Readers of the blog know very well that I love travelogues and reading about different corners of the world. In our singular life, we cannot travel everywhere that our mind wishes to travel. We are often bound by finances, the duty to work, and dedication to family (and now, covid). Even if we were to only travel all our lives, one lifetime isn’t enough.
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Last July, I took the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing. The trains in China were comparable to the Shinkansen in their speed and comfort. In the business class, the seats could apparently recline flat. Petite hostesses hushed by, offering bottles of water, and serving snacks and local juice brands. As the train hurtled forward, I stared outside the glass windows from my lofted perch of elevated rail-line. I saw divided highways and undivided farmlands, with their almost-prairie looks. Towns that zipped by the window, looked like well kempt oversized matchboxes arranged carefully in a quadrilateral.
Leave a CommentSome travel notes from China. Just snippets of travel observations.
Leave a CommentTo understand China, its growth and society, its trade, outsourcing and manufacturing relationship with the US, it is imperative to understand its history. In this article, I discuss books, films, podcasts and web resources that helped me begin my journey of learning more about China. First in the set of notes from a long China trip.
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How should one rethink travel and culture? How do we really learn about places we visit? I review a “lost” treasure-set of books. Notes on Borges and death, La Jetée that influenced the birth of Science Fiction cyber punk, and rediscovering Ancient classics.
Leave a CommentParis to the Moon is a love letter, exquisite and heartfelt. It is not one that a pining star-crossed lover writes, but one a soldier writes to family back home. The Paris of lovers is well-trodden. Paris to the Moon describes the Paris of a writer with a young family. Gopnik’s penchant for adorning unremarkable happenings with remarkable witticism makes the book lovely. In the midst of absurdities and abstractions, swimming pools and schools, gyms and dinner plates (mellow and varnished like an old violin), never-ending dossiers, parks and pregnancy, politics and futbol, Adam Gopnik, all the while failing miserably to prevent his son from learning about Barney, reflects on our forlorn life away from home, even as we are having…
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