Destination: Asia
Photo You Must See: The Thin Yellow Line in Chongqing
by World Hum | 11.19.09 | 4:29 PM ET
REUTERS/Stringer Shanghai Yellow cabs line a viaduct in Chongqing, China, while waiting to get their tanks filled during a shortage.
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Yahoo! BuzzJan Morris Reveals her Favorite Cities
by Michael Yessis | 11.19.09 | 3:41 PM ET
She fields this question in the Guardian: What is her favorite of them all?
Dear God, what a question! To my mind cities are distillations of human life itself, in all its nuances, with all its contradictions and anomalies, changing from one year to another, changing with the weather, changing with history, changing with the state of the world, changing above all in one’s own personal responses. How can I have a favourite? Sometimes I prefer one city, sometimes another. Inconstancy governs my responses to cities—fidelity in personal matters, promiscuity in civic affairs.
Morris does have a ready answer, though, when asked about her least favorite city: Indianapolis. (Via @ben_coop)
Video You Must See: A 25-Second Sunrise
by Eva Holland | 11.19.09 | 2:07 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s New Novel: ‘A Dead Hand’
by Jim Benning | 11.18.09 | 1:50 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s new novel isn’t scheduled to be released in the U.S. until February 2010, but it’s already getting mixed reviews in the British press. It’s a mystery of sorts set in Calcutta and featuring a down-on-his-luck travel-writer-protagonist named Jerry Delfont.
Intriguingly, writes Doug Johnstone in The Independent:
Midway through the book, Delfont meets a fictional veteran US travel writer called Paul Theroux, a more successful and famous version of Delfont, whom he despises. The next 20 pages amount to a diatribe by Delfont about the act of travel writing, describing it as an emotionally stunted, puerile and selfish pastime, and brutally denouncing anyone who is stupid and arrogant enough to do it. This remarkable interlude is compelling, like rubbernecking a psychological car crash - but the rest of the novel is distinctly patchy, the bad points eventually outweighing the good.
Apparently the sex writing in the book leaves something to be desired. Once again, Theroux has been nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award.
Photo You Must See: Snow-Frosted Forbidden City
by World Hum | 11.18.09 | 11:54 AM ET
REUTERS/Jason Lee A snowy scene in Beijing’s Forbidden City, photographed several days ago.
Photo You Must See: On the Mosque’s Threshold
by World Hum | 11.12.09 | 11:38 AM ET
REUTERS/Beawiharta Beawiharta A child steps inside a brightly lit mosque in Pelalawan, Indonesia.
Don George: ‘Anticipation is one of Travel’s Great Gifts’
by Eva Holland | 11.11.09 | 1:22 PM ET
In the latest issue of Recce, Don George looks back at his first trip to Japan, and realizes—as he prepares to board another flight for Tokyo—that the pre-trip excitement still hasn’t waned, thirty-two years later.
Photo You Must See: Models Strike a Pose in Karachi
by World Hum | 11.10.09 | 10:49 AM ET
REUTERS/Adrees Latif Two fashion models pose together before hitting the catwalk during Karachi’s Fashion Pakistan Week.
‘Is Japanese Getting Simpler, Easier or Just Worse?’
by Eva Holland | 11.09.09 | 2:09 PM ET
Writing in the New York Times, Emily Parker ponders the changes being wrought on the Japanese language by the internet and cell phones:
Americans may fret over the ways digital communications encourage sloppy grammar and spelling, but in Japan these changes are much more wrenching. A vertically written language seems to be becoming increasingly horizontal. Novels are being written and read on little screens. People have gotten so used to typing on computers that they can no longer write characters by hand. And English words continue to infiltrate the language.
Video You Must See: From Denver to Singapore in Five Minutes
by Eva Holland | 11.06.09 | 1:44 PM ET
(Via Kottke)
‘Ivory Coast = France = Japan’
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.09 | 10:02 AM ET
That equation comes from a James Fallows post in the Atlantic, and he’s talking about language habits.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can’t really learn it, and that one’s attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. “Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!”
World Travel Watch: Protests in Nepal, Tensions in Nicaragua and More
by Larry Habegger | 11.05.09 | 7:47 AM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
Photo You Must See: 32 Meters of Mao
by World Hum | 11.04.09 | 11:34 AM ET
REUTERS/China Daily A 32-meter (or 105-foot) statue of a youthful Chairman Mao is under construction in Hunan province, China.
Fall Foliage Around the World
by Alicia Imbody | 11.03.09 | 10:16 AM ET
From Osaka to Chicago, seven photos of turning leaves around the shrinking planet
Escape From Thamel
by Eric Weiner | 11.02.09 | 10:19 AM ET
On hawkers, banana pancakes and tourist ghettos from Kathmandu to Bangkok
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