New Book About Teaching and Traveling in East Asia: Notes from the Other China by Troy Parfitt

Taipei, Taiwan, January 09, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Notes from the Other China (Algora Publishing, October 1st, 2007) is an account of an English teacher’s decade-long experience in East Asia. Part memoir, part cultural exposé, and part travel narrative, Notes bypasses the political and instead focuses on the individuals the author encounters as well as the cultural context in which he encounters them. Taiwan, or “the other China,” receives the bulk of commentary and analysis, while the Koreas, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, and Vietnam also make appearances. It has become common for university graduates from English speaking countries to head off to East Asia for a year or more of teaching, yet there are scant few published accounts of such experiences. More significantly, there has been a great deal of interest and speculation concerning the People’s Republic of China, while there is an oft-overlooked comparative model in Taiwan, Republic of China just across the Taiwan Strait.

Troy Parfitt is a native of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada but now lives in Taipei, Taiwan where he teaches English in that country’s foremost private high school. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Brunswick (major: American history), a teaching certificate from Cambridge University, and has worked as an English teacher for more than ten years. In Seoul, South Korea he taught at the Seoul Government and in Taiwan he has had numerous ESL textbooks published. Notes from the Other China is his first travel book. Mr. Parfitt says that he set out to write his book under the premise of doing something highly original. "There are many good books on East Asia, and especially China," says the 36-year old, "but besides Peter Hessler's River Town, there aren't too many that depict what it's like for a Westerner to live in this part of the world. So, that's what I set out to capture - the bizarreness, elation, and frustration of it all."

Notes from the Other China is a diverse account that exemplifies the vast dissimilarities and disconnects that exist – not only between East and West – but between Asian cultures themselves. The writer shines the spotlight on Korea’s fever-pitch nationalism in the run up to the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis, scrutinizes Japan’s sex culture, evaluates the enduring Marcos legacy, and gives the reader a glimpse inside the world’s one and only Chinese democracy while at the same time offering assessments of just how well traditional Chinese culture is fairing in an ever modernizing (and ever Westernizing) world. The second half of the book is given over to travelogue, with Nepal and Vietnam featuring prominently. In traveling from Hanoi to Saigon, the writer keeps a running tab on the “American War.” Although parallels to Iraq are never drawn, the reader should have little trouble in noting the correlation.

Parfitt endures the jolts of traveling where there is no travel industry, touring where there is no tourism infrastructure, and teaching map reading skills where there is no Western-style logic and his (adult) students readily admit they can hardly find their way to work and home again. He shares it all with the reader, over a beer, and all is well again. Then it’s off for more. The reader is exposed to a fractured, diverse, and ultimately unusual corner of the globe, along with facets of Asian society seldom seen or examined.

Troy Parfitt is available for interviews, appearances, and book signings. For further information and review copies (either print or PDF) of Notes from the Other China please contact the author in addition to visiting his website at TroyParfitt.com.

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October 1st, 2007
250 pages
Algora Publishing
Paper: ISBN: 978-087586-582-9
Price: USD 22.95
Hard Cover: ISBN: 978-087586-583-6
Price: USD 34.95
Ebook: ISBN: 978-0-87586-584-3
Price: USD 34.95
Algora.com