Polly Greeks: Embracing The Dragon

Reviewed by JIM EAGLES

Embracing The Dragon: A Woman's Journey Along The Great Wall Of China

The Great Wall of China is one of the places most travellers aspire to see before they die. But the wall the ordinary tourist visits is merely a small, carefully preserved fragment of a vast, crumbling edifice some 56,000km long.

Wellington journalist Polly Greeks acknowledges she "had never given a stuff" about the wall, let alone its incredible size, until she was sent to interview a young Kiwi, Nathan Hoturoa Gray, who claimed to have walked about three-quarters of the main wall, which runs 4000km from the Gobi Desert to Korea.

At some point in the interview journalistic curiosity turned into personal connection and she decided she wanted to walk the remainder of the wall with Gray.

The pair didn't finish the journey but they did have a remarkable adventure, gaining marvellous insights into a life in rural China which remains largely untouched by the economic boom in a few selected industrial cities, and reaching places touched by few if any Westerners.

When they were not camping out on the wall, they experienced the hostels, homes, vehicles and food of ordinary Chinese and even managed to come to know some of them a little.

Sharing this journey with them offers a mixture of fascination with the China they discovered along the wall and irritation at Greeks' naivety.

She wants to experience the reality of China but would rather it was tidied up to remove blemishes such as the eating of dogs and primitive sanitary arrangements.

And she wants to make the journey with a Gray who is not her somewhat obsessive, self-centred companion but an idealised, romantic dream man.

For me the story of two well-meaning Westerners confronting the realities of rural China does make it all worthwhile.

But by the finish I was skipping over the maudlin self-analysis in order to get on with the journey.

Awa Press, $29.95