Iron and Silk

#688
Title: Iron and Silk
Author: Mark Salzman
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 1986/1987
224 pages

This is an easy to read account of Salzman's two years teaching in China. It was the 1980s, so his perspective on China (and the Chinese perspective on him) is different from that of Peter Hessler's in River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze in the next decade.

Salzman's encounters are charming and depict rural China very positively. One wonders when he found time to teach and prep his lessons, to say nothing of grading, between his various martial arts trainings, calligraphy lessons, and bouts of travel with fishing families. In all, a comparatively benign introduction to living and working in another country.