7 continents reading journey, part 1: China (+winter)

Reading this week: the first books for the "7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Challenge", and the story of a winter journey on foot:

"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" by Yiyun Li
My 7-continents reading journey around the world is starting in China, the country that ranks highest in the list of countries by population. About 1,37 billion people live in China, that's about 19% of the world population. (In comparison, the current population of Europe with all its countries is 742 million people, about 11% of the world population.)

But numbers don't really tell too much about the daily life in a country, and it was interesting already to go looking for books from China. In 2012, when Chinese author Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, I read one of his book "Red Sorghum", a book with multiple timelines that reach back to the time when Japan invaded China. The red in the title refers both to the Communist party, and to all the blood that was shed. (more here: book fair days),

For the 7 continents, I looked for a more contemporary read - and found it in "A Thousand Years of Good Prayer". Here's the book summary from the Guardian book list "Best books on China":

"Li's prizewinning debut collection of 10 stories delves into the lives of everyday Chinese – both at home and in the US – struggling to cope with a fast-changing, new China." (more: Guardian list book list: The best books on China)

It's not a thick book, but it is a moving read, with every story conveying a different angle. One thing that becomes clear when reading through it: there are countless layers to China and the steps the country has gone through in the recent past, with Mao and his communism campaigns, and then the opening to communist-capitalism, the one-child-laws, and the student protests.

The most touching part of the book is the afterword by Yiyun Li, with her reflections on growing up in China, from the days of kindergarden and school, the witnessing of executions, and the time after the Tiananmen Square drama. Yiyun Li was a student in Peking at that time, and like many others, had to spent time in a military camp afterwards:

"It was the winter of 1991, and I was one of the freshmen of Peking University in the middle of a one-year brainwashing in a military camp in central China. The Harvard of China, as the university advertised itself, Peking University had been the hotbed of every student movement in Chinese history, including the one in 1989 in Tiananmen Square that ended in bloodshed. For the next four years, to immunize the incoming students to the disease that was called freedom, all freshmen were sent to the military for a year of brainwashing, or political reeducation, as it was called..."

You can read the whole afterword/essay online: "What has that to do with me?"

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"Wor(l)ds Apart" by Smitha Murthy and Dorothee Lang

Yiyun Li's stories and notes on life in China made me start to re-read "Wor(l)ds Apart", the book I wrote together with Smitha Murthy. The book, it started when Smitha was in China as a teacher, and I just had returned from India - and we happened to get into mail contact. "How is China? How does it feel to live there?" I asked in one of the first mails. And was amazed when she wrote back with notes from her journey. I still am stunned by the coincidence that brought this contact, and by the exchange of travel moments and stories it inspired. Below, the start of Smitha's journey notes. For more about the book, try these two links: the book page + the goodreads page: Worlds Apart.

"Bound by some hopes and spurred by some dreams – that’s how I arrived here in China. The earliest memory of China is of Beijing. Landing in Beijing, the first thing that strikes… having never travelled outside India is that the land smells different! Strange but true. The air has a different feel to it and the people… you realize that you are surrounded by people who don’t seem to be like you at all. People whom you realize only later are just the same… just like you. 

And the second thing that strikes you is the language. I hear sounds of a language unlike anything I have ever heard. I assume immediately, considering how difficult it was to carry on a normal conversation with even an average English speaker, that I would hardly be able to make friends here. How wrong I would be!..." 

Reading those pages also made me think that the things that remain are the things that feel fleeting: Journeys. Encounters. Words.

Revisiting books, that's also something I want to do more often this year, together with reading more globally. Yes, there are so many new books - but then, it's also a joy to revisit books and stories, and to see how reading them again feels different, and also brings back memories of the first reading, and the place / circumstances of that.

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"Germany, a Winter Journey" by Willi Winkler

In contrast / combination to the world books, I read the hike memoir from Willi Winkler, a German journalist who walked from Hamburg in the North of Germany to a town in Bavaria, in the South of Germany.

The thing that made his walk special: he walked in winter time, and followed the suggestions of his navigation guide. So he didn't take the most scenic route, but walked along all kind of roads and trails. Which lead to seeing the everyday-Germany, not the touristic / fancy one, not the most interesting cities and their attractions, but the usual small towns, villages, common roads, industrial areas, and the small suprises and encounters they hold. All this is accompanied by short reflections on life in Germany in these days.

A thoughtful, humorous and reflective read, and a reminder that most people in a country live in the not-wellknown places, and that the scenic tourist images you arrive at when you google "Germany winter" don't really show the way this season looks like in this country.

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

In the previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

High Altitude Reading with Laotse, Liu, Shamsie in Tibet, China & Pakistan

This blog post is inspired by the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge 2013, more about both, at the bottom of this post.

Into the Mountains....
The second task of the 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Reading challenge is to read a book from one of the 7 highest countries in the world, which are: Nepal, China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan

After checking the map, it's easy to see that all of those countries belong to the Himalaya region - and of course, it makes sense that the highest mountain range of the world is home to the highest countries. What I didn't expect, though, is to find 3 countries in this "highest" category also belong to the"most populated" category of the first challenge: China, India and Pakistan. Especially as high regions aren't synonym for comfortable living: the higher the region, the more difficult to live there.

More about the Himalaya region at Wikipedia, the page also includes this regional map of the Himalayas:

...to the highest village in the world
Now, where to head to with the next read? Looking at the list, a book recently read came to mind: Journey to Ki – a travel memoir from the Himalaya by Simon Worrall. It starts with these lines:

“I am on my way to the Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Ki. At 5.500 metres, it is the highest monastery in the world, and for two days, we have been climbing up the Sutley River valley towards the India-Tibet border." 

For the reader who isn't sure how high 5.500 metres is, Worrall adds a comparison later in the book, in a sentence that leads from Tibet to Switzerland in 13 words: "Ki lies almost at the same height as the summit of the Matterhorn." And there are more world altitude references: on the way to Ki they pass a village named Kibber - the place their guide Tsewang, a 27-year old monk is from:

"At 4.205 meters, Kibber claims to be the highest village in the world connected by road, though several places in Peru and Bolivia may dispute the claim. We passed through Kibber on our way here and having seen the hungry, bedraggled children living there it was easy to imagine the kind of future that would have awaited Tsewang if he had not joined the monastery."

Life up there isn't romantic, and the contrast of the group of travelers who enters this higher regions to follow the trails of one of the first photographers who took a photo of Ki, and the people who live there is striking. The closer the travellers get to Ki, the more difficult it is to navigate the road, and the more difficult it is to eke out a living. The monastery itself is a fascinating and powerful, but also a physically demanding place to be: no warm water, no electricity, but the mountain wind waiting when you step out of the monastery rooms. Altogether, "Journey to Ki" is an e-book in brief novella length of about 50 pages, or rather, a longer travelogue. It both tells about cultural divides and encounters in the mountains.

...and into China 
A very different mountain read recently went online at Litro Magazine: a traditional folk tale from the Chinese mountains, told by a Chinese author, not in written words, but in a podcast, with song parts included: Chinese storyteller and musician Fong Liu tells a tale called “The Golden Reed Pipe”, it's a traditional folk tale of the Yao culture, an ethnic minority who live in the mountains of southern China. Here's the podcast link - ancient tales in modern technology: “The Golden Reed Pipe".

While listening, i searched my photo files for a photo i took when i was trekking through the mountains of Vietnam, guided by a woman who belonged to one of the ethnic minorities, too - and who pointed to the mountains at the horizon, and explained: "Beyond those hills: China."

...and still reading: the Tao Te Ching
Also, i am still reading the Tao Te Ching - this classic philosophical read of the different kind, written in verses. Here are two of them:

"The wise man is one who, knows, what he does not know.”

and this one:

"There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger."

For more, try the Goodreads quote page, or visit the more/wiki. and if you want to read into it, try this link (again, old texts in new technology:) Tao Te Ching translation with introduction, by Stan Rosenthal

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Voices and Stories from Pakistan 
The book i ordered especially for the global reading challengs is a mixed collection of stories from Pakistan. Pakistan indeed is a country i know almost nothing about, and the only images that come up in mind are those of tragic tv news: earthquakes, floodings, political turmoil.

The Granta collection is a carefully edited, multi-facet read, it includes stories and essay, poetry and photography. And the cheerful, colorful cover itself gives the read a different tune, even though some of the stories are painful and tragic. But it also includes an amazing story about the mountains of Pakistan: "Ice, Mating" by Uzma Aslam Khan, about creating a glacier:

"After five winters, the ice blocks - one male, one female - would begin to creep downhill, growing into a natural glacier.. Only this side of the mountain attracted the right length of shadow for the snow to hold for ten months, 14.000 feet above sea level."

Who knew?
And again, reading brought back own travel memories: i remembered that while in India, i joined a desert tour with camels. And out there, if you would have kept walking for some days, you would have arrived in - Pakistan. Yes. No border there, in the desert. Here's a photo from back then:

I also still remember the evening out there in the desert, our group gathered around a fire, and our guides singing traditional songs for us, then turning to pop, and then asking us to sing our songs for them... "Country Roads Take Me Home" then turned into the theme song of this tour.

Which (you guessed it) now leads to the story that fascinated me most in the Granta collection: "Pop Idols" by Kamila Shamsie. In a mere 14 pages, she tells so much about life in Pakistan, how it was to grow up there, and how national and international politics turned into one of the main themes for everyone:

Given the state of Pakistan today, it is impossible to remember the heady days at the end of 1988 without tasting ashes. Elation was in the air, and it had a soundtrack. At parties my friends and I continued to dance to the UK’s Top 40, but the songs that ensured everyone crowded on to the dance floor were ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ and the election songs of both Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Karachi-based Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM).

There was little concern for political affiliation. At one such party I recall a young Englishman looking perplexed as Karachi’s teens gyrated to a song with the chorus Jeay jeay jeay Bhutto Benazir (‘Long live Benazir’). ‘I can’t imagine a group of schoolkids in London dancing to a “Long Live Maggie” number,’ he said, and I pitied him and all the English teenagers for not knowing what it was like to see the dawn of democracy. .. 

Only that this dawn of democracy never came to full bloom, she notes a bit later: "One of the most distinguishing features of the Bhutto government was the prevalence of the status quo precisely where there was the most urgent need for change. ... the great social transformation we had expected to see, that Return to Before, never happened."

When googling the story and her name, I arrived at a list of links: Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels, and writes for the Guardian. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London kamila shamsie  is a feature on the story, at NPR: Understanding Pakistan, By Way Of Its Pop Idols

And curious for the music, I arrived at this photo slide show about Pakistan, with the popular pop song playing while so many different images of Pakistans are shown. Here's the intro note for it: "The video highlights some aspects of Pakistani culture, architecture and landscapes. The famous song "Dil Dil Pakistan" by Vital Signs has somewhat become a secondary national anthem for Pakistan." (and the one who uploaded it, farkagal... happens to be living in Munich right now, down the Autobahn A8. small, big world.)



So the global reading challenge and this monday reading-meme now also induced a trip along memory lane, with some of my own travels included. And the Granta Pakistan anthology, it’s like a door to new authors and to unknown web-links. The good thing about the reading challenge and the connected posts is that both makes me look for interesting links and connected links that then lead to other books and links.

And so one of the next books i will read is Kamila Shamsie's novel "Burnt Shadows", which is a read that leads around the world: "Burnt Shadows is a story for our time ... Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events... (leading) From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan." (...which also happens leads back to the starting list of highest countries: "Nepal, China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan")

*****

This blog post is inspired by the blog series "It's Monday! What are you reading?" which is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. participating blogs are listed in this Linky Book List

Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf: currently  reading... there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:

And my own new book... is Worl(d)s Apart. True.

7 countries with the most population – global reading challenge

The 7 countries with the most population

The first task of the 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Reading challenge is to read a book from one of the 7 countries with the most population. According to the wiki list countries by population, the top 7 countries with the most population are:

• China (1300 Million)
• India (1200 Million)
• USA (314 Million)
• Indonesia (237 Million)
• Brazil (193 Million)
• Pakistan (181 Million)
• Nigeria (166 Million)

Here are the relating country reading links, from Goodreads:

Goodreads / China  --  Goodreads / India  -- Goodreads / US best of  -- Goodreads / Indonesia  -- Goodreads / Brazil  - Goodreads / Pakistan --  Goodreads / Nigeria

For more book links, visit: Finding books by country: helpful links + resources

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Around the globe

For some virtual globe spinning, try this short world video that shows the 25 most populated countries and their location on the globe:

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A world in change - 2 global docus 

If you are interested, there is a fascinating documentation online, a report of a journey across 3 continents by a journalist who tries to chart the phenomenon of Chinese migration. The docu starts in Africa, moves to America, and to Asia. It inlcudes a lot of encounters with citizens and immigrants, and also shows city and road scenes from the countries. It's also up on youtube:

• TV Docu: The Chinese are Coming

And here's another docu on the theme of population:

• BBC Horizon: How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth

Words, Wars, Books, Peace Prizes, Time, Beats, etc. (or: what are you reading?)

Book Fair Days 
It was the week of the books: the International Book Fair in Frankfurt was on, and parallel to it, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded. I happened to be on the Fair that very day, and thought i would check the news around 1 pm, but forgot about it with all the events and themes that are on there: national + international halls, new media area, guest land New Zealand, and so many author talks, forum discussions and extra events that the best strategy seems to be: just keep your eyes open while you are walking and go with the flow. More about all the impressions later - now back to the Nobel Prize and the peculiarity it brings for that day:

It was in the hall of the established german book publishers that i remembered about the prize and walked up to the next publisher's counter to ask. The woman smiled and pointed to the shelve: "Mo Yan," she said. "We have one of his books, Ullstein around the corner has the larger program." - i walked up to them, and there it was: an on-the-spot wall for the Nobel Prize Winner. Note the neutral poster for all cases / all optional winners:



Mo Yan - Nobel Prize for Literature
Back home I checked my bookshelf - and indeed, I still had the copy of Mo Yan's book "Red Sorghum" (which is titled "Das Rote Kornfeld" in German). It's one of the books I started, but didn't finish, a book with multiple timelines that reach back to the time when Japan invaded China. The red in the title refers both to the Communist party, and to all the blood that was shed.

Reading into it again made me think of one of the recent Prize Winners, Herta Müller, which i read parallel to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book on Nigeria and the time of civil war there. back then i noted: "2 books, from 2 continents. both are dealing with war, and the hardship it brings on so many levels, the way it disrupts families, regions, futures. the approach of both books: history, seen through personal lives. another parallel: both books are written based on oral memory." The same is true for Mo Yan. It's a hard, painful and complex read, spanning 3 generations, detailed in all aspects: rural life in China, and the hardship and cruelties the family has to go through.

Book Fair Impressions 



A photo series with books, halls, themes and snaphots from the book fair is online in an own post:
International Book Fair Frankfurt - impressions, themes, snaphots

Liao Yiwu - Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
The Nobel Prize wasn't the only literature prize that highlighted the week - in Frankfurt, the most important German book prizest is awarded: the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (more here). The recipient this year is from China, too, but unlike Mo Yan he had to flee the country to write his book. It's Liao Yiwu, who took part in the demonstrations of the Tiananmen-Square in 1989 and was imprisoned for years afterwards due to joining the demonstration, and also due to poem he wrote and spoke on the evening before. His book  "Testimonials" / "Für ein Lied & 100 Worte" is the collected history of political and other prisoners, and was released in Germany a few weeks ago. I read into it. I don't find the words for it. I don't think I can read it. The excerpt alredy haunted me and let me wake in a dream of being imprisoned with my feet frozen in a block of ice. Here's a sequence from a video interview with Liao Yiwu:



To think of all those young students, engaging for freedom of speech and thought, and finding themselves imprisoned for years, tortured, killed.

It's hard to imagine, but then, it's something that happens in so many places. It could have happened here when the demonstations in East Germany started, and when the border checkpoints opened in the first night of reunion. It was partly luck that it all didn't end in a huge bloodshed here, like it did in Prague, or in China. It's something that is easily forgotten: how violent life in Europe was for a long time. The Nobel Peace Prize for the EU, as surprising as it was to hear the news - i guess like most, i expected a name rather than an organization - it brought back the larger picture of history. Since World War II, there are ongoing (or rather: endless), mostly bureaucratic and unsexy meeting of European politicians who all are working on the long and winding road to more community and less nationalism. They are also working for peace. It's not often put like that, but when you open borders and share your currency and work together in science and economy, when you do school exchange programs and a thousand other small and large reforms and get togethers (including european song contests), you are less likely to return to warfare when it comes to difficulties between states, because you are codependent or at least connected on so many levels already.

This video shows how common war was in Europe, it reaches from 1000 to today, and almost every change in borderlines meant war, lives lost, homes destroyed, refugees, vengeance, the next conflict - a spiral of bloodshed.



-- update: and here's an article that sums up a lot about the idea of the EU, by the Israeli ambassodor to France: Peace Price for EU

Howl - Allen Ginsberg
From China to Europe - and now to America: the online course on Modern American Poetry (ModPo) now moves to beat poets. The beat chapter starts with Ginsberg’s Howl – i printed it and listened to the audio while reading. Voice adds so much, especially for this poem, and the desparation it puts into words, which probably goes for many of those who lost their life and future when they found themselves between frontiers: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked..  "

*****

It's Monday! What are you reading? This blog post is inspired by the blog series "It's Monday! What are you reading?" which is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. participating blogs are listed in this Linky Book List

Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf + monday reads. there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:



Some lines about me: I'm into roads, stories, places, crossings, and all the things they lead and connect to. I edit BluePrintReview and the blueprint book + lit blog. Apart from being an editor and blogger, I am also an author myself. My new book Worlds Apart just launched:

Worlds Apart: the true story of 2 friends, 2 journeys, and 10 life lessons  
In the global world, a traveler from Europe and a teacher from Asia meet in the web, share their journeys, and the joys, longings, and life lessons that wait along the road. Captured in letters and photos that reach from China and India to Germany and Spain, a dialogue across continents and cultures unfolds: Worl(d)s Apart

forms of being

this post belongs to the upcoming language/place blog carnival #16: "Translation (in all its forms), hosted by Steve Wing, which is now online: Translation Issue - Übersetzungsausgabe


talking Italian
some years ago, i started to learn Italian. as it turned out, the most confusing thing about Italian was its closeness to French, which i learned in school, and which kept mingling with Italian in my mind.
in the end, i gave up on the Italian lessons, but the whole theme of languages and conjugates kept moving on in conversations, and at some point, in a play with words and places, and photos from different regions, with all those different shapes of houses, and those different conjugations of the basic verb: "i am / you are / she is...". which turns to "ich bin / du bist / sie ist.." in German, and "io sono / tu sei / lei è.." in Italian, i created a moving word installation: forms of being

from Italy to China
the installation later found its way into the qarrtsiluni Translation issue, which also lead to two conversations on language. the first with the Smitha, a friend of mine who at that point spent some time in China to learn Chinese. she wrote:

"I have never come across a language that frustrates and enthralls in equal measure. The sheer mountain of learning required just to converse is mind boggling. I can study Chinese for 3 years, and still not be able to read a Chinese newspaper or talk life philosophies with the Chinese. Sometimes, when I think of that I get discouraged. But I remind myself that is part of the reason I chose it. I could have learned Telugu or Tamil in a year. Those are languages closer to Sanskrit. Even European languages are easier with the root being Sanskrit. Remind me will you why I chose to torture myself?"

(the mail belongs to an ongoing conversation across continents, which eventually lead to our book that now soon will be released: "Worlds Apart")

China isn't China
the another conversation that developed was with Nick Admussen:
"There's some oddness about the pinyin stuff -- esp. "China yo shi yi dian ban zou"...I'm guessing you know that China isn't "China" in Chinese, but "Zhongguo", but you might not know that the "yo" is a typo for "you" which is the possessive verb ("yo" isn't a pinyin syllable). I also think that the only way to read and understand it is in context, both because of the pinyin and the kind of odd phrasing -- maybe you've misprinted "zou" for "zao" (early, morning). I would probably say "中国时间现在早上十一点半" "Zhongguo shijian xianzai zaoshang shiyi dian ban."

The verb 'declensions' are all right, except for the question mark after nimen in one iteration (which might also be intentional). If the Chinese characters above came through, you could email me and I'll give you the ones for "wo shi", etc.

Anyway, this is a very cool project!"
- Nick Admussen (more)


truth is, i hadn't known that. i just tried to find the original files, but it seems, they got lost, with only the extracted flash files remaining. so i keep the note here, as addition. which also adds another layer to the project: the complexity of language, and the difficulty of working with translations when you don't have a clue about the language itself. and the fact that blogger has problems in displaying the signs just shows another level of this complexity. here's a mail screenshot copy + paste:


and one more addition, following the note that China isn't "China" in Chinese, but "Zhongguo". it's the same for Germany. which isn't "Germany" in German, or "Allemagne", as the French say, but: "Deutschland". with "Deutsch" meaning "German", and "Land" meaning "country". which in fact was the key to founding "Deutschland", which was a mosaic of regions with one uniting element: the language.

Frankfurt Book Fair with guestland Iceland: clips, photos, links

it's a time of books in Germany: Frankfurt Book Fair is on. i've visited the fair in the last 2 years, and will pause this year, and visit virtually: there are lots of features in newspapers and tv on it.

here's the official videoclip of the book fair:

and here's a clip from the comic area, where CosPlayers took over at the weekend:

the guestland this year is Iceland, here's a clip for the book fair from there:
"Small Iceland, Big Stories":

blog - there's an english fair blog. current entries: "A First Timer’s First Day At The Fair", "Collective Storytelling" .. Frankfurt book fair blog

photos! here's the official photo gallery from the fair:
- setup and opening (with Iceland hotspot photos) / - day one (Trade Visitor's day) ..
and here's a daily blog of a book magazine with LOTS of photos: Frankfurt Blog



some impressions from the last 2 years:

- Frankfurt Book Fair 2010: themes, sights, hotspots (guest: Argentina)

- Frankfurt Book Fair 2009: impressions / the power of culture (guest: China)

A note + some advice on visiting the book fair
The book fair is huge, with publishers from all over the world, and with China as guest of honor. Walking in there, i heard japanese, english, languages i don't know. With all the foreign people and books, this fair has the touch of a miniature world trip.

The other amazing thing: there is so much happening: live readings, author interviews, podium discussions. there are listings of events, but i found, the best way to go (very much like with a journey), is to have a rough plan, and then just go with the flow, walk through the halls, and if there are cameras somewhere, walk up, and see what's up. That way i saw the author Leon de Winter in an interview, and then later walked into a reading of chinese poetry: first in original, then in translation. There also is reading tent, and when i walked in there, there was an author from new zealand reading, from a book set in london.


From there, i went to the hall of art and nonfiction books. So amazing. so many beautiful books, art books, architecture, world books, books in all kind of languages. So good