If you ever want to know what it was like when America first met China a book called "When America First Met China" is a great book. This book talks about how this new action was so innovative with sea trade that would soon be on the shores of a civilization that had been around three thousand years longer commencing trade with it. The United States has always had merchants wanting trade to richer their pockets and get some of the values out from the East such as porcelain, silk,spices and tea there was plenty of tea and I cannot imagine what tea must of been for the folks in the Nineteenth century. It must of been the coca cola of its age asI can count the number of times on my hands I have darken the stuff. Author Eric Jay Dolin pretty much discusses all the aspects and consequences of this relationship between America and China and once again the opium war is right up as does it seem to be a major part of every book about China post seventeenth century. 
More interesting was the part he wrote on the Chinese slaves who worked the guano fields of Peru and the sugar fields of the Caribbean and our role of bringing about this legal slavery trans-Atlantic trade of human beings.plenty of great illustrations and drawings of the time period and Chinese paintings and artwork dot this book giving the reader some page candy and breaking the monatancy that book reading can be at times. I also learned a bit about the original Siamese twins Chang and Eng who Dolin writes a few pages about their lives in America as a freak show. These twins arrived in Boston to a sensation as they were a freak of nature joined at the hips and campaigned to a life together these guys settled their freak down in America both getting married to two women and liv g a life of orgy traveling around the country for all to see.
They would soon settle down in North Carolina and become wealthy and slave owners themselves with their own estate. Trade was the primary form of contact between these nations and this is mostly what the book is about givi g a glimpse of historical interactions that reverberate to this day with global trade and li is between these two big and powerful nations.
More interesting was the part he wrote on the Chinese slaves who worked the guano fields of Peru and the sugar fields of the Caribbean and our role of bringing about this legal slavery trans-Atlantic trade of human beings.plenty of great illustrations and drawings of the time period and Chinese paintings and artwork dot this book giving the reader some page candy and breaking the monatancy that book reading can be at times. I also learned a bit about the original Siamese twins Chang and Eng who Dolin writes a few pages about their lives in America as a freak show. These twins arrived in Boston to a sensation as they were a freak of nature joined at the hips and campaigned to a life together these guys settled their freak down in America both getting married to two women and liv g a life of orgy traveling around the country for all to see.
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