06 May 2006
Frommer's China
I selected the contents, chose and briefed the writers, wrote guidelines in addition to those provided by Frommer's and specifically related to the difficulties of covering China (see Writing China guides), and negotiated minor adaptations in Frommer's templates to fit the style of China. I wrote all the structural material and one of the gazetteer chapters myself, and edited all the other contributions.
Unfortunately we gradually added to the project by accepting the invitation to update two other overlapping titles, and in general the whole process was a complete nightmare. There was the editor who took it upon herself to rewrite the technical details of the hotel reviews using their websites for information. So when we'd left out the beauty salon because it actually functioned as a brothel, or the Jacuzzi because it had more rings than a sequoia, she added them back in. It had been a fight to get Frommer's to agree to having words in Romanized Chinese tone-marked (so readers could see how to pronounce them), as well as to add a limited number of Chinese characters, but accepted that for technical reasons they wouldn't appear on maps. This editor decided to add them herself, without any reference to the authors, and so, unsurprisingly, not being a Mandarin speaker, she missed out a lot of them and got others wrong. This then went to print without the proofs being seen by any of us.
Another editor imposed draconian deadlines for sections of her own title without reference to the fact that they clashed with those for the main China book. Two of these were at the beginning, it turned out, of ten-day periods spent out of the office--in each case ten days the authors could have used for vital improvements to the material. She also managed to lose all of the hand marked-up maps, so that they had to be done again, and when the book came out she'd extracted the wrong map of China from another title (twice the required size, so something else was cut), and full of errors, which she then published with place names full of Greek and mathematical symbols. Yes, it got right through the production process and into print in tens of thousands of copies (approx.--Frommer's regards the length of its print run as a trade secret it won't reveal to mere authors). As another editor remarked, 'Frommer's is a factory.' They just want to churn the books out on time and get them on the shelves.
The sub-editing process was truly astonishing. It seemed that the subs had not only never been to China, but had never even ventured over the county line. In between moving commas so as to make sentences mean exactly the opposite of what was intended, they would ask whether an Italian dish named in a restaurant review was French. Their ignorance of the outside world and of grammar was profound.
The editor on Frommer's China itself largely fought on our behalf to make the title what we wanted it to be. But it was only by accident that I got to see the text after its mauling by the subs, and few corrections were possible at that stage. Most of the maps I didn't see, but they were laden with the most absurd errors, most of which made it into print.
Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, and despite the dire Shanghai and Hong Kong chapters forced on me as cut downs from Frommer's existing titles, the book was something to be proud of. It was frank and accurate about China travel, and even at times witty. It was, in a sense, rather subversive--it didn't, like other Frommer's titles, pander to the American mind-set and typical ways of travelling, but instead told the truth about the country and set out to educate. It made it clear that other methods were better in China, explained in detail how and why, and just how much money and inconvenience might be saved, and how many scams avoided.
Frommer's doesn't want writers who rock the boat. Frommer's doesn't want the cosy beliefs of its older, American audience challenged with uncomfortable truths. It doesn't apparently want to serve its readership in that way. What it wants to do is to manufacture books on time and on budget and get them on the shelf earning money. The errors seem neither here nor there, and people who want to complain about them and put them right for the readers' sake are regarded as unhelpful.
In order to persuade me to take on this task, extravagant promises were made concerning updates. First refusal was always given to existing authors I was told. I was frequently referred to as 'our China guy', but nevertheless the promise was not kept, and as it was only a promise, not a contractual obligation, there was little to be done. Struggling to assign some sections for update, the company, with gritted teeth, reluctantly returned to me to offer just some sections of the China book, while having cut me dead on other China titles. But the money was derisory, and new contracts carried ridiculous penalty clauses. There were problems with scheduling payments. Wanting to preserve (and indeed improve on) the quality of what we'd done, and asked by some of the other original authors to do so, I looked at ways to accept the offer, but the terms and conditions offered bordered on abusive. Of the writers I chose only two had anything to do with the second edition, and then not with either of the two major sections each had tackled before.
While the question of tackling at least some parts of the second edition was still under discussion, I was forwarded a note from the publisher that while it included the remark, "never read a guide with more detailed, useful information. Our writers did an amazing job...." went on to say that some of the recommendations were 'silly', on the grounds that Americans wouldn't want to behave in the way we were suggesting was best. We'd given them the alternatives if they insisted on ignoring the advice, but he didn't seem to have read the book very thoroughly. But clearly what he felt to be the beliefs of his readers trumped the need for good advice these beliefs demonstrated they needed.
If I'd known such a clear view of China could be had from a comfy chair behind a desk in New York, I wouldn't have wasted time studying the language or spent a few years of my life there.
Frommer's works on a 'for hire' basis, which means that the authors sell their work for use in all media, for all time, in all parts of the known universe. That means that all the material appearing in the second edition, just published, even if it's word for word what went before (as much of it is), or with only minor changes (as most of the rest), the name of the updater is put down as the author of the chapter, and the name of the originator vanishes.
Looking at a copy in a bookshop the other day I was nevertheless angry to see so much of my own work with other people's names on, and not a word of credit. At the same time, as I saw how patchy the updating was, how lazy and cliche-ridden much of the new writing was, and how many of the changes I'd been back and seen for myself had been overlooked, I was glad to have no part of it. One map, full of errors first time round, now had even more, with several numbered dots on the map ludicrously failing to appear anywhere in the key.
The frame of the original material may support the book for a while, but it's clearly going to collapse to Frommer's usual levels within an edition or two (and don't get me started about earlier editions of other Frommer's China-related titles or we'll be here all night, with you not knowing whether to howl or weep at the stupidity of those books. One review of Frommer's Hong Kong on Amazon begins with the wish that if there's a hell for travel writers the author goes to it, a view with which I heartily agree.)
Here's a sample of what you have coming in the new edition of Frommer's China:
The Best of China
With a landmass of almost 10 million sq. km (4 million sq. miles), plus a further 5 million sq. km (2 million sq. miles) of water, no other single country can even come close to offering such a vast choice of destinations as the unimaginable vastness that is currently known as China.
Unimaginable vastness? The editing at Frommer's is getting worse and worse. Or perhaps the subs wrote this tripe. China is only about 260,000 square miles bigger than the USA, and dramatically smaller than Canada. I hope readers there are holding on tightly to their seats, or already having therapy to cope with living somewhere unimaginable. Fatuous.
The world’s foremost authority on China, Harvard professor John King Fairbank, declared that “our libraries are filled with writers who know all about China, but could not see how much they did not know.”
Isn't the foremost authority on China probably Chinese? Could you guess from this paragraph that Fairbank has been dead for 15 years? I wonder if the author knows that. Fatuous.
We concede that we have barely scratched the surface, especially when we consider that human history in this area stretches back almost two million years, much further than the much-vaunted “5,000 years of Chinese civilization,” yet even this is hardly a smudge on the far longer geologic record.
Setting aside the tortuous language of this almost unreadable sentence, and the soporific dullness of the '5000 years' cliche, what on earth are we supposed to take from it? Human history begins in Africa. The populating of what is now known as China was the result of two migrations from North Africa and Europe, one via Siberia, and one via a southerly route (incidentally making Northern Chinese genetically closer to Europeans than they are to Southern Chinese). So Europe has an even longer 'human history', and Africa longer still. What's the point?
And if by (ugh!) 'geologic record' we're referring to the physical structure, it does seem very likely that China was formed about the same time as the rest of the world. Surprise!
What utter tosh. How on earth does this kind of thing get into print? Are they all asleep at the wheel over there?
In many parts, the People’s Republic has only recently been opened to visitors, and so we have only had a few decades to unlock some of this enormous realm’s secrets. While we certainly do not claim to have uncovered everything, we have been truly inspired by this huge treasure house, and have included here what we have been able to find out so far, starting with what we think is some of China’s very best.
How unrelentingly pompous! What hubris! Who's the 'we' here? 'We' haven't had 'a few decades' in China but rather more like five minutes judging from some of the updating, so it's just as well 'we' aren't claiming 'have uncovered everything'.
God help us all. Where's my pith helmet and machete? I'm off to discover China, Carruthers.
If you've read Writing China guides then you'll know this kind of drivel couldn't have, and didn't, make it into the first edition.
The opinions of some of the other original contributors (as exchanged by private email) are fairly sulphurous, and one, Josh Chin, has already said his piece on his Ch-Infamous blog, here:
A tired collection of unimaginably tired cliches
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