Hi everyone,

This is a quick email to let you know some exciting news: the LA Review of Books is planning to run a piece on Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside later this month. I have no idea if the review will be positive, but until this point, it’s been very hard getting established media contacts to give me the time of day—let alone consider reviewing the book—so this is a HUGE breakthrough!

Back in December, Alec Ash, a correspondent for the LARB who started a writers’ colony in Beijing, mentioned UMDC while talking about expat writing in China on the Sinica Podcast. Unfortunately, he hadn’t read the book yet, but I was able to get his address and send him a copy while in Bali. Of course, that copy got lost in transit, but four days after he emailed me to let me know that it hadn’t arrived, the Bookworm (a large expat bookstore in Beijing) told me that they would be willing to stock it! One of my former students from Ningyuan agreed to stop by later that month to confirm that they had it:

Like I said, I have no idea if the review will be positive, but I’m hopeful, given this scathing, no-holds-barred takedown of Shanghai Cocktales that Mr. Ash wrote last year. He begins the review by saying:

"Somewhere outside the Fourth Ring Road, a nondescript borderline-alcoholic English teacher might be polishing off the manuscript of the China equivalent to The Sun Also Rises. Escape, reinvention, exoticism, disillusionment—it’s all there for the novelist or memoirist, plus baijiu, smog and as many happy endings as you can afford. There’s definitely a way to do it right, make it funny, and say something meaningful about how us foreigners (with nowhere else in particular to go) engage with China, or don’t."

That sure sounds like me, and that sure sounds like my book! Keep your eyes peeled. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but my fingers are officially crossed. Thank you again for all of your support. As I hope this update demonstrates, minor victories (mentioning the novel to the right person, getting it into the right store, leaving a review *cough, cough* that resonates with someone else) have the potential to lead to major developments.

Quincy