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Title: The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0-312-42337-3 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.07 (29 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Dip Into Chinese History
Comment: The subtitle "A Journey up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time" more or less explains this combination travelogue/history. Winchester's aim is to travel the length of the Yangtze heading upriver. In doing so, he does a superb job of explaining the importance of the Yangtze River in Chinese history by blending in all manner of history from Western gunboat diplomacy to Mao's Long March to the Rape of Nanjing to the current Three Gorges Dam project. In fact, the book isn't bad as a way to sort of dip into Chinese history for the uninitiated. The travelogue aspect is also well handled, as Winchester travels with a Chinese woman translator/problem-solver. Modern China doesn't come across very well in his description, as he encounters the usual corruption, but also amazing episodes of lethargy and apathy from the locals. At times, the technical hydrology/geology stuff gets tiresome, but overall, it's an excellent read--especially for prospective travelers to area.
Rating: 5
Summary: A fascinating tale of the Yangzi River
Comment: For the discerning Western reader with an interest in all things Chinese, Simon Winchester's "The River at the Center of the World" makes for an enthralling read.
His arduous journey from the mouth of the Yangzi River to its source high in the Tibetan Plateau, is far more than merely a commentary of his travels. Entwined amongst his own colourful experiences, Mr Winchester captures a fascinating analysis of the river's history.
Indeed the Yangzi has a history worthy of telling in a book of this type. Charting a course that initially wanders from the urban delights of Shanghai near the Pacific coast then along the meandering, lower reaches of the Yangzi, the reader is taken through hundreds of years of Chinese history. The author touches on elements as diverse as the Opium Wars, the turbulent history of the tea trade, the Yangzi High Dam and Emperor Da-Yu - who is attributed with rerouting the river and keeping its vast waters within China. There is space even for the origins of Asian-man to be pondered upon.
Occasionally the author takes the reader on self-indulging investigative expeditions, such as seeking the anchor reportedly captured by communist forces in 1949 from the stricken warship HMS Amethyst at Zhenjiang. Upon finding it he declares it more likely to have come from a river junk. These expeditions are interesting nonetheless and aid his overall goal of depicting the Yangzi as a fascinating place both in present and past tenses.
Simon Winchester has certainly done his research. He tells of otherwise obscure river-navigators, chart-makers and naturalists who made their marks in respective fields along the river's twists and turns in times long past
Two thirds of the book is allocated to the more sedate stretch of water, between Shanghai and Wuhan, perhaps because this is where the far greater proportion of recent history lies. Other experiences though, like the Three Gorges, Tiger Leaping Gorge and the trip along forbidden roads in Tibet, are also allocated their due space.
The end product, though is one that vividly colours the mind with written-images of a river that has formed the very heart of the world's most populated nation -continuing to very much dominate day to day life today. It is a narrative of a journey that inspires the arm-chair reader to do likewise.
Indeed, I myself started reading Simon Winchester's book in far-off New Zealand, finishing it a few weeks later while visiting China - on the river itself aboard a ferry boat from Shanghai bound for Wuhan.
Very inspirational stuff indeed Mr Winchester.
Rating: 4
Summary: Simon Winchester has done the Yangtze proud
Comment: Simon Winchester is one hot literary property these days. In the past several years he has produced such splendid nonfiction books as THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and, most recently, KRAKATOA. Now the Picador branch of Henry Holt has issued a paperback reprint of Winchester's riveting 1996 paean to the majesty, history and folklore of the Yangtze River, THE RIVER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD. It is still a superb read.
Winchester determined to travel the length of the 3,964-mile river (third longest in the world) from Shanghai, where it empties into the Yellow Sea, back to its source in the remote and forbidding mountain fastnesses of Tibet. Being a curious and observant fellow, Winchester stopped at cities large and small along the way to sample atmosphere, probe local history and meet interesting people. He darted off-course now and then, sometimes of necessity, at other times simply because there was something nearby that piqued his interest.
As traveling companion he enlisted a resourceful and intelligent Chinese woman whom he disguises (for fear of official retribution against her) under the name of Lily. She plays a hardheaded and outspoken Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, and brings a revealing personal dimension of her own to Winchester's story.
In addition to being a fine writer, Winchester is a born reporter. Nothing seems to escape his notice. He has done his historical and literary homework thoroughly and is not shy about intruding his own strongly held opinions into his narrative. Most of those opinions oscillate between nostalgia for the rich pageant of China's past as reflected along the river and utter disdain verging on disgust for what has become of the country under its Communist rulers.
As in most good travel writing --- indeed, like the Yangtze itself --- the "tributary" digressions in this book are fully as interesting as its main course. We learn the exact process for making Chinese brown rice vinegar and the history of tea as a major Chinese product. We learn the stories of intrepid but largely unknown westerners with names like Cornell Plant and Joseph Rock, who were early explorers of the river. We are fed many fanciful legends from Chinese mythology and a number of facts --- often depressing but always interesting --- from Chinese history.
The famous Three Gorges dam project is examined in detail and the area itself described fully. Winchester considers the whole monster project a defilement of one of China's most beautiful areas, a venture meant more to glorify the government that planned it than to help the people who will be affected by it. Many of those people, he feels, will simply be made miserable.
Chinese national pride, in fact, is a major theme that runs through the book. From the dawn of its history, China has regarded foreigners with suspicion and mistrust. They are "foreign devils" and "barbarians," and as a matter of pride they have to pay more for just about everything than do the native Chinese.
Winchester sent me scurrying to my unabridged dictionary a score or more of times to look up unfamiliar terms that seem routine to him. A few of them --- nunataks, portolanos, ayurvedic --- were nowhere to be found, but I did learn something about haars, skerry, compradors, corvees and kentledge, among others. My only tiny complaint about this reprint is that the maps, so sorely needed as the upriver journey continues, are inadequate.
The only addition to the book's 1996 text is a four-page afterword in which Winchester speculates about the future of the great Chinese cities. Beijing will continue to be the country's capital, its Washington D.C., he says. Shanghai, sitting grandly at the mouth of the Yangtze, will be its New York City --- and poor Hong Kong down in the south of the country, will be merely its New Orleans.
Unless there is some sort of unimaginable government upheaval in China, this fine book is likely to remain a classic account for many years to come. For a "foreign devil," Simon Winchester has done the Yangtze proud.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn
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Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0198607024 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0060931809 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0066212855 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: River Town : Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler ISBN: 0060953748 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 24 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 006099486X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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