Stephan Orth

I don't generally read travel books, but this one was interesting due to all the horror stories (real or otherwise) about China in the media and how the author ignored some of the government controls to do what he did - like going places he didn't list on the paperwork in the "where are you going to be" box, or whatever. I wouldn't have expected the Chinese government to allow foreigners to meet locals, even safely middle-class locals, via any sort of "find a friend"-type apps or websites. That being said, the fact that one of the people on the aforementioned website was a police officer makes me think that the government is in fact monitoring foreigners meeting locals - wouldn't surprise me one bit if the officer in question was required to file reports or otherwise provide information to her superiors about what the foreigner was doing, or anything suspicious he may have said. Plus the officer in question provides some apparently sensible justifications for China's omnipresent surveillance state, pointing out how police can use that surveillance data to help solve murders or other crimes, in contrast to countries like the United States without these surveillance panopticons.

Most of the book isn't about that stuff, though - the author goes a bunch of places, meets a bunch of locals, and does a bunch of tourist stuff without a lot of problems, except for some stuff in Xinjiang that the government unsurprisingly doesn't want anyone (foreign or not) to do. I am definitely jealous of some of the food adventures he went on - I live in the United States, where you have to look relatively hard to find Chinese food that isn't the "B4, M1" stuff the author talks about. I did have goose intestines one time at a place somewhere around Milpitas, California, though.

Also, I'm not sure if there was supposed to be a closing chapter or epilogue or something that wasn't included in my preview copy, but the book ends rather abruptly after talking about Xinjiang. Ultimately this is a travel book and I assume any such epilogue would have been about leaving China, but it still seemed a bit terse.

Speaking of Xinjiang, the Chinese government is definitely committing genocide there, albeit through cultural obliteration more than physical mass murder. The author points out some of the issues there and his conversation with "Alim" is very interesting, but he understandably doesn't have a ton of details about what's going on there. I recommend that if anybody wants further information about this specific topic, they read Darren Byler's "In The Camps" (https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/in-the-camps/).… (más)

Der Autor reist allen Widerständen zum Trotz privat durch China. Seine Einblicke sind sehr interessant und erhellend. Vor allem zeigen sie mir, wie wenig wir im Westen eigentlich über dieses riesige Land mit seinen Millionenstädten wissen, weder im Positiven noch im Negativen. China wird die nächsten Jahrzehnte sicherlich seinen Einfluss enorm ausbauen. Das Buch ist ja noch recht neu, dennoch hat sich schon wieder viel verändert im Verhältnis des Westens zu China. Corona kommt im Buch noch kurz im Nachwort vor. Nun haben wir den schrecklichen Krieg in der Ukraine. Ich bin gespannt, wie sich die Weltordnung verändern wird… (más)

Review of: Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia,
by Stephan Orth
by Stan Prager (8-15-21)

I must admit that I knew nothing of the apparently widespread practice of “couchsurfing” before I read Stephan Orth’s quirky, sometime comic, and utterly entertaining travelogue, Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia. For the uninitiated, couchsurfing is a global community said to be comprised of more than 14 million members in over 200,000 cities that includes virtually every country on the map. The purpose is to provide free if bare bones lodging for travelers in exchange for forming new friendships and spawning new adventures. The term couchsurfing is an apt one, since frequently the visitor in fact beds down on a couch, although accommodations range from actual beds with sheets and pillowcases to blankets strewn on a kitchen floor—or, as Orth discovers to his amusement, a cot in a bathroom, just across from the toilet! Obviously, if your idea of a good time is a $2000/week Airbnb with a memory foam mattress and a breathtaking view, this is not for you, but if you are scraping together your loose change and want to see the world from the bottom up, couchsurfing offers an unusual alternative that will instantly plug you into the local culture by pairing you up with an authentic member of the community. Of course, authentic does not necessarily translate into typical. More on that later.
Orth, an acclaimed journalist from Germany, is no novice to couchsurfing, but rather a practiced aficionado, who has not only long relied upon it as a travel mechanism but has upped the ante by doing so in distant and out of the ordinary spots like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, the subjects of his several best-selling books. This time he gives it a go in Russia: from Grozny in the North Caucasus, on to Volgograd and Saint Petersburg, then to Novosibirsk and the Altai Republic in Siberia, and finally Yakutsk and Vladivostok in the Far East. (Full disclosure: I never knew Yakutsk existed other than as a strategic corner of the board in the game of Risk.) All the while Orth proves a keen, non-judgmental observer of peoples and customs who navigates the mundane, the hazardous, and the zany with an enthusiasm instantly contagious to the reader. He’s a fine writer, with a style underscored by impeccable timing, comedic and otherwise, and passages often punctuated with wit and sometime wicked irony. You can imagine him penning the narrative impatiently, eager to work through one paragraph to the next so he can detail another encounter, express another anecdote, or simply mock his circumstances once more, all while wearing a twinkle in his eye and a wry twist to his lips.
Couchsurfing may be routine for the author, but he wisely assumes this is not the case for his audience, so he introduces this fascinating milieu by detailing the process of booking a room. The very first one he describes turns out to be a hilarious online race down various rabbit holes over a sequence of seventy-nine web pages where his utterly eccentric eventual host peppers him with bizarre, even existential observations, and challenges potential guests to fill in various blanks while warning them “that he follows the principle of ‘rational egoism’” and “doesn’t have ten dwarves cleaning up after guests.” [p7] Orth, unintimidated, responds with a wiseass retort and wins the invitation.
Perhaps the most delightful portions of this book are Orth’s profiles of his various hosts, who tend to run the full spectrum of the odd to the peculiar. I say this absent any negative connotation that might otherwise be implied. After all, Einstein and Lincoln were both peculiar fellows. I only mean that the reader, eager to get a taste of local culture, should not mistake Orth’s bunkmates for typical representatives of their respective communities. This makes sense, of course, since regardless of nationality the average person is unlikely to welcome complete strangers into their homes as overnight guests for free. That said, most of his hosts come off as fascinating if unconventional folks you might love to hang out with, at least for a time. And they put as much trust in the author as he puts in them. One couple even briefly leaves Orth to babysit their toddler. Another host turns over the keys of his private dacha and leaves him unattended with his dog.
Of course, the self-deprecating Orth, who seems equally gifted as patient listener and engaging raconteur, could very well be the ideal guest in these circumstances. At the same time, he could also very well be a magnet for the outrageous and the bizarre, as witnessed by the madcap week-long car trip through Siberia he ends up taking with this wild and crazy chick named Nadya that begins when they meet and bond over lamb soup and a spirited debate as to what was the best Queen album, survives a rental car catastrophe on a remote roadway, and winds up with them horseback riding on the steppe. Throughout, with only a single exception, the two disagree about … well … absolutely everything, but still manage to have a good time. If you don’t literally laugh out loud while reading through this long episode, you should be banned for life from using the LOL emoji.
You would think that travel via couchsurfing could very well be dangerous—perhaps less for Orth, who is well over six feet tall and a veteran couchsurfer—but certainly for young, attractive women bedding down in unknown environs. But it turns out that such incidents while not unknown are very, very rare. The couchsurfing community is self-policing: guests and hosts rely on ratings and reviews not unlike those on Airbnb, which tends to minimize if not entirely eliminate creeps and psychos. Still, while 14 million people cannot be wrong, it’s not for everyone. Which leads me to note that the only fault I can find with this outstanding work is its title, Behind Putin’s Curtain, since it has little to do with Putin or the lives led by ordinary Russians: certainly the peeps that Orth runs with are anything but ordinary or typical! I have seen this book published elsewhere simply as Couchsurfing in Russia, which I think suits it far better. Other than that quibble, this is one of the best travel books that I have ever read, and I highly recommend it. And while I might be a little too far along in years to start experimenting with couchsurfing, I admire Orth’s spirit and I’m eager to read more of his adventures going forward.

[Note: the edition of this book that I read was an ARC (Advance Reader’s Copy), as part of an early reviewer’s program.]

Review of: Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia, by Stephan Orth https://regarp.com/2021/08/15/review-of-behind-putins-curtain-friendships-and-mi...… (más)

Orth is a German travel writer. For this book he used the Couchsurfing app to meet most of the people who became his travel guides, logging in and looking for people who would give him a bed for a couple of nights and show him their neighborhoods. The variety of people he bunked with varied, from a female artist whose newly built studio was razed by the government in what she believed to be a plot to silence her controversial work, to a car dealership trainee who's apartment was so small that he and the author had to share the one bed. He stayed in a rural village with a family and was horrified to learn that they had cooked a dog to give him an honorable dinner, and he stayed in a city of nearly 10 million with a young man who was addicted to the internet and video games.

Orth had to lie in order to take this trip across the country, telling the Chinese Consulate that he had no intention of writing a book about China, that he was just visiting a friend and would see just two cities. He knew that if he admitted to his plans for a book, to meeting strangers all across the country and to informing the official about an app that allowed foreigners to sleep in Chinese homes and see ways of life the government hid from the outside world, he would be denied entry.
His journey was one of constant juxtapositions, going from modern metropolises to villages that seemed unchanged for a century. One of his app hosts turned out to be a tv host who drove Orth to a poor village in order to exploit him for her show, another turned out to be fascinated by Nazis, and another was a married policewoman who had a brief fling with the author. He also secretly interviewed probably the last person the Chinese government would want a foreign writer to meet, a government official who is also a Uyghur, the ethnic group who is currently enslaved in reeducation camps. Along the way he met many regular people who just wanted to meet a tall European.
The "tech" part of the title figures prominently in his travels as he was shocked by the level of surveillance the citizens live under, with pretty much their every move being monitored through street cameras and online monitoring of their phones and computers. One of his hosts pays for their dinner with a phone app called Sesame Credit, which is connected to Alibaba. Orth explains that the app holds all her financial records, which is translated into a point system that follows the customer throughout her life and that the government has access to it. Having high points can get you a line jump when seeing a doctor or a better response in online dating. Orth's friend knows her every move online is being watched, she's had proof and it creeps her out.

"The development of Sesame Credit, and other such apps, will soon enable an almost complete surveillance of the population...
Here you can lose points by failing to pay you debts on time, for example, or driving through red traffic lights of visiting online porn sites. Conversely, those who pay rent punctually, save a child or report a crime are rewarded with points. It is almost as if somebody is sitting somewhere judging every living moment, then rating it with: good, medium or bad...A number of cities are already running pilot schemes where even political opinions are incorporated into the ratings. "It's all about what you have posted online and how your friends respond," says Simone. "...if a friend of mine criticizes the government on Weibo, it will also affect my points in the future. It's crazy that such plans haven't caused an international outcry, isn't it?"

It gives an extensive look at the wide variety of people living across China, and while some of the people he met had remained in their hometown, many he met had lived abroad and returned, out of a sense of duty to their family or the hope they could improve lives, but what they had in common was a knowledge that their government had too much control of their lives.… (más)