BOOKS

By Martha Duffy

THE LAUGHING SUTRA

by Mark Salzman

Random House; 263 pages; $18.95

Four years ago, Mark Salzman made an enviable debut as a writer. Iron and Silk was an account of the two years he spent in Hunan teaching English to Chinese medical students. A young man's book, it was modest and graceful and, most important, managed to reflect how the author's own openness and charm brought out the candor in the reserved Chinese people he encountered.

Salzman made a movie of his book, due out next month, and has now written his first novel, also with a Chinese theme. It would be good to report that he has managed another conjuring act, but that is not quite true. The Laughing Sutra is very promising and often funny. But the author opts for the picaresque, and nowadays it's a tough act to bring off because ordinary headlines make tall tales look tame.

Hsun-ching is a worthy young man who, after his mother is killed, is raised by a patient Buddhist monk. The old monk's only dream is to go to San Francisco and find the Laughing Sutra, which he believes will unlock the secrets of wisdom. Of course he is too frail for such a quest, and of course Hsun-ching undertakes it in his behalf, ignorant though he is of travel bans in China, not to mention restrictions on entering the U.S.

And he makes it too, because he carries with him a kind of human talisman, an ancient named Colonel Sun, who bears every possible intimation of immortality. It becomes increasingly clear that the colonel's memory, while selective, goes back centuries, that Sun has a handy way with magic and, yes, an evil eye. He has a ready street wit too. When an earnest Californian wants to know his religious beliefs, he retorts, "If there were any gods, they would be on earth making us do their laundry for them."

Salzman is skilled at using his meandering tale to comment on such varied ; matters as the Cultural Revolution, the Hong Kong drug trade, American amusement parks and the idiocies of slob art in West Coast galleries. But the subjects -- the earnest seeker and his wizardly mentor, an old dormant civilization and a young bombastic one -- are still stereotypes, no matter how lovingly drawn.