Delisle had already been to China in
Nanjing. He is deployed to
Shenzhen as part of an outsourcing project, where he will spend three months in the Great Wall Hotel. Unlike in Hong Kong, there are not many bilingual Chinese so he has language problems during his stay, including with the interpreters at work. Often he has to recourse to drawing or pointing to communicate. Among his experiences of life in Shenzhen include a visit to a Chinese dentist to cure a toothache, but after seeing the unhygienic conditions of the clinic, he is relieved to find out it is just a case of mesialization. Since the main leisure activity in Shenzhen is shopping, Delisle tries to read books, works for
L'Association's
Lapin magazine, and buys Chinese artbooks (drawings by children, Wang Chi Yun, and Hu Buo Zhong). He realizes that the
Spirou that he liked as a child is no longer funny. An allegory he applies to the Chinese
rural exodus is the
Divine Comedy, with the Chinese countryside as the
Inferno; the USA as the
Paradiso; and the big Chinese cities, Shenzhen and Hong Kong as intermediate rings. He finds a copy of
Théodore Poussin. His Chinese-speaking acquaintances bring him to try
Chinese food. He finds
Guangzhou and Hong Kong more interesting than Shenzhen. The only tourist attraction he visits in the new city is the
Window of the World, since his Chinese friends are not interested in
Splendid China Folk Village. He spends a Christmas dinner with a Chinese animator who, while a fan of
Rembrandt, has only a black-and-white photo of
Bathsheba at Her Bath. There is less political commentary than in his later graphic novel
Pyongyang. ==See also==