num_pages: 270
description: This marvellously observed and brilliantly painted picture of China since Mao promises to be one of the most exciting and original new books of 1986.Tiziano Terzani was one of the first western journalists to be accredited after Deng Xiaoping opened China's doors, and, taking a Chinese name and speaking the language, lived there for over for years. To break through the wall erected around foreigners in China, he sent his children to a Chinese school, travelled by train and bicycle and made friends among ordinary Chinese people.From Tibet to Manchuria, from Xinjiang to Hainan Island, Terzani vividly brings to life the people and their customs, China's vast landscape, and the appalling state of its ancient treasures, temples and palaces since the Cultural Revolution. And in passionate and often moving prose, we see the unpleasant reality behind some of the propaganda and policies after the turbulence of thirty years of communism and the changes brought about by Deng's regime of liberation.The authorities could not tolerate this foreigner, who stepped off the path set for him and knocked at forbidden doors. On the night of 8 February 1984, Tiziano Terzani was arrested in Peking. He was interrogated, put through 're-education' for an entire month, and then expelled from the country he has so passionately studied and described.
language: English
title: Behind the forbidden door: Travels in China
titlecomplete: Behind the forbidden door: Travels in China
characters: Tiziano Terzani
genres: Biography, Asia, Memoir, Nonfiction, China, Travel, Contemporary, Italian Literature, History
ratings_count: 1078
places: China
publisher: Allen & Unwin Ltd