Destination: Asia
No. 18: “All the Wrong Places” by James Fenton
by Frank Bures | 05.14.06 | 11:53 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1988
Territory covered: Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea and the Philippines
James Fenton is not only one of the great characters of travel writing, having starred as the poet-sidekick of Redmond O’Hanlon in his Into the Heart of Borneo. He also happens to be one of the great travel writers, having authored classics of the genre like The Snap Revolution, about the chaos surrounding the fall of Marcos in the Philippines. At the time, the entire region was convulsing in the Cold War, and having been given an award for “traveling and writing poetry,” Fenton had to pick a place to go. “Looking at what the world had to offer,” he wrote, “I thought either Africa or Indochina would be the place to go. I chose the latter, partly on a whim.” Once there, Fenton watched governments rise and fall, and many of his stories in All the Wrong Places read like semi-comic thrillers. They are required reading for anyone traveling through Southeast Asia who wants to understand the background against which their travels take place.
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Yahoo! BuzzNo. 20: “River Town” by Peter Hessler
by Frank Bures | 05.12.06 | 7:40 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary,
we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 2001
Territory covered: China
In 1996, Peace Corps volunteer Peter Hessler was sent to the town of Fuling, in Sichuan Province, to teach English. During the two years he spent there, he got to know his students, their culture, their language and the imperious and strange communist state better than most outsiders. Today, China is arguably the second most important country in the world, and its influence can be felt on every level—economic, military, cultural. The rise of China only makes River Town more essential reading as a window into the culture. Many China analysts can add up the sum of China’s productivity increase, but can’t tell you why the Nanjing Massacre still rankles people so deeply, or what the average young Chinese person’s hopes for the future are. “River Town” is a textured look at a culture. It is also an important and moving account no one should miss.
No. 23: “Behind the Wall” by Colin Thubron
by Tom Swick | 05.09.06 | 9:25 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1989
Territory covered: China
As usual, Thubron studied the language before the trip and arrived with his customary grasp of history and notebook of contacts. His encounters with people—beginning with his seatmate on the plane over, who believes he says “smile” when he asks her if the Chinese think Westerners “smell”—have the openness and the authenticity (and in this case the humor) of a great travelogue. But Thubron raises the bar with his physical descriptions, employing language that often verges on pyrotechnic, and his analytical thrusts. He is one of those rare writers who possess both the intellectual capacity to interpret and the emotional ability to connect. As a result, his writing upgrades frequently from informative and entertaining to profound and moving. This is perhaps the best book by the best travel writer working today.
The Critics: “Oracle Bones” by Peter Hessler
by Jim Benning | 05.06.06 | 2:35 PM ET
Peter Hessler’s new book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, earned a glowing review in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. Writes Seth Faison: “[H]e goes beyond the usual ways of evaluating so complex a culture. Instead, his focus wanders intelligently and settles into corners of China that we don’t ordinarily read about. With quiet power, his writing glues stories into a coherent whole.” That said, Faison wishes there were more of Hessler in the book: “Hessler reveals little about himself. He seems to thrive on what he calls the ‘floating life’ of a writer, observing contemporary China with detachment. The power of his storytelling would be even stronger if his own personality emerged in it.” Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze is a modern classic.
Mount Merapi, Indonesia
by Ben Keene | 05.05.06 | 1:36 PM ET
Coordinates: 7 32 S 110 36 E
Elevation: 9,550 feet (2,911 m)
To call volcano tourism a hot trend would not only be a bad pun, but also somewhat of an exaggeration; yes it exists, but it isn’t for everybody. For those climbers and thrill seekers with summer plans to visit the slopes of Mount Merapi, the youngest and most active volcanic peak in Indonesia: Start looking elsewhere. Ash and gas have been issuing from the cone for several weeks and authorities monitoring Merapi’s activity have encouraged the local population to evacuate the area, warning that a major eruption is increasingly likely. Located on the island of Java where the Australian tectonic plate meets the larger Eurasian plate, this menacing mountain last erupted in 1994.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
No. 27: “The Size of the World” by Jeff Greenwald
by Michael Shapiro | 05.05.06 | 1:22 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1997
Territory covered: Latin America, Asia, Africa
In 1994, to commemorate his 40th birthday, Jeff Greenwald decides to travel around the world without getting on an airplane. As the date approaches, he wonders if he should cancel the trip and focus on his magazine writing. But then he realizes that freelancing has become a “dead end” where “once-celebrated word wranglers on dark corners moon about their Precambrian cover stories for Esquire while they suck Night Train from brown paper bags.” So he places a personal ad seeking a female companion for the trip. He meets eight candidates, one at a time, at a Chinese restaurant, “a bow to the old Jewish proverb that you can learn everything you need to know about someone by ordering Chinese food with them.” One candidate looks promising till she blows her nose into the last mu-shu pancake. Then an old flame of Greenwald’s agrees to go. The couple moves by bus, boat and train, and after his companion has to leave, Greenwald completes the nine-month journey on his own. He has riveting encounters with the famous, such as Paul Bowles in Tangier, and with ordinary people, including Tibetans struggling for basic rights. Greenwald’s New York upbringing is evident in his savvy maneuvering at border crossings and in his sharp-edged humor. Included in the book are dispatches he filed for Global Network Navigator, an early online magazine that published Greenwald’s essays just hours after he wrote them. In a 1996 interview, Greenwald told me: “I had this sense of being almost on fire, that the excitement and heat of my journey was something I could broadcast in no time at all. It was a very giddy feeling.” Fortunately for readers, the heat of the journey still resonates on the printed page.
Lust in Translation
by Jim Benning | 05.01.06 | 8:20 PM ET
iStockPhoto When the phone rang in his hotel room in Xian, China, Jim Benning expected to face a frustrating language barrier. He never imagined a woman with a sultry voice at the other end.
Travel Photo Caption Contest
by Jim Benning | 04.28.06 | 1:17 PM ET
Inspired by The New Yorker’s cartoon caption contests, we thought we’d give our own contest a try. I took this shot in China. Got a caption idea? Click on “comments” below and let us know!
Business Traveler on Chinese Brothel: I Had to “Damn Near Fight My Way Out”
by Jim Benning | 04.25.06 | 1:41 PM ET
No, this is not from the pages of the Onion. It’s from an AP story about an American business traveler in China who wound up flying into the wrong city—Taiyuan, a place with 1.5 million residents—and seemed to nearly fear for his life. We’re not sure what’s more shocking: the business traveler’s level of anxiety over a situation backpackers experience more or less daily, or the AP’s breathless account, which doesn’t begin to question the traveler’s response. (How does any city with 1.5 million people qualify as “remote”?)
Movie Review: ‘Mountain Patrol: Kekexili’
by Ben Keene | 04.14.06 | 2:33 PM ET
The menacing howl of the wind across a barren plateau 13,000 feet above sea level. The sharp cry of vultures circling over the carcasses of hundreds of chiru (Tibetan antelope) slaughtered for their downy fur. The crackle of flames leaping from a rusty Land Rover abandoned by suspected poachers. These are the sounds of Mountain Patrol: Kekexili, the latest dramatic release from National Geographic World Films, which opens in select theaters this weekend. I was invited to an advance screening Wednesday and was both entertained and educated.
Phaic Tan: It’s No Vietnam
by Michael Yessis | 04.12.06 | 7:57 AM ET
The U.S. edition of the Southeast Asia guidebook parody Phaic Tan: Sunstroke on a Shoestring came out recently, and yesterday I got my hands on a copy. It’s hilarious all the way down to the blurbs about contributors (“Jenny Ronalds is a freelance travel writer with a special interest in Southeast Asia who, over the years, has contributed to Travel & Leisure, Globe Trotter and International Gourmet. None have ever been published and we kind of felt sorry for her.”). It’s also so dead on in its aping of guidebook style and convention that I almost started believing Phaic Tan was a real place. It’s easy to do. How easy? Take our Vietnam vs. Phaic Tan quiz and find out.
“Lust in Translation”
by Jim Benning | 04.10.06 | 11:51 AM ET
My latest travel essay, about a sexy phone call I received in a hotel room in Xian, China, appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post. It’ll be coming to the pages of World Hum soon.
Upper Yangtze Ecoregion, China
by Ben Keene | 03.31.06 | 11:00 AM ET
Area: 280,696 sq. mi. (727,000 sq. km)
Provinces included: 12
Although North American in origin, the proverb “after the feast comes the reckoning” can be applied to a predicament facing modern China. With 1.3 billion citizens using chopsticks, an eating utensil that dates back more than 3,000 years and that’s usually made of wood, the country was watching its forests disappear at an alarming rate. Taking a step toward conservation, the Chinese government has responded by applying a 5 percent tax, beginning in April, on the tens of billions of these ubiquitous disposable implements that are produced annually from birch and poplar trees. Much of China’s commercial logging occurs in the southwestern area of China known as the Upper Yangtze Ecoregion. The region supports a diverse range of flora and fauna, including the giant panda.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Rolling Stone Magazine Banned in China
by Jim Benning | 03.30.06 | 4:51 PM ET
The magazine had just launched its China edition with a splashy billboard advertising campaign. The Los Angeles Times has the details.
Chick Lit Around the World
by Michael Yessis | 03.22.06 | 10:30 AM ET
Rachel Donadio has a great piece in the New York Times Sunday Book Review this week chronicling the popularity of the oft-derided genre known as chick lit in countries around the world. It’s taken hold in India and throughout Eastern Europe. In Scandinavia, it’s marked by a “certain existential angst.” In Indonesia, it has inspired a related genre known as “fragrant literature.”