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An American Bum in China: Featuring the bumblingly brilliant escapades of expatriate Matthew Evans
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About An American Bum In China: Featuring The Bumblingly
Product Description Down on his luck and disabled, cancer survivor Matthew Evans had nothing to lose by fleeing the farmsteads of Muscatine, Iowa, at age 21 to pursue his Chinese Dream. With all the makings of a classic folk tale, his curiosity became an epic five-year adventure that would find him homeless, stateless, posing as a professor, imprisoned, deported, and caught in the middle of the 2014 Hong Kong protests. Though it has all the form of great fiction, An American Bum in China is a true story and all the crazier for it. Review "Painfully hilarious...the escapades Evans experiences are the stuff of legend." -- Des Moines Register "His story serve(s) as a cautionary tale for anyone who may believe that China needs Americans more than Americans need China, using Evans' misadventures as an example." -- Muscatine Journal "Tom Carter does very well to draw out Evans' story, to capture the declining towns of the Midwest, to narrate his friend's exploits with humor, pithy realities, and insight, and to emphasize the political significance of China's events. His prose is deft and his observations show an excellent knowledge of what he speaks." --The Beijinger "A picaresque foray into the world of the foreign down-and-out reminiscent of the 18th century English novelist Tobias Smollett." -- Taipei Times "I suspect many readers, U.S. readers in particular, will regard Matthew Evans as a disgrace. Carter's engaging narrative, at once wry and affectionately told, has a built-in liability, its distasteful subject matter, which may keep book reviewers at arm's length as well." -- Isham Cook, author of Confucius and Opium: China Book Reviews, for the chapter 'The adorable expat eccentric' "Tom Carter should be applauded for daring to publish an unconventional work that is not only a fun and whimsical read about one of America's oddest new pioneers but also a tale that captures the bleak zeitgeist of our age." -- Arthur Meursault, author of Party Members, for The American Conservative "One of the best books of the year, immensely entertaining while at the same time rich in insights into a country too few of us understand." -- San Francisco Review of Books "Carter has created an entertaining tale about the lower rungs of the expat scene in China...he also captures the atmosphere of the early years of Xi Jinping's reign--the crackdown on foreigners, the end of the party in Macau and the beginning of the protest movement in Hong Kong." -- Asian Review of Books "Whether one reads with feelings of compassion and empathy, or just can't look away from the train wreck, one way or another, it will definitely be worth the read." -- Ray Hecht, author of South China Morning Blues , for Cha: An Asian Literary Journal " An American Bum in China may satisfy readers disillusioned with polished and uplifting travel stories, and are ready to discover how unforgiving foreign travel can be for those unprepared for reality - or those who, perhaps, never lived in it in the first place." -- The World of Chinese "Evans' exploits serve as a primer on what not to do, not just in China but in life generally...Perhaps I am being unkind. Carter, the narrator, is far more sympathetic. There is a morality tale here but he tells it in good humor; it is an enjoyable romp and a quick read." -- JFK Miller, author of Trickle-down Censorship , for China Law Blog "Even the most ardent defenders of fiction will be forced to admit: you just can't make this stuff up...there is a page-turning quality to the book based on the simple, foreboding question: just how bad is this going to get?" -- Quincy Carroll, author of Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, for Los Angeles Review of Books' China Channel
