Riding the Iron Rooster was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1988. Theroux spent a year in China — 1986, seven years after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms began — traveling by every train route he could manage: the Trans-Mongolian from London, then internal routes from Beijing to Shanghai, Shanghai to Kunming, Kunming to Tibet, Tibet to Xinjiang, and back to the coast.
China in 1986 was at a particular historical moment: post-Mao but pre-Tiananmen, opening economically but still politically controlled, curious about foreigners but suspicious of them. Theroux found a country of immense contradictions: Mao posters alongside Coca-Cola ads, collective farms being parceled into private plots, cadres reciting Communist slogans while running private businesses.
The book is darker than Theroux’s earlier travel works because China frustrated his methods: people were guarded, translators controlled conversations, and the landscape was often hidden behind industrial smog. The Tibet sections — where Theroux witnessed the destruction of monasteries and the cultural suppression of Tibetans — are the book’s moral center, written with controlled fury.
Collecting Riding the Iron Rooster
First edition (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1988): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $20–$40
- US first edition (Putnam): $15–$30