Pollution
and imaginative foods are the key impressions which writer Maarten Troost takes
away from his travels in China, in "Lost on Planet China."
I know him from his "The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific", so his exaggeration for comic effect is not unexpected, but his observations on the air quality in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are more stomach-turning than his experiences eating live seafood and various novel animal parts.
Petchem travellers to China will recognise his descriptions of traffic chaos in the city streets and the comparative slickness of airports and metro stations. Unlike Troost's previous books, however, the overall tone is not one of benign even affectionate observation, but one of distaste. The over-riding message is that the cataclysmic level of pollution in China is bringing the rest of the world closer to environmental disaster.
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