If Eden Collinsworth weren't so good a writer, she'd do well with her own reality TV show.
She has a fearless, go-anywhere, do-almost-anything attitude that — combined with her intelligence and keen observational powers — makes for exceptional storytelling. And that's what you get with "I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Western Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson."
Collinsworth was a business executive who broke the glass ceiling at several companies. After splitting with her husband, she became the primary caregiver of their son, Gilliam, whom she imbued with a version of her wanderlust. Gilliam grew up to develop an uncanny faculty with languages, lived in France and Japan, studied Chinese at a British University and went to live in China, which is where this story begins.
He told his mother, "China's school system is producing socially disconnected kids." He wondered if "parents would pay for an after-school program" in manners and etiquette.
Collinsworth had been to China before. On her first visit there, about 30 years ago, a local businessman wanted to purchase her. Despite this inauspicious introduction to the country, she seemed intrigued by her son's suggestion. She went back to China, began to develop a course and then was asked by a Chinese publisher to write an etiquette book.
She didn't offer earthshaking advice, at least by Western standards. Instead, the book ("The Tao of Improving Your Likability") included suggestions such as: In a business meeting, do not pull over an ashtray and spit in it.
"I Stand Corrected" is partly the story of how that book came to be, but it is also an amalgam of anecdotal memoir, travelogue — she's also been to Rwanda, Thailand, East Timor — and sharply etched observations of life in a country she seems to admire. For all its faults, she says, "China has already proved that a one-party system can deliver dynamic economic growth."
Almost every page offers a delightful tidbit, whether it is how Zheng He, a famous military commander and adventurer, was turned by Western writers into Sinbad the Sailor, or how she and her son developed an interesting eating arrangement. (On their journeys, Gilliam picked out food for them to eat "as long as I remained ignorant of what we were eating.")
In the end, Chinese censors delayed publishing her book for an inane reason, but eventually relented, a tribute to the government's desire to assume an even greater role on the world stage. After approval, though, she received another call from the government. Uh-oh. What now?
Turned out it wasn't a censor, but someone who wanted her to create a curriculum on deportment for the Chinese school system. "It was incongruous. It was comical. It was the last thing I expected."
The same might be said of this book, which in this case is a very good thing.
Curt Schleier is a freelance critic in New Jersey.
