Bought from the Glen Innes Salvation Army Family Store on Saturday. Looked like an interesting read and really who can turn down a book with such an amusing cover image?

I haven't read any of the author's other books though I have seen them in shops. I thought with a title like this one (and the cover reminds me a little of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson)

This is travel writing about China with a difference - to find the origins of his cheap underpants, quite an intriguing idea to write about.
His experiences with Chinese food and using chopsticks (which I am slowly getting better at using myself) I found interesting and got a bit of added knowledge about business and life in China, which is a country I don't know that much about.

I think I will be sending this book to Skyring as a thank you/surprise.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed off to the wonderful Skyring along with two other books and a block of yummy chocolate!

Chocolate, books and a delightful card! Thanks Alkaline-Kiwi! You're as sweet as the macadamia chocolate!

Really looking forward to reading this one - ever since I first heard of it, I thought that it would be an interesting read.

Mind you, I might have to wrench it off my wife, first. She's snaffled it.

Having a broken arm and staying at home while my wife works is an easy way to leapfrog her reading. I've finished this book, and I'll never look at a bloke's underpants the same way again.

Joe puts a lot of effort into tracking down the source of a pack of underpants, through the shop, the warehouses, the ship, the trucks, the factories, the workers, the cotton fields and the rubber trees.

Along the way he not only discovers where underpants come from, but what sort of lands and cities the people involved live in, what they eat, what they do for entertainment, how their lands have changed and what lies in their future.

He also discovers a lot about himself, how the faceless hordes of Red China tiurn out to be individuals, as interested in making him happy as he is to get them smiling. He doesn't class himself as a champion chopsticker by the end of the book, but he's well on the way.

I travel along with him in his back pocket if not his undies. I visited Communist China for thefirst time last year, and the over-riding impression I got was that the Chinese had embraced capitalism and commerce with more fervour than any other folk on earth. And that was just from a few hours in Shenzen!

I felt for his fumbling attempts at Chinese tucker. I've been handling chopsticks for decades now, but my experiences in fair dinkum Chinese restaurants were equally bewildering. They seem to be set up for superb efficiency, except for my table.

One thing shines through as Joe gets into his stride, and that is the incredible pace of growth in China. The rest of the world in general and the Americans in particular have very little understanding of just how fast these billion people are regaining China's ancient role at the centre of the world's affairs.

I'll send this one overseas. To America.

Sent to me by Skyring while I was marooned at summer camp :p Can't wait to read it!

Promised to Wombles when I'm done :-)