I love an adventure story.  I’m not talking about the jarring action packed adventure with lots of guns and running, destined for an R rating if it makes the big screen, but instead a personal kind of adventure for one person that ends up being a life changing personal journey for them.  And that’s exactly what happened to Janis Letts.

On page one, she’s living in the Australia “bush” in the Central Queensland Gemfields as a tour guide for an underground sapphire mine.  A historical cottage infested with white ants is where she makes her home.  She best sums up her livelihood like this:

The greatest strength of the community is its people, an abundance of colourful characters from all walks of life.  What we lack in physical comfort we make up for in diversity.

What Janis doesn’t know is that those words are about to become a strange metaphor for the journey she is about to take.  Her oldest son, Cameron, resides in China.  He’s married, has a son, and is about to open his second English school.  He persuades his mother to get a tourist Visa and to come to China to meet her new grandchild for the first time, and to be a teacher in his school.  On page 2, Janis announces “I’m going to China!”  And she persuades her younger son, Hamish, to join her.

The difficulties Janis will face start almost immediately, the biggest being the language barrier. But right from the start, Janis remains determined and keeps a sense of positivity about all of this. She’s also a masterful story teller.  I hate a coworker’s vacation story that runs long because they have to tell me hour by hour what they did each day.  As I’ve already pointed out, Janis announces her intentions on page 2 of this book, on page 4 she’s battling through airport crowds to get on a plane, and on page 6 her plane is touching down in Beijing.  She constantly keeps the story moving throughout, revealing Chinese culture from an outsider’s respectful point of view.

Janis’s story is full of small nuances that really make the reader stop and ponder what she is experiencing, from everyone’s strange smoking habits (Cameron explains its a cultural thing) to every rumor you’ve heard before about Chinese food, from nonexistent customer service and no rules for “waiting patiently in line for your turn,” to Chinese in-laws like you have never met before, Janis never offers her own personal opinion about what she sees or hears.  She simply points out that its there and that it’s noteworthy.  Most of the time I found myself giggling at her perceptions because although she never offers a biased opinion, you just know that inside her head she’s probably saying, “Oh no!  What the heck have I gotten myself into?!”

But this is no vacation.  Being a stranger in a strange land definitely has its consequences.  Cameron does a good job of warning his mother to “trust no one” and to never give out their home address.  Cameron advises her that the school can’t afford to employ her full time and that she will have to find other part-time work (or not to panic because work will find her).  I was stunned when he warns his Mom to be careful of people who approach her with work because she could be “whisked away by white slave traders.”  Like Janis I was asking, “Do they still exist?”  Janis attacking a pickpocket with an umbrella literally made me laugh out loud, but I was relieved in the end that she didn’t lose her wallet.

Janis’s small accomplishments make her so proud, and I found myself smiling with pride and happiness for her.  In a letter she writes to her mom, she mentions having to catch a cab after work without her son there to translate.  Cameron wrote down their home address for her and told her to speak it rather than show it to the driver for practice in tackling the language.  “I can speak Chinese!” she exclaims when she arrives home safely at the correct gate.  “You make it all sound so easy,” her mom writes back.

The first page of each chapter presents a photo from Janis’s adventure with a caption explaining what the photo is, almost as if you have sat down with her to thumb through a memory book or photo album.  The photos really help set an overall tone and add depth to her story as her daily adventures unfold. Over time, Janis becomes very accustomed to her surroundings, her job as a teacher, and to Chinese life in general.  Her appreciation for the culture shines in the end when she photographs some mah-jong players and states:

As an outsider, I feel strangely honoured that I’m not a tourist, but a significant family member.

My only complaint about the story – and it is a minor one – is that the ending is very rushed.  The epilogue sums up the end of Janis’s story in half a page with her returning home to Australia, staying in contact with Chinese family members via phone and computer, and the arrival of a new grandson.  After reading 300 pages of Janis’s year long fascinating journey in China, I would have liked a more thorough glimpse into how she felt in the end when she returned home and had time to reminisce about  “the dragon.”   But like I said, that is very minor.  The 300 pages I spent with Janis on the streets of China were captivating, filled with teary eyes and lots of laughs; this author has done an amazing job of bringing the reader along with her on a trip neither will forget.

Read a preview of this book at Google Books.