Within this slim tome, we are quickly taken on this man’s journey around the world. “Like everything else that had happened to him in life, from leukemia to being deported, Evans took his dismissal stolidly and as a matter of course.” That just about sums it up best. The lingering question is never fully answered: Is he an idiot savant or just a slightly-luckier-than-average idiot? In this sense, there are several ways to interpret the book.Įither way, Evans most consistent trait is that he takes it all in strides. As he drifts from one town to another, somehow surviving while apparently making no money, it’s not always clear how bumblingly brilliant the man’s so-called escapades may be. Spoiler alert, he never does get that better life.
In a way that makes it only natural that such a person would be driven to Shanghai and elsewhere as he seeks a better life. The comparisons of rural America to rural China are vivid and foster much conversation. The full title of this tome is An American Bum in China: Featuring the Bumblingly Brilliant Escapades of Expatriate Matthew Evans, and it is a fitting title indeed.Įvans’s tale begins in the small town of Muscatine, Iowa-where Xi Jinping actually visited in 2012. So author Tom Carter tells the story of his friend Matthew Evans, a perpetual hard-luck case who might just be the oddest expatriate you’ve ever heard of (and if you’ve been around a good number of expats, that’s saying a lot). Tom Carter, An American Bum in China: Featuring the Bubblingly Brilliant Escapades of Expatriate Matthew Evans, Camphor Press, 2019.
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