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Abdiel LeRoy

Beguiled in China! 

"The girls here are dazzling, " the author marvels as he begins work as an English teacher in China's Sichuan Province. The food is delicious, the cameraderie joyous, and the enthusiasm of his students infectious. 

But how long will the honeymoon period last? 

Until the pollution becomes unbearable? Or the faculty falsely accuses him? Or his postgraduate students cheat in their exam?! 

With a journalist's eye and lively wit, Abdiel describes the delights and despairs of living and working in China and how he copes with unprecedented challenges in an alien and often toxic environment. 

But will his campus romances compensate? 

Dispatches From Chengdu is the first of five memoirs in Abdiel's Dueling the Dragon series and witness to the deep corruption and incompetence behind China's superpower façade. As always, he'll have you laughing between the tears! 

"An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today." 

San Francisco Review of Books 

"These stories from China are addictive!" 

"LeRoy's ability to write so cogently about such AWFUL things and simultaneously give readers a chuckle, is magnificent." 

"Wields a wicked and eloquent pen." 

"Should be awarded an honorary degree in Anthropology." 

"Informative and eye opening." 

"Reveals the the dark side of the country." 

"The author knows the Chinese better than the Chinese." 

"Subverts dominant concepts of China."

Reader reviews

Unparagoned

Dueling the Dragon: Five Memoirs About Living and Working in China

Dispatches From Chengdu

China's Oppressions of the Poor 

What does Communism mean in a country that drives poor farmers off their land and restaurant owners into bankruptcy? That takes students out of the classroom and sells them into slavery while their teachers pocket the proceeds? 

Abdiel LeRoy is witness to all this as he takes on his second teaching assignment in the western province of Sichuan. Nor is he immune to the oppression himself as a university recruiter hatches schemes of entrapment against him. 

Yet there is light amid the darkness in this memoir as he makes friends with one of Sichuan's famed artists, enjoys the attentions of a student named Emma, and joins locals for a swim in the fast-flowing Dadu River. 

Laments From Leshan is the second of Abdiel's five Dueling the Dragon memoirs and testifies to the deep corruption and incompetence beneath China's superpower façade. As always, he'll have you laughing between the tears! 

"An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today." 

San Francisco Review of Books 

"These stories from China are addictive!" 

"LeRoy's ability to write so cogently about such AWFUL things and simultaneously give readers a chuckle, is magnificent." 

"Wields a wicked and eloquent pen." 

"Should be awarded an honorary degree in Anthropology." 

"Informative and eye opening." 

"Reveals the the dark side of the country." 

"The author knows the Chinese better than the Chinese." 

"Subverts dominant concepts of China." 

Reader reviews

Laments From LeShan

China's Educational Backwater

Another teaching gig at another Chinese university. This time with "some of the laziest, dumbest students who ever wasted oxygen in a classroom, " and under unprecedented conditions of surveillance.

"Sometimes I grind to a halt, stunned by the sheer stupidity of my students, by their inability even to answer the simplest question, though expressed in every variant known to man, and broken into the most elementary forms of language, or to recall what I had shared with them but two days ago."

With a journalist's eye and lively wit, Abdiel describes his struggle to maintain academic discipline at Geely University, a private institution near Beijing, where indoctrination reigns and wealth subsidizes failure in a "fraudulent exchange of papers — banknotes from students' parents, meaningless certificates in return."

Meanwhile, "It is impossible to be indifferent to the ugliness" of campus surroundings."It steals over the heart like an infernal shadow, eclipsing all hope. "

Chidings From Changping is the third of five memoirs in Abdiel's Dueling the Dragon series and testifies to the deep corruption and incompetence beneath China's superpower façade. As always, he'll have you laughing between the tears!

"An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today."

San Francisco Review of Books

"These stories from China are addictive!"

"LeRoy's ability to write so cogently about such AWFUL things and simultaneously give readers a chuckle, is magnificent."

"Wields a wicked and eloquent pen."

"Should be awarded an honorary degree in Anthropology."

"Informative and eye opening."

"Reveals the the dark side of the country."

"The author knows the Chinese better than the Chinese."

"Subverts dominant concepts of China."

Reader reviews

Chidings From Changping

Chinese State Mediocrity! 

After two years in China's education system, Abdiel takes on its broadcasting empire when he joins China Radio International in Beijing. Following an ill-fated stint in newscasting, he goes on to record audiobook episodes for the state media giant and becomes fascinated with the Tang Dynasty 'Poet Immortal', Li Bai. 

But trouble is brewing as surely as a cup of oolong cha as the station ups his workload, degrades contract terms, and misses salary payments. All amid a culture of paranoia as producers fear "the American embassy might be listening." 

If that were not enough, Chinese police get involved, showing up at the author's door one night, dragging him to the police station, and insisting he sign a false confession! 

But things look up when Abdiel takes up freelance voice-recording work and "full-throttle immersion" in the performing arts and his belovèd Penghao Theatre. 

Briefings From Beijing is the fourth of five memoirs in Abdiel's Dueling the Dragon series and testifies to the deeply embedded corruption behind China's superpower façade. As always, he'll have you laughing between the tears! 

"An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today." 

San Francisco Review of Books 

"These stories from China are addictive!" 

"LeRoy's ability to write so cogently about such AWFUL things and simultaneously give readers a chuckle, is magnificent." 

"Wields a wicked and eloquent pen." 

"Should be awarded an honorary degree in Anthropology." 

"Informative and eye opening." 

"Reveals the the dark side of the country." 

"The author knows the Chinese better than the Chinese." 

"Subverts dominant concepts of China." 

Reader reviews

Briefings From Beijing

Out of the Frying Pan… 

When seasoned journalist Abdiel LeRoy joins China Central Television in Beijing, it is his second foray into Chinese state media. Surely, things can only get better after his ordeal at China Radio International, right?

But now, Xi Jinping is installed as China's leader, and the authoritarian screws are tightening again. Nor has incompetence relaxed its chokehold of China's cultural discourse. The author is about to find out the fraudulent depths to which managers to persecute quality in a workplace wedded to mediocrity.

Yet amid the darkness, there is light, as Abdiel again takes to the Beijing stage to play the lead role in a British comedy.

With a journalist's eye and lively wit, LeRoy witnesses the early days of China's reversion to its most repressive instincts now playing out against Hong Kong and the Uighurs of Xinjiang. But he also frames these observations in context of China's psychological and historical traumas.

Perspectives From Peking is the final memoir of five in Abdiel's Dueling the Dragon series. As always, he'll have you laughing between the tears!

"An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today."

San Francisco Review of Books

"These stories from China are addictive!"

"LeRoy's ability to write so cogently about such AWFUL things and simultaneously give readers a chuckle, is magnificent."

"Wields a wicked and eloquent pen."

"Should be awarded an honorary degree in Anthropology."

"Informative and eye opening."

"Reveals the the dark side of the country."

"The author knows the Chinese better than the Chinese."

"Subverts dominant concepts of China."

Reader reviews