Her book begins as she stares at the cadaver of Chairman Mao on display in Beijing, then spins the yarn of all the trouble his personal physician had with the embalming, comparing it to similar processes with Lenin and Stalin. Evans learns a little Chinese before her trip and knows a resourceful couple in Shanghai who have a travel business, but she is pretty much on her own as she ventures out into this exciting, mysterious country. She endures the excruciating Chinese massage of "gua sha", in which the masseuse scrapes her back with a flat implement, a process that almost immediately cures her miserable cold; journeys through and gets lost in the bustling streets of modern Shanghai; and ventures into small villages that have not changed in years. She stays in modern hotels and on one occasion finds herself in a hotel for prostitutes. Her tales are amusing and truly fun to read, and the book gives readers a firsthand look at the worlds most populous nation. A helpful map of her travels and a list of sources are included. Recommended for all public and academic libraries, specifically for collections on travel in China."Melinda Stivers Leach, Precision Editorial Svcs., Wondervu, CO"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2006
Evans' third travel book finds the intrepid author making her way across China by any means possible: plane, train, bus, boat, mule. Alternately funny and informative, the book focuses primarily on the people and places Evans encountered along the way, but you can't write a book about a nation as old as China without dipping into its history from time to time--exploring, for example, the Yungang Grottoes near the coal city of Datong, where there are 51,000 Buddhist carvings etched into the face of a cliff; or taking a boat trip up China's longest river, the Yangtze, where a controversial damming project has created quite the stir. Evans is a hands-on kind of travel writer. She likes to try new things and hang out with new people, and she writes travel lit at ground level: noisy, colorful, and entirely delightful. Comparisons to Bryson, Cahill, and Theroux, while obvious, would not be unwarranted.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)