The Great Dragon's Fleas

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Dragons, Tim Ward explains in his introduction, are the blank spots on
maps where no Western eyes have been. Ward’s stated goals are to
travel to these places and “see with [E]astern eyes.” He succeeds
relatively well at his first aim and fails miserably at his second.

Ward writes well and often with humor; but unfortunately his talent
cannot overcome his Western cultural prejudices. His everyday
observations are spiked with ethnocentric statements like “the old man
descended from the beams like a naked monkey” or “schooled in the
Thai art of indirect answers ... he withdrew, sensing all too clearly
that everything around him was laced with lies.”

Ward also does not flinch from intruding his Western values upon
less-advantaged hosts. For example, in Bangladesh he pressures a young
Moslem social worker into proposing marriage to a woman beyond his
social reach. The author even throws in money, and is genuinely miffed
when the wedding plans fall through. For most of the book, he merely
looks askance at religious pilgrims who cannot seem to come up to his
own personal standards of conduct.

Ward ends his book with a list of a variety of organizations dedicated
to lobbying for Tibet’s independence from China and challenges his
readers to take up the struggle. While the sentiments are good, it is
hard not to feel used by Ward and this political/religious tract.