Book Details

Boxing with Shadows

Brian Johnston

Boxing with Shadows is Brian Johnston's account of the two-and-a-half years he spent living and travelling in China.

Opinion

‘informative, entertaining and insightful about the nature of travel’
Robin Gerster, Australian Book Review

Endearingly honest and self reflexive, Johnston journeys, often bewildered, across the country, taking with him his wit and sense and humour. The book provides an entertaining snapshot of a nation that is both fast changing and fascinating.
Sue Wallace, Border Mall, 2.12.2006

About this Title

Boxing with Shadows is Brian Johnston's account of the two-and-a-half years he spent living and travelling in China. Johnston recreates his encounters with a delightful perceptiveness and subtlety. Humorous encounters with a TV crew, a snake, a drunken shoe salesman and China's most famous rock star are interwoven with more serious observations on political campaigns and ethnic minorities, and balanced with personal reflections and lyrical descriptions of the landscape.

Johnston comes to terms with life at university, grapples with bureaucracy in Guilin, attempts to learn tai chi in Chengdu, rides horses with Tibetans and battles the buses of Shanghai. At the same time, he reveals his frustrations in social exchanges with people of such a different cultural background. Endearingly honest and self-reflexive, he journeys often bewildered across the country, but never leaving behind an engaging wit and sense of humour

Boxing with Shadows is a rich, delightful and rewarding book, powerfully evoking a unique moment in time in this fast-changing and fascinating nation.

About the Author

Brian Johnston is an Irishman born in Nigeria and raised in England and Switzerland. He contributes travel and other feature articles to travel magazines and websites, and to newspapers such as the The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, South China Morning Post and New Zealand Herald. In 2004 Brian won the prestigious Australian Travel Writer of the Year Award. He is the author of three travel books including Into the Never-Never: Travels in Australia and Sicilian Summer.

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978-0-522-85330-8