Undress me in the
Temple of Heaven, Jane Gilman
This has to be one of my all-time favorite travel memoirs. Take two young women just graduated from a
prestigious Eastern College – one rich, one on student aid and put them in an
IHOP. Over food and conversation about
what to do with their lives comes the intrusion of a placemat with pancakes all
over the world. “Let’s eat pancakes
around the world.” And that is the
beginning of a plan that takes place really quickly between two people who
really do not know each other very well – yet they commit and start – in Communist
China in 1986. It is not a good place
for rooky travelers, which of course is what we need as readers.
This is not only their grand adventure, but the author’s
first foreign trip! They run in to the
normal bureaucratic issues, language challenges and a nation that had just
opened itself to tourists, but had no mechanism for dealing with them.
They meet travelers from other nations and this creates a
mixture of issues, but everything has been complicated by Jane’s partner who
begins to exhibit psychological issues.
Paranoia creates some really dramatic scenes which are funny in reading,
but had to be shocking in person.
Convinced that she is being spied on and is part of an international
conspiracy she creates amazing problems for her inexperienced partner.
This leads to yelling and army waving outbursts,
disappearances, and hospitalization, jails, plunging naked in to the river and
more. I hesitate to tell more and even
feel bad telling this much, but I do want to encourage you to read it.
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