Travel to China

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

Format: Paperback
Author: Simon Winchester
ReleaseDate: 01 April, 2004
Publisher: Picador
Rating:

Permit for Entry to China
The book is still excellent. I agree with some of the previous reviews that it would have been an asset to the book to include more images of the trip (especially the Three Gorges Area), and to have more content on the people of the areas he visits. To do everthing for a region like this would make it a three volume, 2,000 page edition. China is a rich subject and this is a one person of a billion view.

The author has done his work and achieved permits to travel the entire length of the River from the China Sea to Tibet. I am grateful to be able to read an account of a journey that is probably impossible for most of us. I read the book last summer and I still find myself thinking of it from the impression of the 21st. century city of Shanghai to the horific history of the city of Nanking,the ledge walks above the Three River Gorges, and the remote, cold, snowy heights of the headwaters.

If you are not upset about a Brit-centrict view of the history of China and long for an impossible journey through lands beyond reach you will feel that this book is a very worthwhile read.

Me like pictures!
Maybe I should be a little embarrassed about this, but my first reaction is. . why weren't there any pictures?

I know that travel writers often don't include pictures in with their accounts, and a lot of the time, that's okay. For example, Bill Bryson writes about journeying up the Appalachian Trail, and that atmosphere is familiar enough to me (and I would imagine many of his readers) that pictures of all the trees and mountains really are not necessary.

Winchester's account, however, is of travelling all the way from the mouth of the Yangtze River, near Shanghai, to its headwaters, just to the north of Tibet. You would think that this is a sufficiently unusual location that pictures might be appropriate. I'd venture a guess that 99. 9x% of American readers have not ever been to the backwoods of China, so we, going in, wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to visualize what he talks about. A thousand words, like they say. (Probably more than that, in this case!) This omission is particularly annoying, in this case, because Winchester goes out of his way to note that he did, in fact, bring his Leica M6, a very expensive (almost $2000), high-quality camera that could, and no doubt did, take wonderful pictures of the awe-inspiring scenery that Winchester describes in words. . . and more words. . . and more words.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book a great deal. I really liked the basic idea of the book, and I was fascinated by his descriptions of the people and places in the more remote regions of China. The book does have sort of an unusual format, in that the farther Winchester travels up the river, the farther back in Chinese time he pulls history and historical anecdotes from. The history lessons are well-written, and it's obvious that Winchester knows his material very well. It's clear why he structured the book this way, although the historical digressions be disorienting (as in, "Wait. . . what were they doing again? Who is Mr. Tang?").

I do wish Winchester had included some of the mundane, day-to-day stuff, like random conversations he had with Lily, and the other unusual characters he meets along the way. I had very little feeling of what any of the people he met were really like; even Lily, who is with him for the entire journey, only speaks in the book when she has something important to say (usually a political rant). By the end of the story, I still had almost no feel for what she was actually like as a person, and this is even more true for the various minor characters he briefly introduces throughout the trip. As far as interactions with the locals go, this is a strictly-the-essentials book, meaning that unless there is some really good reason for including a snippet of dialogue or observation into the text, it won't be included. This lends the journey a kind of stripped-down air, which I think is not good in travel writing. Travel writing ought to have a sense of immediacy; immersing the reader in the journey important, and his omissions in that regard have reduced this immersion considerably, to the book's detriment, I think.

Also, I have to say, this book made me want to visit Tibet (or at least remote Qinghai), although, unless the situation has changed significantly since this book was written (1996), that probably remains an impossibility, since the Chinese government keeps the borders to Tibet locked with an iron fist.

Yes, terribly disappointing!
Mr. I agree totally with Yau in the previous review. Winchester is more interested in sharing the British (yawn) history of China, not giving us much else about the culture and beauty of the Yangtze and its people. I have been to China 2&1/2 wks and also taken a cruise (5 days) of the Yangtze and for him to make it all so boring is more than annoying, it is almost criminal. Perhaps his ego supersedes him. I would not buy this book, in fact I was uanble to even read more than a couple chapters, it was that boring and dry. The one by Mr. Hessler is an absolute winner. I read it once a year at least to refresh my amazing memories of China.

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