Brown is honest enough to admit he never quite reached his easternmost point, the frontier post of Ulugchat. (Other writers would simply have gone back and changed their intended destination in the first chapter). Instead, he is content to view the ruins of Khocho, the 9th century Uighur capital, in moonlight.
There is a sting in the tail of the book, however. In its last section the author visits the site of Japan's infamous Unit 731, at Pingfang, south of Harbin. His account of the experiments in biological warfare performed there on Chinese prisoners in the 1930s and 1940s, as revealed in the modern museum, is matter-of-fact but nonetheless devastating. Bubonic plague pathogens, for instance, were developed, and bombs of porcelain made for their delivery. These were then tried out on men and women tied to stakes, with their subsequent deaths closely monitored by military doctors.
After this, the author's trip to the Russian border and the modern environmental destruction he observes, is mild indeed. This is on the whole a readable book. The problem with it is that there are no highs. Nowhere does Brown achieve an ecstatic moment, see or hear anything fantastic, become enthralled, overjoyed or even angry.
... and negative
Instead, he's phlegmatic and equable to a fault. Nothing moves him excessively. Imperturbability may be a virtue in difficult traveling situations, but in a writer it tends to make for bland reading. For example, Brown invariably opts for the middle ground. "You can't replace religion with science," he sagely but un-world-shatteringly concludes. And Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, he hears, acknowledging the view as all but proverbial in China. You can almost see him nodding in approval at this agreeably balanced assessment.
You can imagine Theroux, by contrast, blasting his interviewee as an idiot, and demanding to be told of a single instance in which Mao made a right decision. It seems apt that the book Brown takes to read on his journey is Hardy's, Far from the Madding Crowd, a novel about English rural life during the Napoleonic wars. Theroux, on his train trip round China, characteristically read a classic of Chinese eroticism that was banned in China at the time.
This, then, is a somewhat prosaic record of a long Chinese journey. Brown has done his homework, dutifully traveled by the means the ordinary backpacker has to travel, and recorded his impressions honestly, if with no marked flair.
This is the author's first book, but it has to be said that it is no brilliant debut, and Liam D'Arcy Brown a little less than a classic travel guru in the making.
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