At the prow of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, few so irreverently cut through the Chinese suppression as Aric S. Queen, the messy-haired controversial producer of the wildly successful "The Shanghai Diaries." Aric lives the high life with drugs, sex, and maverick success; but while on hiatus in Indonesia, one phone call changes everything. Aric discovers the Chinese police are hunting him down. Caught between nowhere to go and nowhere to go back to, this is the story of his exile.
From climbing Mount Rinjani in an orange sarong to motorbiking through Nepal, visiting secret schools in Burma to unexpected detours at Cambodian brothels, ditching patchouli at a Thai monastery to stumbling upon a rare glimpse of the burning dead in Varanasi, Aric pens an astonishingly uncensored narrative. With equal parts political exposè, travel journal, and self-deprecating wit, Aric wields a conspicuous rip through the cloaked underbelly of the Chinese regime while pulling the reader through an intensely personal journey of validation, love, and utter originality.
From climbing Mount Rinjani in an orange sarong to motorbiking through Nepal, visiting secret schools in Burma to unexpected detours at Cambodian brothels, ditching patchouli at a Thai monastery to stumbling upon a rare glimpse of the burning dead in Varanasi, Aric pens an astonishingly uncensored narrative. With equal parts political exposè, travel journal, and self-deprecating wit, Aric wields a conspicuous rip through the cloaked underbelly of the Chinese regime while pulling the reader through an intensely personal journey of validation, love, and utter originality.