In August 1993 Brooks Robards and her husband Jim Kaplan landed in Bejing. College professor Robards was there on a Fulbright award to teach at the China School of Journalism. Columnist and author Kaplan was there to complain. The result is a frequently amusing and always informative series of she-said, he-said essays covering every aspect of their experience and shedding light on the People's Republic of China. It is a book for every American who hopes to visit China, work in China, or just read about China.

Authors:

BROOKS ROBARDS began her writing career at the age of 12 with the Patent Trader in Mt. Kisco, New York. After serving as a researcher/reporter for Life Magazine, she worked for Ramparts Magazine, as Women's Page Editor for the Presque Isle (Maine) Star-Herald and as Co-Publisher and Co-Editor of the Newington (Connecticut) Town Crier. The author of "Arnold Schwarzenegger," she has also written for Connecticut Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Vineyard (Massachusetts) Gazette and the Daily Hampshire (Massachusetts) Gazette. She has an A.B. in English from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. in English from the University of Hartford and a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She teaches film, criticism and journalism at Westfield (Massachusetts) State College.


JIM KAPLAN was graduated from Milton Academy and Yale College, then took a Master's at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. He began his career writing for the Minneapolis Star and spent 16 years at Sports Illustrated as a reporter and writer. Since becoming a freelance writer and editor in 1986, he has published 10 books, including "Raising Your Bridge", and with Ira Berkow, "The Gospel According to Casey." The editor of The Baseball Research Journal, a publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) from 1987 to 1990, he has written a syndicated bridge column since 1990. Kaplan has contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The New York Times and The Village Voice among other publications.


Robards and Kaplan, who have been married since 1988, divide their time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and Martha's Vineyard.




Excerpts

HIS: SMALL PLEASURES, LARGE TREASURES
"...Extended travel is an iffy prospect, especially for the middle-aged and partially bald. Your back aches so much from walking around museums that you begin to bend like Winston Churchill in his later years. Your plumbing balks. You get wake-up calls you didn't ask for and can't fall asleep again. In the end, travel's joys aren't large treasures but small pleasures: an unforgettable scrap of conversation, an unexpected visual treat, an insight or two. The best of travel is sort of like tuning in on "Roseanne" by mistake and discovering you like it."


HERS: WAITING FOR GODOT IN WUHAN
"...First class didn't exist--except when heads of state were visiting. Then the staff--none of whom spoke English--cleaned the mysterious, off-limits upstairs quarters, giving new meaning to the term "spit and polish." Our second class, inside stateroom on the main deck was a claustrophic's nightmare: narrow bunk beds with dingy sheets--no wonder Nellie had warned us to bring our own. Each bunk was supplied with a lumpy quilt and a rough wool blanket propped fan-like against the wall. Gumdrop-green acetate curtains hung from a ceiling track around each bunk. A battered desk was wedged between the bunks. It was along way from the Love Boat."


HERS: THE STORY OF ZHANG HAIYAN
"...Then Haiyan was sent to Kuwait to cover the Gulf War. While there, the unimaginable happened. She met and fell in love with Canadian tv cameraman Mike Parsons. The romance blossomed. After her two-year stint in the Cairo bureau, she was rotated back to China and returned to the China School of Journalism. She and her Canadian camerman decided to get married, so Haiyan applied for permission to emigrate to Canada. Xinhau was not very happy about losing one of its best teacher-correspondents, but as Haiyan said, "they could give me a better salary, they could find me better housing, but they couldn't find me a husband.""


HIS: POLITICS AND PEOPLE
"...Sunny came from heavy-duty academic/intellectual stock. I lost track of the doctors, chemical engineers and sculptors in her family. Sunny knew her strengths early on. "People told me I could use 10% of my brain in science and get 100% results, 50% in the social sciences and get 50% results, and 100% in athletics to get 10%. I love physics!" Naturally she was forced to play softball for the regional team and study physical education at the university level."


"...we wandered on top of the wall as far as we liked, through guard towers, down stone stairways. The views of the hills, with the wall snaking across them, were breathtaking. So was the thought of horses galloping five across between the parapets to fight off the Mongols."
-Brooks Robards



"The best thing about the Great Wall of China is that you can say you've been there. I know, I know. It spans fully 3,000 miles or kilometers or something. Took 300,000 men 10 years to build. Visible from the moon. Wide enough at some points to fit five horses side by side. One of the Seven Wonders of the World. Trust me, there's less to the Great Wall of China than meets the eye."
- Jim Kaplan



Comments

"...A unique aspect of the book is its format: Readers hear two voices in constant counterpoint, as the two authors offer contrasting views of China in 35 alternating sections. An interesting and entertaining book; recommended for general readers."
-Library Journal
"...the treat of being on the ground in modern China with two people who take pleasure in recording how life is changing there is enough to carry you through what amounts to a literary, and sometimes comic, travelogue."
-Vineyard Gazette
"Brooks and Jim bring us the sounds and smells of life in Beijing today, the travails of Chinese transportation, the different stages of culture shock and bright portraits of Chinese and American newspeople, Chinese film directors and other characters who are making their lives for the long or short term in an increasingly complex China."
- Andrew J. Nathan,
Director, East Asian Institute, Columbia University

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