No comments about Ennin's Travels in T'ang China.

No comments about Peking (World 100 Years Ago).

3 comments about I Have Seen the World Begin: Travels through China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

1. The title of this book, I Have Seen the World Begin, got my curiosity. The Danish journalist Carsten Jensen travelled from Russia south in Asia, through China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong, and memories from these travels are collected in this huge book. And there are not only memories. Jensen has an open eye and tries to explain what he sees, and make it part of a bigger context, our world.

   Jensen travels alone, but he meets local people on his way. And he is not afraid of making contact. Many of these people are there for us to meet through the book. I Have Seen the World Begin is not a romantic story. Here we meet all the dirt of poverty, all the dust of the landscape, all the evilness in people, though we also meet the beauty of the women in Vietnam, the charm of a poor guide in a small village in China, the greatness of a landscape. Travelling might be boring and depressing, or it might give new dimensions to your life. Jensen has experienced both.

   And where does the world begin according to Carsten Jensen? It began for him in the birth of his child. The world is alive, the world is a place which will go on living inspite all odds

   Britt Arnhild Lindland




2. "The lone traveller is the most dependent of all, because he has need of everybody and no one has need of him."

   So notes Carsten Jensen in I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN, his narrative account of his journey of discovery through China, Cambodia and Vietnam during the early 90s.

   Jensen begins his travelogue in Beijing, but quickly moves on to Shanghai, from which he travels by boat up the Yangtse River, then by rail and bus, into southeastern China near the border of Myanmar (Burma). A constant thread is the state of the country and its inhabitants, individually and collectively, post-Tiananmen Square.

   Then it's on to Cambodia, a country yet to recover from the cruel self-immolation imposed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge minions. As Jensen writes about this "biblical Judgement Day":

   "... when the gates of Paradise were opened, it was only to reveal yet another graveyard. ... It was the humbled, the abased and the desperate who were raised on high, not to put an end to despair, but to extend it to everyone."

   And lastly, Vietnam, with which the author is obviously entranced, and the reader with him. Much of Carsten's enthrallment is with the country's women - Tam, Kim and Scent of Spring in particular. It's with the first that he has a physical relationship. And it's Tam who states in the most eloquent manner I've ever encountered the worst thing about not being able to conceive a child:

   "You can't pass on the eyes of the one you love to posterity. Like the stars they will be put out, instead of living on in a new face."

   Whether Jensen is describing China's Tiger Leap Gorge, Shanghai's New Year fireworks celebration, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh's horrific Security Prison 21, Vietnam's Hanoi ("like a wood with streets"), the royal tombs at Hue, or Dien Bien Phu, the graveyard of French colonialism in Southeast Asia, his magnificent prose transports you there.

   I was tempted to award I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN five stars, but am prevented from doing so by what I consider to be a significant omission. There's no photo section. What were the publisher and the author thinking?

   Having finished the book, I now want to visit Vietnam, a country I really had no desire to visit before. If a travel essay can accomplish this for any destination, it's very good indeed.




3. This is much more than a travel book. It's a book that has a deep respect for the "natives" it describes, and I really like that.
   
   Like all good books about travel, this book is about Jensen's inner journey as well. This work is sensous and it makes me want to travel. We need travellers instead of frigtened people who stay at home watching tv, disliking foreigners, Muslims, and the "darkness" they perceive is out there.'

3 comments about Yangtze Remembered: The River Beneath the Lake.

1. This amazing book by Linda Butler is a beautiful and heartbreaking look at the Three Gorges Dam project in China and the changing landscape because of it. The images are incredible and the text is haunting. The photographs are wonderfully reproduced and she has a great eye for capturing the subtle silence and the small nuances of the people and the landscape. Her vivid images document a changing China in a very intimate way. This text is a true photographic and historical treat!



2. As a person with a long-standing involvement in both photography and the professional evaluation of major energy projects in many countries (including hydro) I really appreciated the true value of this wonderful book.
   
   To begin with, many not involved in this kind of work may not appreciate how politically sensitive it is. It took a great deal of courage and savvy for Ms. Butler to create the relationships and the entrees needed to make and exit the country with all those wonderful photographs and interview materials. This is no small feat in its own right. It speaks highly of her and also says alot about the growing openness of China.
   
   Turning to the content, the quality of the photographs - in purely photographic terms - is superb. Lest we forget the power of black and white and the time-tested virtues of powerful composition, lighting and choice of subject matter, this is the place to recall them. Most of these pictures are not merely records - they are good photographs.
   
   The captions and the text are very well done. This book is not a one-sided tirade against dam development. Rather, it is a sensitive, obviously well-informed and balanced perspective on the costs and benefits of these undertakings - both at an individual and more aggregate societal level. It is very clear from this book that there are winners and losers, progress and losses, and the actual long-term net result remains to play-out. This is reality.
   
   There are important lessons of experience to be learned from this text. Let us not forget the scale of this enterprise. China committed something like six billions dollars to resettlement alone for over one million affected people. That a certain percentage of this money got misdirected through corruption and poor implementation is not surprising, and to the Chinese themselves - not acceptable - people are going to jail for their misdeeds. Ms. Butler faces these issues head-on and in a balanced manner. It becomes clear from reading this text that no matter how well-designed a project may be, the quality of the implementation arrangements and the structures in place for assuring their proper functioning are truly critical.
   
   Finally, returning to the book as a production in its own right, the quality of the layout and printing are superb. Very highly recommended.



3. Subtle, beautiful, honest glimpse of the most massive public energy project ever undertaken. Linda Butler captures the life and death of the people, commnunities, and cities that were sacrificed for this energy project.
   
   If America is "addicted to oil" then China is addicted to electricity. In the past 3 years China has approved and is building more new coal fired power plants than the entire United States fleet. You would think that this massive hydroelectric project at Three Gorges Dam would appease China's hunger for new energy, but the reality is it's just a drop in the bucket.
   
   This book does a wonderful job reflecting on what we loose when society progresses.

2 comments about Lost Lhasa: Heinrich Harrer's Tibet.

1. What a lovely book! Engrossing illustration of a way of life destroyed by the Chinese conquerors. I love reading Buddhist writings, but I think this would appeal even to those who are not interested in Buddhism, as Harrer seems to be not particularly religious and he concentrates on the everyday life of Tibetans in Lhasa.



2. Most of LOST LHASA documents the peaceful years that Heinrich Harrer spent in Tibet. The map of Tibet and its border with northern India is shown inside the front cover, with a line marking Harrer's route from Dehra Dun near the Ganges River in India, up into the Himalayas far northwest of Mt. Everest. After escaping from a prison camp in April, 1944, and climbing for 18 days to Tibet, then stuck in Traduen until December, 1944 while they waited for permission to travel further, they waited in Kyirong on the border of Nepal until November, 1945, when they escaped again. "To avoid large cities, we decided to move even farther north, into the Changthang region--the famous Tibetan Plateau. Here we would see only nomads and brigands; government officials avoided the area." (p. 43). Walking into Lhasa like starving beggars on January 15, 1946, "We thought of our adventures and of our comrades still in the internment camp at Dehra Dun." (p. 47).

   Heinrich Harrer is famous, now, as the author of the best-selling book, SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, which told the same story. LOST LHASA was not published until 1991, when the 2000 negatives which he had kept became the best reminder he had of the years he had enjoyed most. There is a lot of writing in this book to tell the entire story again, and in places where there aren't many pictures, the people are still fascinating. A young couple, who had given Peter Aufschnaiter and Harrer each a dried apricot on a 20,000-foot pass two months before, had much to complain about after they reached Lhasa. "They were surprised that they had to work for daily necessities, even if it was only a place to spend the night or a cup of tea. They felt that people in Lhasa were greedy, demanding things that in the Changthang you wouldn't think about. . . . We invited them to our modest home, where we had lots of barley, rice, and butter, and we supplied them for their return to the Changthang, their nomadic home, where they had plenty of meat, butter, cheese, milk, and where nature would provide for all their needs." (p. 65).

   Picture captions are jumbled together. The caption under the picture on page 116 explains "Noblemen and women . . ." with everyone in winter clothes "in front of the Kumbum monument in Gyangtse [above]. The girl [right] sits behind three fancy teacups, complete with stands and cover." also explains the picture of a young child on page 117 with very short hair and a necklace of beads sitting behind a table with four teacups. My first clue that it was a picture of a girl was the covers on the teacups. The 7-inch-square picture on page 116 shows plain cups and saucers. I did not realize that four teacups with stands and covers were on the table in front of the kid until I tried to measure the height of each cup to see if they were taller than the kid's head in the picture. Allowing for perspective, it might be possible for a knob on top of the fourth teacup to be mistaken for an earring, just below one of the kid's ears, but the earring pictures are elsewhere in this book.

   Several trips to Lhasa are described in this book, including "When I returned in 1982, I found that the Chinese had destroyed the medical school that perched atop Chagpori and replaced it with a radio tower." (p. 208). A Glossary on pages 218-219 explains terms like Dob-Dob (monk-police) and Tsampa (parched barley flour, the Tibetan's staple food). Notes on the pictures on page 220 identify two of the people in the picture on page 116 and explain that the picture following it is of the daughter of Surkhang Wangchuk, the governor of Gyangste. Harrer had fled Lhasa and was staying with the governor of Gyangste when the Dalai Lama with a caravan that contained more than a thousand animals came through on the flight from Tibet to the Chumbi Valley. Harrer left there in March, 1951. "Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa to find posters of Mao plastered against the walls of the Potala." (p. 207). Among the brighter aspects of the nostalgia in this book is the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Dalai Lama in 1989 because he "opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect, in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people." (pp. 216-217). This book is a monument to that tradition.

5 comments about Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand (Odyssey Guides).

1. Although at times this guidebook serves as an outlet for the authors' intellectual and personal preoccupation with the region, thereby losing its practicality for the reader, overall it is both helpful and beautifully written, brimming with sensory and cultural detail... The authors do not just tell you to go to a bazaar in Samarkand; they take you there, weaving you through narrow streets and by beer vendors, letting you smell the shashlik, nudging you to watch out for pickpockets. Because the authors do not miss a beat, this guide is at times almost a virtual tour of the country. Because the region is unstable and consequently dynamic, this book is now somewhat outdated in certain areas. The two need to update the edition.



2. This is not a mere travel guidance of Uzbekistan, but one of the best scientific articles full of joyful information spiced with humanistic reaction of the authors toward the legacy of Silk Road and Soviet Russian history.
   Names of people, telephone number, street name, as well as social and political information are all correct. Evaluation of the hotel accommodation including smart managers and busters is illustrated interestingly. If the authors would be aware of the fact that the inattentive attitude of the people in some area shows the existence of military secrets, this book might have shown a different flavor.
   Because I have given this book to my friend in Uzbekistan, I would like to order you another copy.



3. I live and work in the heart of Central Asia. Of all the guide books available, this one is the best yet. Not only does it have beautiful color photos and maps, the history articles are excellent. Beware: when you open up this book on the streets of Samarkand, Bukhara, or Khiva, people will gather around to view it! It's so good, I am ordering a full class room set for my students to use in the Uzbekistan studies part of our curriculum at Tashkent International School.



4. This book is not only the definitive and most comprehensive but it is also the most uncannily accurate and comprehensive guide to Uzbekistan in 2006. Throughout our travels from Tashkent to Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and back to Tashkent it was our bible, not only helping us to negotiate the culture but directed us to the 'must do' places to see or visit. In fact it made eveything about the country utterley comprehensible - from food and culture to history and politics. It came home very badly thumbed. Brilliant!



5. I lived in Uzbekistan for two years, and at the time this was the only reliable guide to sightseeing in the country. Well researched and full of historical anecdotes. Re-reading the book only makes me want to return to this very complex nation.

No comments about Ten of the Most Important Words in China.

No comments about Culture Shock! Taiwan: A Guide to Customs and Etiquette (Culture Shock!).

No comments about Dragons and Silk from the Forbidden City.

No comments about Transcaucasia: Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian.