Intersection Logs

I stayed up way too late last night, surfing web travel tips for Beijing, the website for the Beijing airport, and Babelfish's rendering of the Beijing Customs website. (Apparently their plan for getting ready for the 2008 Olympics involves a 'multi-horse whip'; also it is a firing offence for customs officials to be involved in smuggling asylum seekers, whereas taking bribes, nepotism, inappropriate remarks and giving away secrets may or may not be, depending on seriousness.)

So, of course, my dreams this morning were of the airport-anxiety kind, involving labyrinthine concourses, lost belongings, and flights missed by hours if not days.

It also doesn't help that I have a very tight connection in LAX on Friday morning.

Jitter. Jitter jitter.

Today I scanned my passport, filled in an application form, and walked about a mile in 106-degree heat to FedEx Kinko's to get a bad photo taken and send off for my Chinese visa, then walked back to the office. (On the way back, a young lout on a bike came up behind me and snarled, which was a bit disconcerting.) I also lectured to the summer students, bought a copy of Black Powder War to replace the one presumed lost in New Mexico, and did some work for the meeting after next.

We're down to the hardest bit of summer, the brutal heat and barely-double-digit humidity that drives most of the casual population out of town. In a few more weeks, if all goes to schedule (which it doesn't always, and didn't last year) we'll start seeing the clouds building up thunder-pillars in the afternoon, and eventually the monsoons will arrive with a shattering thunderstorm and a brief respite from the heat.

Tim Powers, Last Call
I didn't like this as much as I've liked most of Powers' work; the interweaving of different myths felt clumsy, it was all ugly and grungy, the poker didn't interest me, and I didn't like the characters much, though there were some interesting grotesques.

Tad Williams, Shadowmarch
Typical Tad Williams; richly detailed setting, the characters keep getting lost, and it isn't by any stretch of the imagination a stand-alone, ending on at least three different cliffhangers. The idea of Faerie, long driven out of mortal lands, coming back for one last desperate war, is intriguing. There's something a bit funny about the tech levels, with a god-king living in ancient-Egyptian splendour, and muskets.


Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
Vintage fantasy, set in a small republic that's cut off imports of addictive fairy fruit from neighbouring fairyland. I did find myself wondering if it could be read as a parable about Prohibition. It had an interestingly stylized feel, as if all the images had outlines around them; in that sense the cover art was appropriate, though it seems to show a castle and there aren't any in the story.


Patricia McKillip, Solstice Wood
I enjoyed this, but I'm not sure McKillip was playing to her strengths by branching into contemporary fantasy; it felt a lot less original than most of her work. There were some charming touches, like ( minor spoilers. ) The ending was ... different, and rather sweet, but a bit anticlimactic.

Simon Winchester, The River at the Center of the World
Fascinating saga of a trip up the Yangtze, from the delta to Tibet, the mid-1990's. Lovely vignettes, interesting snippets of history. I'm glad I read the basic history of China first, but this put a lot more flesh on the bones.



In other news, we've been having 90-degree weather, I'm running the a.c. right now, and I just turned off L&O:CI because I was completely failing to follow it.

I have just over six months to educate myself about China in preparation for the trip in July. It probably doesn't make sense to try to learn the language, but it might not hurt to know how to say 'Please' and 'Thank you' and order tea. Mostly, I want to learn about the history, geography, and culture. It's a big and populous country, with at least as much history as Europe, about which I know next to nothing.

To start with, I've picked up three books:

China, its history and Culture,, by Morton and Lewis
The River at the Center of the World, by Simon Winchester
Silk Road, by Luce Boulnois

After that, via Amazon recommendations and some browsing around the campus bookstore, I'm eyeing some slightly deeper titles:

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China - Mark Elvin
Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China - Jung Chang
The Search for Modern China - Jonathan D. Spence

and some fairly serious textbooks:
Ancient China and its Enemies : The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History - Nicola Di Cosmo
Imperial China 900-1800 - F. W. Mote;
China Marches West : The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia - Peter C. Perdue

I know at least two of the people on my flist have been to China. Does anyone have any recommendations or disrecommendations? I'd be particularly interested in something about the recent state of the country, preferably not written by crusading Marxists or evangelizing capitalists.