What's an atrocity?

The last few days have seen extensive coverage of the memorial ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

A significant proportion of the six million Jews and other minorities murdered by the Nazi regime met their ends here. The people responsible for Auschwitz are long gone, the few of their assistants who survive are still relentlessly pursued and prosecuted. Their successors to the Nazi regime rightly abominate what was done.

Is the slaughter of ten times as many people ten times as bad?

Apparently not. The murderers of such vast numbers are still in power. They publicly assert the rightness of their behaviour on the rare occasion anyone bothers to confront them with it. Rather than being persecuted they are nevertheless courted, invited to join international institutions, and given aid and trade deals. Would we roll out the red carpet for Hitler's cronies and appointees were they in power today? Vile as they were, and however appalling their deeds, Hitler and his gang were complete amateurs compared to Mao Zedong and his, yet the red carpet is rolled out time and time again, as the loathsome participants in and beneficiaries of the brutality strut into town demanding the kow tow.

One key difference between the holocaust of the Second World War and the far more recent holocausts of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution is that the former is persistently publicised for modern political ends, and used to make criticism of Israel, even when that country's govenment is a party to other massacres (Shatila, for instance), almost impossible. The Chinese holocausts are, on the other hand, hushed up as much as possible both by the government responsible and by the foreign businessmen and governments who want to avoid awkward questions while they do trade deals.

Let's not forget Tian'an Men, since it's the only Chinese bloodbath anyone seems to be aware of, but let's also have memorial ceremonies for the tens of millions dead at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, and do the people of China a favour by publicly remarking (Condoleezza Rice take note) on its brutality, the numbers of its political prisoners, the numbers of all kinds in its gulags, its continuing suppression of any moves towards democracy, and its bland assertions that sending in the tanks to murder unarmed civilians, or threatening the invasion of a neighbouring democracy are all perfectly justified. Let's especially remember that, Bush and Rice, when we are reading news items about the beating of ordinary citizens just for wearing mourning at the time of the funeral of a former dictator with a microscopically greater quantity of humanity. Let's particularly remember when we are reading out lists of 'outposts of tyranny'.

An atrocity is apparently something which is well-publicised and not problematic for trade.

I want to get out of my way

Two nights ago, at about 2.30am as I was trying to put the finishing touches to the first draft of a story about Hong Kong which had been due that day, so that it would at least be on the editor's desk when he came in in the morning, I received a message asking for the Belgian castles story mentioned below to be resent as it had been lost.

Although it's nearly 12 months since I researched the Hong Kong story (about the survival of traditional pastimes and other activities in which the visitor can participate) that was much easier to write. I'm not sure whether that's because of an abiding affection for Hong Kong, an ease in writing about Chinese culture through long exposure and familiarity, or because at the time the trip went well and the notes were copious and clear, backed up by an assortment of aide-memoire digital snaps. The HKTB usually lays on a guide and a Mercedes to scoot me round whatever locations are necessary, and certainly the guide on this occasion was someone I've had twice before and of whom I've become quite fond.

Unfortunately, due to lack of space, the story needed to be shorter than usual, which meant that chartering a sanban (sampan) from Sai Kung and shopping for reliable antiques had to be mentioned only in notes at the end. But at least this local paper values good writing, and interferes very little with the stories given. Oddly, although in a way this is one of my less glamorous outlets, I tend to take more care with it because I know the people there personally and see some of them socially, and although it never ceases to surprise me how many friends around the planet happen to see my stories in various in-flights, and write to tell me so, here I can be sure than friends, family, and mild acquaintances galore will see it. Some will even read it.

That, very mildly, reintroduces the sense of fear that drove the writing in the early days, then the sense of complete disbelief that some big name publication was keeping space open on a specific date for a story I hadn't even written yet. Experience now tells me that when I have to I can produce a story on anywhere I've been, regardless of how unenthusiastic I may have been at the time. But fear makes for a better story and keeps me alert late into the night polishing it. A bit of fear might have helped the William Adams story I file two weeks ago with a Canadian syndicate. A rewrite asked for more history and cultural background although there was precious little room for an account of the actual travel experience as it was. Adding all the requested material brought the piece at least 20% over length. Another rewrite request then cut some of that and asked for further changes. The next rewrite was accepted, but with queries that had been answered in material first added and then cut again, and which all had to be answered. It all just becomes like shovelling a pile of something to a different place and then shovelling it all back again.

I could do with more fear, really, and more diligence at searching out new markets, too. I was particularly slow at that last year, and having dumped the thoroughly disreputable Frommer's, I should certainly be looking for something to fill the gap.

Some editing and various stories to do before I leave for Antarctica, as well as various admin problems on future trips to sort out and travel insurance to deal with.

Today my son suddenly said, "I want to get out of my way!"

I feel like that almost all the time.

Death by deadline

Too much admin, and too little enthusiasm over these last few days, as well as ample proof of what I already knew, namely that an enjoyable trip doesn't necessarily make for easy writing. There's no connection between the two at all, in fact.

I've completed a long feature for an in-flight on visiting castles in the Ardennes region of Belgium. That was a very enjoyable trip indeed. The castles are rich in both furnishings and history, it's possible to spend the night in some of them, and both the places I stayed also housed restaurants in the top ten of the main Belgian restaurant guide. For reasons too long to go into here I had my little boy with me, and part of the trip was undertaken with someone I've known since I was four. My little boy behaved very well. Already a veteran of castles in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and England, he happily ran around and was occasionally whisked off by staff members while I was given a private tour. But travelling with friends always makes the work more, not less difficult. There's less time to think, and a certain reticence in dictating notes when other ears are listening. Bu the trapping of first reactions and the recording of thoughts as they are still fresh is the key to producing lively writing, in my opinion. And then, given that my friend (who brought his girlfriend, too), lives in a slightly more grand manner than I do, meant that each evening started off with a coupe de champagne followed by a more than decent wine, after the boy was asleep. None of this contributed much to the compilation of notes.

The ideal, of course, would have been to have written the story straight after returning, but no one does that. They wait for the deadline. There are always more pressing problems: other deadlines, administration, pitching other stories; just keeping the whole mechanism going. These last few days, for instance, I've been mailing off copies of recently published articles to those supporting bodies too impoverished or mean to employ cutting agencies; dealing with calls from the Taiwanese, and email from the Baltics and Australia about arranging the next trips to each of these. Then there've been further Antarctic preparations. I've also written two other stories, a long feature on visiting points in Japan connected with William Adams, and a quite different and shorter version of the same for a Canadian syndicate. Then there have been several re-writes of the latter to deal with.

So writing the Belgian story, six months after the trip, has been a bit of a slog. But it's done, and I've heard no more about it (which probably means it simply hasn't been read, since in the manner of many a magazine, the deadline set was probably a month earlier than needed). When it is, we'll have the usual sharp exchanges on vocabulary. Someone there decides what English words Japanese readers won't know. The real answer, of course, is that the Japanese readers will read the Japanese part of the magazine because the won't know 90% of the words. But the answer used is that if the Japanese in the publishing company's office don't know the words, then they must be changed. Usually I try to anticipate the requests, and I supply a list of alternatives. This time I just ran out of steam. And an orangery is an orangery. There's nothing else to call it.

Speaking of words (and I'm going to finish this another time because I have a raging sore throat and I need my bed), some idiot at one paper I write for regularly decided that the phrase 'eating croque-monsieur' (used in a story about Reykjavik, would you believe) wasn't like 'eating fish', or 'eating stew', but required a plural form. His choice was 'croque monsiurs'. In the next five or six articles I wrote for that paper I managed to find a way to include a mention of croque-monsieur. Whether he ever picked up on this I don't know. 'Oh, he knows about French matters,' someone cheerfully observed. Harraps doesn't think so.

I also once had a long argument about whether eau-de-nil could be included in a story (I was mentioning in passing the latest talking fax machines on sale in Tokyo's Akihabara) and for a while I was quite fond of using that, too.

One must amuse oneself somehow.

Saint Ziyang

The death a week ago of Zhao Ziyang has brought tremendous babble from amateur pundits in the Western press, with dead silence in the Chinese media since a terse announcement of his death. The emphasis has been on the good man who tried to stop the killings in Tian'an Men Square in June 1989, and was not seen in public again after visiting the students and making a tear-filled apology not long before the night of slaughter.

Zhao wasn't much of a democrat, believing that the country was in a 100-year transition period to perfect socialism, which meant that elections certainly weren't on the agenda. But neither was he in any sense a good man. He had risen to the top of an organisation collectively responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

The students at Tian'an Men knew this well. The preferential treatment he and his children received was part of the reason why the demonstrations began in the first place. He liked to play golf at a time when a round (on a Japanese-built course) would probably have cost a couple of months' salary for an ordinary worker, already struggling under the steep inflation Zhao's policies had caused.

The scale of the killings at Tian'an Men is so tiny in comparison to the Communist Party's mass murders of land-owners and rich peasants, of political opponents, and of tens of millions of hapless innocents in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution as to be almost an irrelevance. The blood shed there was mere drops in an ocean of it. Zhao was part of the mechanism that caused it, so how can a few tears in public when his star was already in decline possibly wash him clean?

What does it say about the Chinese today that a man with so much blood on his hands, and who was one of the specific targets of the Tian'an Men protests, should now be thought of as a hero?

What does it say about the effect of 55 years of isolation from the outside media and 55 years of a solid diet of lies in the domestic media that the people of China can think of him this way? What has it done for moral standards that someone so corrupt can be viewed positively, simply because he was willing to undertake a certain amount of carefully controlled economic reforms, and because his enemies within the Party were a bunch of moral and intellectual pygmies of the likes of Li Peng?

Worse, what does it say about all the Chinese who've emigrated and who have access to independent thought and accurate historical material, and the freedom to speak their minds, that so many can be recording their approval of him on web sites and in letters to the editor?

What does it say about the Chinese leadership that someone party to so much repression and death, and so corrupt, should be seen as a saint merely for a few words of apology?

And what does it say about us that we should allow those few televised words, and those relatively few televised deaths to grow to obsure the deaths of tens of millions of others not fortunate enough to be on camera?

Fish wrap

Two nights ago, and a week later than promised, I finally heard again from the editor on the Lost in Translation piece (see 'In Limbo', below), with some further requests for extra detail. The edit was promised for last night, and it duly showed up.

One notion it's important to lose when writing for publication in the overwhelming majority of periodicals is the notion that art is in any way involved. This is a trade, and largely due to the journalism schools which squeeze the life out of any imagination by teaching dimwits that all article writing must proceed by a set of rules, even most features are limp on the page. They've met an early death by being too tightly caged.

It's occasionally possible to get in the odd flash of wit, but many editors have remarkably small vocabularies, and literary references pass them by. That's good, of course, if they represent the readership's level of understanding, but not otherwise. But rewriting by editors often goes well beyond simply dumbing down or forcing a story into an ill-suited structure. Editors who have been nowhere near the destination described will sometimes even largely rewrite a story to represent what they want it to be, even if that has nothing to do with the truth. (My worst experience of that was with Time, although I once asked for my name to be taken off a piece in Winds.

So the writer has to get used to seeing his by-line next to drivel which has little left of his own making, and indeed one of the single most important skills anyone writing for a living needs to acquire is the ability to concentrate on the mantra,'Today's paper is tomorrow's fish wrap'.

But the edit of the already substantially rewritten and cut Lost in Translation piece was a complete dog's breakfast: there were new sentences in limp, vapid prose; several additions contained internal repetition or repeated material elsewhere in the piece; paragraphs were moved around so that meaning was garbled and ideas were introduced whose explanations appeared later in the story. It was completely amateurish, and I was being asked only for a fact check and an instant response.

So instead I rewrote much of the piece to restore order and sense, swearing as I went, removed all the redundancy and repetition, and corrected some introduced errors.

To my surprise almost all of the rewrite was accepted, and I went to bed happier, if not entirely happy since a few leaden phrases still existed, quite a few good things gone, and the whole story pointlessly restructured for no obvious profit.

Say after me: "Fish wrap. Fish wrap. Fish wrap."

Now taken into account that the word rate is pocket money, that the story was expensive to research (it was in Japan, for a start), that the work was done in October and it's now January, and that for its pittance this publication demands world rights for all media in perpetuity, something which should cost at least three times as much per word. Worse, this inexperienced editor doesn't know and is too dimwitted to turn a blind eye to later sales in other markets which might just make doing such a story financially viable. I'll be paid in about six weeks.

I spent much of today on rewrites to another Japan story which came back, but the requests were clear and sensible, and the main problem was one of how to engineer the addition of the extra cultural and historical material wanted while still leaving some brief description of the trip itself. Travel pieces are getting shorter and shorter, which is one reason why they are also getting more and more trivial. Before long it will all be 500 words, and mostly lists: the Ten Best Places to go Dwarf Tossing.

Such are the pleasures of travel writing.

Getting ready for Antarctica

The more pessimistic of my two thermometers had temperatures yesterday at -9 degrees Celsius, so I thought I'd test out some of my newly acquired Antarcticwear, and in particular a duck-down-lined parka and insulated boots intended for temperatures down to -40C. Even with only a shirt underneath, and with my ordinary insulated gloves (from the restaurant Zetor The Happy Tractor Driver in Helsinki) I felt completely immune from the elements. The boots would make those worn by Neil Armstrong seem rather dainty, and gave me a springy let lumbering moon walk style of progress.

'You must really hate the cold,' said the assistant at the baker. Apparently not far north of here, where her father lived, it was -52C.

Down at the supermarket the cashier looked in a puzzled way at the note I gave him, and to my surprise went to find someone to check whether he could accept it.

'I'm sorry,' he said when he came back. 'We don't accept Hong Kong dollars.'

The note hadn't struck me as foreign in any way, and in fact when I'd come across it while leafing through papers on my desk I'd congratulated myself on finding a useful sum of money. I really need to sort out both my brain and my wallet, which on further investigation also included receipts from New Zealand and China, and a Moscow metro ticket.

I must say this next trip is daft. Although I'm travelling at the invitation of the tour company, I've had to pay half price for an airfare to Buenos Aires, spend hundreds on cold weather kit, and there'll be other overheads in Buenos Aires, Ushuaia. Despite a commission from a major in-flight magazine, and some others from Canadian newspapers, this is going to be a very unprofitable trip.

So I suppose I should stop writing this and starting pitching to more papers.

I really must give up the vice of replying to China queries on public message boards on the Internet. In most cases people simply don't want to hear anything other than that which goes along with their existing prejudices, and arguing with dimwits who've made single trips to China within the cocoon of a tour group yet are determined that makes them experts (while the replies from real experts are 'only opinions'), who cannot follow a logical argument, and who cannot prevent themselves from descending rapidly into abuse of other posters, is possibly the single most unprofitable way I've ever found to spend my time.

Going back to the Antarctic kit, it does seem odd to be shopping and making plans before a trip. Usually when people ask me a few days before a trip whether I'm packed I just look at them blankly. Usually I do a little bit of packing the night before, and finish off in the morning. What would be the point of doing it earlier? For most of the places I go it's not as if forgetting something would be a disaster since it's all in the shops, and usually cheaper than here. This difference of attitude is just one of the many ways in which travelling for a living differs from taking the annual holiday or the 'trip of a lifetime'.

In limbo

I spend more of my time on administration than anything else; far more than writing, or even than actually travelling. Like most other journalists, I only put fingers to keyboard when there's a deadline to be met, and even then any diversion is welcome. It doesn't help that other than making pitches to editors in the first place, one of the most time-consuming chores of this business is extracting deadlines from them.

Answering China travel queries on The Oriental-List and responding to mail I receive is one distraction from getting any work done, but I often wonder why I bother. Two days ago I received a message from a Frommer's China reader, wondering if I had up-to-date contact information for the former Yamato Hotel in Harbin, now the Gui Bin Lou (VIP wing), of the Longmen Hotel. He said the website information had changed, and the fax number was a voice line.

Looking at the entry in Frommer's China I saw that the fax number ended in 9700, and so was indeed likely to be a switchboard. Likely the fax and voice numbers had become switched round in the entry (which I didn't actually write, and although I'm prone to make such errors as anyone else). I did precisely the same simple Google search as my interlocutor could have done, and found two 'discount' websites which gave the hotel's phone number; both different, but but 9701 and 9702, confirming the switchboard theory. I then entered the name in Chinese into Google, and found the hotel's website straight away. This, too, had been garbled slightly in the guide book entry, which was rather annoying.

Although I was in the middle of finishing off a 2000-word story for an in-flight magazine on taking a (highly enjoyable) tour with Walk Japan, crossing the country visiting sites connected with William Adams (the first Englishman to arrive there, in 1600), I sat down and wrote a reply with the results of my researches, pointing the enquirer to the right web page, providing an email address (although it's highly unlikely any answer would be obtained), and yet another phone number (from the website), along with a paragraph of advice about not booking in advance.

No hint of a reply or acknowledgement. Thank you, beechmk, for making it clear to me I should find other ways to avoid working. Getting those last few bars of K109 finished off, or getting a little further with my translation of Zhongguo Nongmin Diaocha, for instance.

With spring coming on, all of a sudden editors are giving deadlines for various stories researched last year, and inevitably it's at busy times like this that other editors suddenly decide they actually want stories I pitched so long ago that I've forgotten about them. While I'm transcribing tapes from Japan on various trips, and from Belgium on comics and castles, forcing them back into life, I now have to do a story from Hong Kong at short notice, and of course continue with the editing of the new China guide I've been dealing with for a UK publisher, and whipping the fact checkers I've hired in China to get the work finished and back on couriers to London. The there's taxes to sort out, and a major shopping trip for kit needed for the Antarctic next month. Then the arrangements for Australia later in the year are proceeding at a glacial pace and need to be kicked back into life, as do conversations with the Koreans (which are never ending) and with the Taiwanese. It's three months since I was invited to pitch some Japan stories to another HK magazine, and I still haven't done that, and a long-standing need to continue correspondence from last year with The Guardian travel editor, who seems a nice chap.

At this point, too, the Lost in Translation story had suddenly come back to life.

I originally pitched this story to an internationally famous newspaper back on 24 June 2004, and received an immediate, enthusiastic response.

24 June Ed: Can you do it any sooner?

24 June Me: Sorry, the trip's booked for October.

--

22 Aug Me: Here's a repeat of the original pitch and all the possible angles. Can you tell me which appeal?

30 Aug Ed: It all looks interesting. Why don't you see what you come up with?

31 Aug Me: Thanks. Any thoughts on a deadline?

--

9 Nov Me: I'm back with just one 'phone interview to do. When do you want me to file?

9 Nov Ed: 'As immediately as possible [sic], as I'm about to go on leave'. 19 November.

9 Nov Me: 1200 words, is it?

9 Nov Ed: Fine. 'We're flexible about length.' Any pictures?

9 Nov Me: You'll find stills from the film to be better.

9 Nov Ed: Has anyone else run this angle? If not, all the better to run ASAP. [I don't reply to this because she has massive article databases at her fingertips, which she's used to chastise me in the past, and I don't.]

--

14 Nov Ed: Can I still expect your piece by Friday?

14 Nov Me: Yes

14 Nov Ed: Good. By 11am please. [This means considerably earlier the previous day where I'm sitting.]

18 Nov Me: [Files story very early in morning, a working day ahead of schedule in HK.]

19 Nov Ed: [Having declined earlier to give specific direction on angle or length, now gives a detailed description of what she wants, and adds, 'Remember, this only needs to be 1000 words.' Readers with equally short memories may like to scan upwards a few lines to find '1200', and 'flexible'.] 'If you can get revisions to me in a day, I can try to work on it over the weekend.'

19 Nov Me: [Having worked on nothing else because of the hurry for this, files story rewritten to instructions given, and cut by 1/3rd.]

19 Nov Ed: 'Thanks so much Peter! i'll get back to you asap'

--

25 Nov Me: Anything I can do? Long time no hear.

--

6 Dec Me: Can you let me know what's happening?

--

8 Dec Ed: 'Peter, as I mentioned earlier I've been on leave for several weeks [?] I just returned to Hong Kong today. I needed to have all pieces in before I left. Your revisions looked good on first glance, I will be back to you very shortly.'

--

2 Jan 2005 Ed: [Nice note apologizing for the delay, and mentioning that now the tsunami has changed everything, and now there's a backlog of pieces tied to specific events. The piece had already been produced with great urgency more six weeks before the tsunami hit, of course.]

2 Jan Me: Thanks. I'm away for most of February, by the way.

--

10 Jan Ed: 'I'm hoping to edit your piece today, and send it to you today or tomorrow. Could you please do me a favor and look through the final version you sent me and let me know if anything needs updating?'

10 Jan Me: [Quick flurry of email to interviewees.]

12 Jan Me: [Sends one minor change.]

And that is the story so far. I expect it will eventually amble into print.

To do this business you have to become inured to this kind of behaviour, since there are very many editors as dizzy as this, but vastly more people desperate to see their names in the papers at any price. There are many editors who are much, much worse. I remember particularly an extremely inexperienced editor at Time who routinely reneged on agreements, spiked commissioned stories without compensation, asked for an extra story to be added to a package then spiked that, too, and who couldn't even spell very simple English words. In the end it was costing me money to write for Time, so I gave up.

Why bother to travel anyway, when often home seems so alien?

A few days ago I was in a video rental store, renting a DVD, and the assistant who was serving me, said, 'How did you find everything today?'

'It was all in alphabetical order,' I explained, 'so it wasn't difficult.'

This response seemed to open a great gulf between us, and nothing more was said for the rest of the transaction.

Shopping locally is increasingly removing the need to return to China. The dry cleaners is run by people from Heilongjiang; one greengrocer has Taiwanese; another greengrocer has people from Ji'nan, Hangzhou, and Beijing (seems there's someone different every time I go in); and there's a Shanghainese in the bank.

With the sole exception of asking me for my nationality, the conversation is exactly the same as the one had a dozen times every day in China itself. 'You can speak Chinese?' (Facial expression similar to the one which might be expected if I were a talking dog.) 'You speak Chinese very well.' (Not true.) 'Where did you learn Chinese?' 'In London! You can study Mandarin in London?' And when I've asked where each person is from (a personal revenge for the thousands of times that's happened to me in China), complete astonishment that I've nearly always been there and can tell her something about her home town. Then usually delight, and more questions; but today the occasional opposite--a kind of condescension.

Right, I must stop avoiding work, and finish checking practical data (transport, website information, etc.) for a Japan piece and get it off to a Canadian syndicate.

Luckily Someone Else Said it First

One of the pleasures of reading old travel writing on China is discovering just how often the observations of the past might equally be applied to modern China. Quoting earlier writers in print both hints at the persistent unreliability of commentary on China over the centuries, and allows the modern author to use the earlier one to make points which will inevitably attract a reflex response from some muddled, shallow-witted, automaton for whom any comment on another race or nationality not dripping with admiration must by definition be racist.

The days of the kind of travel writer who flies in for a brief trip around a country he or she has never previously visited, and of whose language he or she knows nothing, ought to be over by now. In the past most of us travelled to China by reading titles written by such people. In the present many of us can go for ourselves, and there are many resident observers who can give a more detailed and accurate picture (although many a foreign correspondent sees China through ignorance and pre-conception—or that of his editor who demands, for instance 'China Rising' stories, whatever situation may have been found on the ground). Travel books certainly by now should have progressed to giving a more detailed view from longer exposure and cultural familiarity, acting as a foil to headline-driven, 30-second pieces of light entertainment currently called news. It's a shame that there still seems to be a market for pieces of meretricious fluff such as The River at the Centre of the World, which is about as dire as travel writing on China gets unless it's the propaganda-driven product of the Chinese themselves.

But back in 1923 there were big markets for people like Harry A Franck, and his Wandering in Northern China. Never having visited China before, he touches in his introduction on the general problem of knowledge in China, perhaps wanting to defend himself from inevitably criticism from Old China Hands, before it could even start. Knowing about China has always been a highly competitive industry with conversations between know-nothing diplomatic spouses trapped in the expatriate air-conditioned (or fanned) bubble as well as those between long-time Mandarin-speaking residents equally given to attempting to trump the other party with claims of greater experience, greater sensitivity, or greater understanding. It's still the same story between struggling English teachers accompanied by their xiaojie on drunken evenings in wannabe-Western bar streets from Beijing to the back of beyond. In Franck's words:

Lafcadio Hearn said that the longer he remained in the East the less he knew of what was going on in the Oriental mind. And "old China hand" has put the same thing in more popular language: "You can easily tell how long a man has been in China by how much he does n't know about it. If he knows almost everything, he has just recently arrived; if he is in doubt, he has been here a few years; if he admits that he really knows nothing whatever about the Chinese people or their probable future, you may take it for granted that he has been out a very long time.

But as I have said before, the "old-timer" will seldom sit down to tell even what he has seen, and in many cases he has long since lost his way through the woods because of the trees. Or he may have other and more important things to do. Hence it is up to those of us who have nothing else on hand to pick up and preserve such crumbs of information as we can...

In its overall fatuity this resembles what I like to call the argument from Lonely Planet: a defence of the complete unsuitability and staggering ignorance of many of that series' contributors made by some ordinary back-packers on the grounds that they are 'just like us', and so therefore better able to write for 'our' needs. Needless to say, the independent traveller, whether her luggage is on her back or on wheels, desperately needs accurate information in order to make travel arrangements, and someone who can read timetables, interrogate bus drivers and ticket clerks, and listen-in to the chicanery of guides is rather more likely to provide this than someone who has just flown in for the first time, with a previous career as a slot machine repairman, as long as he is properly motivated and diligent (which is very rare in guide book writing). For guide books certainly, ignorance is not bliss. For travel narrative it hardly seems desirable either, and I doubt that Franck's pre-emptive strike spared him caustic comment from self-appointed experts.

It is true to say, though, that expatriates in general are often profoundly ignorant of the realities of China, seeing only their own routine, believing everything they tell each other, and which they heard from their drivers on the daily ride from their mock-European residences in secure compounds to their equally air-conditioned offices. They know everything about the latest French restaurant in town, and nothing about eating Chinese food outside the restaurants of a few big hotels and certain other larger restaurants recommended by the English-language magazines which cater for them. Confident, since they are resident, that their knowledge is accurate, they declare that the Great Wall cannot be visited for less than ¥1000 (about ¥20 will do it, and even in a taxi hired for the day ¥300 is enough). They know where the airport is but not the cost of tickets since they are liberally overcharged by the agent that someone else recommended to them, and who uses his reputation for reliability to overcharge all the foreigners who come his way. The railway system is believed to be unmanageable. Some do indeed have the justification offered by Franck, that they are just too busy doing whatever they have been employed to come to China to do.

There are others, of course, who immerse themselves completely in the culture, and whose advice is unmatched.

But returning to the original theme of how past writers on China often seem to be writing on the present, Franck (an American) goes on to say:

In our own land there are many very false ideas about China; false ideas that in some cases are due to deliberate Chinese propaganda abroad. While I was out in the far interior I received a clipping outlining the remarks of a Christian lecturing through out Middle West, and his résumé left the impression that bound feet and opium had all but completely disappeared from China, and that in the matter of schools and the like the "republic" is making enormous strides. No sooner did the Lincheng affair attract the world's attention that American papers began to run yarns, visibly inspired, about the marvelous advances which the Chinese have recently accomplished. Such men as Alfred Sze are often mistaken in the United States as samples of China. Unfortunately they are nothing of the kind; in fact, they are too often hopelessly out of touch with their native land. There has been progress in China, but nothing like the amount of it which we have been coaxed or lulled into believing, and some of it is of a kind that raises serious doubts as to its direction. For all the telephones, airplanes, and foreign clothes in the coast cities, the great mass of the Chinese have been affected barely at all by this urge toward modernity and Westernism—if that is synonymous with progress. As some one has just put it, "the Chinese still wear the pigtail on their minds, though they have largely cut it off their heads." How great must be the misinformation at home which causes our late President to say that all China really needs is more loans, thereby making himself, and by extension his nation, the laughing-stock of any one with the rudiments of intelligence who has spent an hour studying the situation on the spot. England is a little better informed on the subject than we, because she is less idealistic, more likely to look facts in the face instead of trying to make facts fit preconceived notions of essential human perfection. China may need more credits, but any fool knows that you should stop the hole in the bottom of a tub before you pour more water into it.

Let's make a few updates:

In our own land there are many very false ideas about China; false ideas that in some cases are due to deliberate Chinese propaganda abroad.

Satellite-delivered CCTV9 now available on cable across broad swathes of the West, spewing out a constant stream of lies and half-truths disguised as news and features. The inclusion of Xinhua 'news' reports in China news summaries compiled by Google and Yahoo! The constant uncritical repetition of economic figures produced by the Chinese government, and the uncritical treatment of the announcement of new laws as if that meant the same thing as in democracies. The treatment over the last few days of the announcement of the birth of the 1.3 billionth baby in China, as if the Chinese had the remotest hope of knowing how big their population already is; as if population experts outside China haven't been saying for years that it might already be far more; as if the 1.3 billionth would magically and conveniently appear in Beijing rather than in some remote country hamlet with poor communications which constitute rather more of China; as if the Chinese remotely cared about getting such clumsy propaganda right if dumb Western journalists will swallow it as it is.

While I was out in the far interior I received a clipping outlining the remarks of a Christian lecturing through out Middle West, and his résumé left the impression that bound feet and opium had all but completely disappeared from China, and that in the matter of schools and the like the "republic" is making enormous strides. No sooner did the Lincheng affair attract the world's attention that American papers began to run yarns, visibly inspired, about the marvelous advances which the Chinese have recently accomplished.

Our own insistence on seeing China as deep, mysterious, and incomprehensible (the polite modern way of saying 'inscrutable') continues to bring such commentators into existence. Outsiders drop into Shanghai bare of any advance research, and write gushing pieces about the high rises and high standard of living of Shanghainese, without even a glance at the government's own figures which although falsified still show a far less rosy view. Shanghai is Shanghai, and completely different from the rest of China. It has the highest average per capita income in the country. Most of the country is still down on the farm on a fraction of these amounts, and with no prospect of improvement.

Such men as Alfred Sze are often mistaken in the United States as samples of China. Unfortunately they are nothing of the kind; in fact, they are too often hopelessly out of touch with their native land.

Chinese living abroad now crop up in chat rooms, websites, and interviewed on radio swearing blind that pollution has vanished from Beijing, that China only has peaceful aims towards Taiwan, and anything else falling into the general 'production is up, the minorities are happy' tone of the Chinese media. Some of these, abashed at the ignorance of and indifference to their country they find when they settle in their new homes, want to save face and gain respect for themselves and their nation. Others seem to have a more sinister agenda to mislead: everything in China is as good as it could be; China will progress towards more openness at its own speed (it is currently heading in the opposite direction); Hu Jintao is the best possible leader for the times; the Chinese are not suited to democracy (but whisper that one, and only if pressed).

There has been progress in China, but nothing like the amount of it which we have been coaxed or lulled into believing, and some of it is of a kind that raises serious doubts as to its direction. For all the telephones, airplanes, and foreign clothes in the coast cities, the great mass of the Chinese have been affected barely at all by this urge toward modernity and Westernism—if that is synonymous with progress.

Exactly. 88-storey towers and magnetic levitation trains in Shanghai do not a continent of contentment make, and only a short ride into the interior the water buffalo still pulls the plough. And it's not clear that the introduction of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, the looming monster of Monsanto and its mutated seeds, the introduction of low-nutrition processed foods and unhealthy foreign fast food outlets can be synonymous with anything except degradation rather than progress. Appalling living conditions, pitiful wages of US$500 per annum, and long shifts in unsafe and highly polluting and carcinogen-emitting factories producing goodies for the West at rock bottom prices can hardly said to be progress from working the land.

As some one has just put it, "the Chinese still wear the pigtail on their minds, though they have largely cut it off their heads." How great must be the misinformation at home which causes our late President to say that all China really needs is more loans, thereby making himself, and by extension his nation, the laughing-stock of any one with the rudiments of intelligence who has spent an hour studying the situation on the spot. England is a little better informed on the subject than we, because she is less idealistic, more likely to look facts in the face instead of trying to make facts fit preconceived notions of essential human perfection. China may need more credits, but any fool knows that you should stop the hole in the bottom of a tub before you pour more water into it.

For credits, read foreign investment, and the urge to throw good billions after bad in a headlong rush to bankruptcy directly parallels the dot-com boom and bust, although it's been going on intermittently since the 1860s. But there's no longer (if there ever was) a difference between the U.S. and U.K. position. The lack of 'the rudiments of intelligence' is now global.

First post: Vilnius and more

Below are samples written from Vilnius in late 2003, and while in flight to New Zealand in early 2004, the only evidence of two earlier attempts to get this going.

Vilnius

What is it that makes tour guides the way they are? Today, for the
third time on this particular trip, I had a personal guide. She began
in a promising way by asking me what exactly it was I wanted to hear
about and see. Primed by the behaviour of guides in Tallinn and Riga, I
was quite specific that I did not want any finely detailed history that
I could read in the background pack supplied by the tourism bureau, and
that I wanted to see as many as possible of Vilnius' main sights. I had
been told (I told her) that while Tallinn's strength lay in Gothic, and
Riga's in Art Nouveau/Jugendstil (as I'd already seen for myself),
Vilnius' lay in the Baroque, and I was hoping this would turn out to be
true, making writing a general story about the pleasures of the three
capitals much easier. But, I told her, I only have 600 words, so I
can't use every last historical detail. I also explained to her that I
was recording with a lapel microphone, and so often when I spoke I
would be recording my own impressions, and not attempting to hold a
conversation with her.

I should have saved my breath. Once we got started the historical data
poured out in quantities which would have buried even a large tour
group armed with shovels. And whenever I turned away to mutter my own observations into the microphone she would pursue me, so that even talking to myself I could hardly get a word in edgeways. Half her sentences began with, "And, by the way..." until I wanted to say, "Any sentence beginning with 'By the way...' is unlikely to contain material I can use, and I'm only here to get material I can use." Not much of what I saw really entered my consciousness as a result, and I worry about its accuracy on the page. The only exception was the St. Peter and St. Paul church a little outside the old town, which despite a
nondescript exterior had amongst the most extravagant Baroque interiors I've even seen, its walls, pillars, and ceilings crawling with stucco statuary, made (said the guide in a brief moment of usefulness) from life. As a result, Mary Magdalene, for instance, appeared beautifully clothed and shod in the fashion of the time. The guide was also some kind of ultra-Catholic, who paused for long diatribes against the Soviet regime turning chapels into accommodation, until I almost wanted to argue the Soviet side in provocation. There were frequent observations that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to turn away from paganism, and I couldn't help remarking that it was probably better off left as it was (except that sword-wielding Teutonic crusaders kept turning up to offer either Christianity or a close encounter with something pointy as options. Faced with this typically humourless approach I might convert myself.)

The Soviet response was to turn most of the churches into warehouses or to other practical uses, a policy which sounds highly attractive if it weren't that the churches were in many cases extravagant works of art. Of one church the guide said that in her days as an undergraduate the Soviets had actually driven trucks straight into the interior, and indeed the pillars inside looked as though they'd been particularly bad at the three-point turns required to get out again.

After a very modest Lithuanian lunch (of torpedo-shaped potato
dumplings stuffed with meat) at least there was time to wander around
the parts of the old town I should have seen in the morning, which were
attractive, if rather more noticeably filled with souvenir shops that
those of Tallinn or Riga, and certainly of a variety of styles, with
every other building a church. The Baroque, it seems, is confined
largely to the churches and the university area. But further
investigation tomorrow may prove me wrong.

This afternoon's meeting with the PR department of the National Opera
and Ballet Theatre (this may not be entirely the correct title--I'm not
attempting accuracy in any of these notes, and you'll be lucky if you
even get correct spelling) was moderately entertaining, although
clouded by the need to use an interpreter. Vasiliev's Romeo and Juliet
was quite a triumph, and danced with the same slightly passionless
technical precision as the Swan Lake I saw in Riga on Saturday. The audience, however, had far more warmth and enthusiasm, and provided a standing ovation at the end. It was also more given to conversation, and I almost thought myself in some North American cinema. I actually told two women behind me to shut up, which surprised me as much as them. But they did keep quiet afterwards, although they may not have understood a word I said.

The Lithuania Tourism representative who was also with me for part of the day said that her second degree had been in international communications and that she was in tourism now because it was an important part of such communication, and far more important and significant than diplomacy. I pointed out that almost all tourism activity involved misrepresentation of the truth, and so might not be as communicative as she was suggesting, to wit: Destinations and sights constantly over-promote, misrepresent, or downright lie about themselves; many businesses overcharge visitors; many "experiences" are entirely created for tourists; tourists frequently mislead themselves, preferring some romanticized view of their chosen destination, even when a grimmer reality is right in front of their eyes, to admitting that their expensive trip is anything but blissful.

Enough. I've moved to the Sky Bar on the 22nd floor of the Reval Hotel
Lietuva for a coffee and a snack, and I must escape from the
horribleness of seeing a roomful of businessmen looking for a
commercial cuddle for the night. A forty-something blonde with a 60s
Jean Shrimpton hairstyle, was giving me the eye until a very large
German came and invited both her and her friend to join him at his
table with the gracious phrase, "You know you can come and join us at
our table if you want." They wanted, and there they are now.

Returning briefly to truth, it was entertaining to hear Ieva from Riga
tourism talking about the stupid behaviour of guide book researchers
and magazine article writers, quoting examples where the country's
national day is given in completely the wrong month, and a city located
in the wrong country altogether. I haven't heard any complaints about
the Bradt guides, which I'm carrying, but I'm rushing so quickly
through everywhere that I don't really have any time to check their
recommendations. The local expat product is something called "In Your
Pocket" guides, which appear in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius (as well as
other eastern European cities) as bi-monthly small magazines. Their
contents and presentation are inconsistent from town to town, and the
writing often in a self-consciously smart-Alec style which any decent
editor should automatically ban. There's also a noticeable correlation
between the presence of an advertisement at a positive review. Since
the biggest ad buyers are strip clubs, of which every city has several,
a fair proportion of each guide is given up to ads for erotic massage,
lesbian shows, etc. and some of the editorial to reviews and
justifications for a skin section appearing in the guide.

Oh well. Bed. There's an early start tomorrow.


In flight

I'm doing the impression of a skimmed stone--Vancouver-Los
Angeles-Auckland-Christchurch-Invercargill-Stewart Island. My guess is I lost you after Christchurch (or even after Auckland). I'm coming to the end of the second, fourteen-and-a-half-hour hop.

Sometime during the night we flew over a pair of very brightly illuminated islands. "Where was that?" I asked an Australian flexing his knees with me at the back of the aircraft. "Last time I flew over Fiji it was largely unlit."

"Could be Western Samoa," he replied.

"It was almost as if both islands were completely floodlit."

"Ah," he said. "Wasting natural resources. Must be American Samoa."

Upgrade-if-available to business class turned out to be not available,
but the seat pitch on Air New Zealand isn't bad, and the seat next to me was empty anyway. Such are the excitements of being in an aluminium tube for long periods.

One problem with this blogging business is that it's an entertainment
of last resort. Once I'm bored with everything else, and work is out of
the way (or if I've nothing else left to do to avoid work) then I might
turn to this. Anyone who writes for a living might understand a lack of
enthusiasm for writing in one's spare time. Anyone who spends a lot of
time editing and re-editing text for publication beneath a by-line
might understand the difficulty of putting something largely unedited
into the public domain.

I came across this in an article edited and reprinted in Canada from
something in the Hong Kong Standard discussing journalism studies in
China:

I simply have no idea why young men and women believe that three years
at a university can help them cope with this circumstance; with
weddings, funerals, town meetings, the lurking disbelief of the
sub-editors back at the office and the spasmodic alcoholism of the page
editor. Print journalism is a craft involving massive skepticism, pints
of lager afterwards and the occasional freebie from a PR outfit.
Television journalism is vaudeville and three years in a communist
university is unlikely to help you with either of them.

I like 'the lurking disbelief of the sub-editors' although many a
sub-editor would quite rightly object, not because of the implied
criticism, but because the phrase doesn't entirely make sense. On the
other hand most would be oblivious to that.

Journalism is pretty well summed up, however, and I'd just like to add
that most travel writing is fantasy born of ignorance and
self-indulgence.

'So?' perhaps you say. 'I'm willing to be ignorant and self-indulgent
if someone will fly me for free halfway around the world.'

It can pall.

---------------
Later in 2004 I went to England partly to do a piece on a couple of lesser-known National Trust properties, both former hunting lodges, and then Belgium to write on castles in the Ardennes. Later still I was in China for the second time that year, marshalling contributors to a forthcoming Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness guide, reviewing Shanghai hotels and restaurants for the same book, and hopping around obscure corners of China by plane when I could find no one else to cover them. From there I went to Japan to join a trek around the volcanic Kunisaki Peninsula, and then another took trip right across Japan visiting sights connected with William Adams, the first Englishman ever to visit the country. (There's a high risk that some sub delighting in cliche will write a headline or strapline saying "In the footsteps of...', I'm afraid.)

All worth writing about in a weblog you might think.

I'll try to do better in future.