Destination: China
China’s Environmental Woes
by Jim Benning | 07.18.06 | 5:27 PM ET
Several years ago I visited China, and I enjoyed just about every minute of it. This photo I shot at a McDonald’s in Xian—Chinese food is great, but a guy needs a break now and again—captures a hint of the juxtaposition between old and new that is becoming such a common sight in the country. But the gorgeous, centuries-old building out the McDonald’s window here looks so gray because in Xian I encountered thick, gray-brown, throat-burning, eye-stinging air, the worst I’d ever seen. It was so bad I bought a cloth cover to wear over my nose and mouth, as many locals do, hoping to filter out some of the pollution. It’s ugly. The World Bank reports that China is home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. This week, the public radio show The World is airing a four-part series on China’s environmental problems, entitled “Paying for Prosperity.” The first report, broadcast yesterday, focused on air quality, among other issues. Listening to it, I almost felt like coughing as I recalled Xian and the kind of air that so many people in China have to breathe daily.
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Yahoo! BuzzGere on the China-Tibet Train
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.06 | 10:11 AM ET
Richard Gere, the actor and chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times about the new train from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet and its consequences. “[It] is a staggering engineering achievement and a testimony to the developing greatness of China,” Gere writes. “But it is also the most serious threat by the Chinese yet to the survival of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity. In the words of a well-known Tibetan religious teacher who died after many years in a Chinese prison, the railway heralds ‘a time of emergency and darkness’ for Tibet.”
The Rise of Chinese Car Culture
by Michael Yessis | 07.07.06 | 10:05 AM ET
China’s train to Tibet dominated the headlines this week, so much so that I forgot to post about Ted Conover’s excellent story about Chinese car culture in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine. “The figures behind China’s car boom are stunning,” Conover writes. “Total miles of highway in the country: at least 23,000, more than double what existed in 2001, and second now only to the United States. Number of passenger cars on the road: about 6 million in 2000 and about 20 million today. Car sales are up 54 percent in the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period a year ago; every day, 1,000 new cars (and 500 used ones) are sold in Beijing.” Conover signs on for a “self-driving tour” with the Beijing Target Auto Club and explores the economic, environmental and cultural impact of all those automobiles hitting Chinese roads.
Train Completes First Journey to Tibet. But is it Progress or a ‘Second Invasion’?
by Jim Benning | 07.07.06 | 7:30 AM ET
In the final chapter of his terrific 1988 book Riding the Iron Rooster, about riding trains through China, Paul Theroux wrote of the difficulty in traveling from China to Lhasa, Tibet—“six days overland from Xian, or else a long and frightening flight from Chengdu.” Later, he continued, “[T]he main reason Tibet is so undeveloped and un-Chinese—and so thoroughly old-fangled and pleasant—is that it is the one great place in China that the railway has not reached. The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa.” If only it were so. Earlier this week, after years of construction, a train completed the first journey from Beijing to Lhasa along what is now the world’s highest railway, topping out at a breathtaking 16,640 feet. “Laptop computers and digital music players failed because the tiny air bags that cushion their moving parts broke,” the AP reported via the Los Angeles Times. “Some passengers threw up. Others took Tibetan herbs or breathed oxygen through tubes.”
The Historical Rise in Chinese Tourists
by Jim Benning | 05.19.06 | 1:41 PM ET
The New York Times reported on the phenomenon earlier this week: “For the first time in history, large numbers of Chinese are leaving their country as tourists, resulting in an unparalleled explosion in Chinese travel. If current projections are met, the global tourism industry will be undergoing a crash course in everything Chinese to accommodate the needs of what promises to be the greatest wave of international travelers ever.” The story notes Lonely Planet’s foray into Chinese-language guidebooks beginning next month: “The initial titles cover Germany, Britain, Europe and Australia, with guides covering the United States, Canada and Southeast Asia due soon afterward.” It’ll be interesting to see how all this develops. I was in China a few years ago. My most enduring recollection of Chinese bus tourists traveling within their own country was the great risk I saw several of them take leaping onto a tiny rock in the midst of a rushing river in order to pose, sullen-faced, for photographs. I couldn’t imagine most Americans willing to take that leap. And they seemed to thinking nothing of it. Granted, these might have been particularly daring Chinese travelers, and one always has to be careful making generalizations, but let’s just say that if the tourist Olympics are held any time soon, my money is on the Chinese.
No. 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.
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.
“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.