Review: Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz

Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz

I don’t sign up for a lot of sites offering free books for review. I learned my lesson years ago. Yes, the idea of free books is great but I acquire books faster than I read them. And it’s unfair to the author or publisher to leave them hanging after promising them a review. You get the books for free but binding and sending it to you is not free for them. But I’m glad I signed up for Blogging for Books because I’ve found some really good reads through their program; titles that I wouldn’t have picked up on my own.

This is one of them. Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road by Rob Schmitz is a non-fiction book that talks about the real lives of everyday Chinese people in the middle of one of the most bustling cities in the world, Shanghai. In a city of more than a billion people, not all of them can be the rich and successful Chinese business moguls we see on TV and magazines, right? A lot of them struggle and have dreams of a better life just like the rest of us.

Rob Schmitz is an American journalist who was at that time was living in China to report on their economy. He found himself living at a street called “Street of Eternal Happiness”. His neighbors are quite engaging characters with equally interesting layers of history and experiences. Everyone is so different that you can’t help but root for them even when they’re doing something questionable. His research takes him to rural provinces in China and all the way back to the USA, tracing the threads that connect these people to their hometown and how they got to where they were presently in their lives.

It is a fun peek into the lives of these people. It is but a snapshot of their long and well-lived lives but it says so much of Chinese history and tradition that still manifests to this day. We see China as this huge, busy, non-personal country but look closer, you’ll see a yuppie trying to make his mark in the world, an aunt and uncle married for so many years yet still bicker like newlyweds, a family torn apart by history and government. You might find all of them here at the Street of Eternal Happiness.

This book was such a delight. I don’t read very many non-fiction and if I did, they’re usually military history or other dark times in the years past. When I was reading this, I laughed out loud so many times. I questioned a character’s decisions as if she were my own aunt. I pictured how their lives were, peddling their wares to an empty street. I was touched.

Rating: 4/5. It did take me a while to finish this but do not be deterred by the long time between Start and End date. Really, this is a quick and fun read.