How to Ride a Train to Ulaanbaatar and Other Essays

by Josephine V Roque

How to Ride a Train to Ulaanbaatar and Other Essays is a coming-of-age story of a woman who leaves home to work in Shanghai following the death of her mother. In a collection of ten travel essays, she writes about living in another culture to learn another language and the experiences that shaped her view on what it means to be her own person, a daughter, a friend, a lover and a citizen of the world.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

214 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2021

Reviews

[Jade Capiñanes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of travel essays about the places the author went to after her mother’s death: Shanghai, Beijing, Lhasa, Seoul, Hong Kong, Macau, and the titular Ulaanbaatar.

The prose reminds me of Kerouac’s freewheeling style in “On the Road,” with a hint of Sebald’s attention to detail and digressions into historical and cultural observations. The collection shines best in its linguistic insights: Roque’s making sense of her difficulty in speaking a foreign language is not only personal but also anthropological.

The pieces in this collection aren’t as linear as (magazine) travel essays tend to be. They are reflective and accumulative, which I think is the book’s main strength: traveling, the essays imply, is not about moving from place to place but about being there, about finding your place wherever you are.

I love how the essays end. Roque concludes her essays in the middle of something going on, or sometimes even where something begins—a river, a commotion, an airport—as if to say that nothing ever ends, we just linger on.

[Bomalabs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comparing this book to a Pinoy BBQ stick, Nasa Dulo ang Taba. The Juiciest Essay are in the end. I'm amazed at the authors' ability to make you care about their travels, especially knowing that when you travel, you do tend to forget everything that happened after. And so I admire her writing, for bringing you there, whether its Lhasa or Ulaanbataar, and sharing her thoughts intimately with you.

[Stephanie Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this brought me back to my younger days of living abroad, sharing flats, and traveling both alone and with friends, especially to places that are off the beaten path.
While the book is filled with the specifics of Roque’s experiences before moving to, living in and eventually leaving China, it’s also universal in its insights into family, friendship, and love and loss.