Iron & Silk: Encounters with Martial Artists, Bureaucrats and other Citizens of Contemporary China - Hardcover

In 1982, Salzman flew off to teach English in Changsha, China. He writes of bureaucrats, students and Cultural Revolution survivors, stripping none of their complexity and humanity. He's gentle with their idiocies, saving his sharpest barbs for himself (it's his pants that split from zipper to waist whilst demonstrating martial arts in Canton). Though dribs of history and drabs of classical lore seep through, this is mostly a personal tale, noted by the Los Angeles Times for "the charmingly unpretentious manner in which it penetrates a China inaccessible to other foreigners."

"Salzman demonstrates with skill and subtlety just how Chinese society works."--The Washington Post

"Gong fu, or 'skill that transcends mere surface beauty'...no other term is as apt for a book that describes China and its people with such deftness and delight."--Time