A little serendipity here reminds me of a book (author's name Schaeffer,
perhaps - I'm damned if I'm going to trundle downstairs at this hour to
check) called "The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: a Study of T'ang Exotics"
which examines the glamour of central Asia for the poets, and others, of
seventh and eighth century China.

When reading the book, I always tend to hear an echo of a comment I heard
on BBC radio, about twenty years back, about how immigrant schoolchildren
(largely from the Indian subcontinent, I think) were referring to places
like Manchester and Newcastle, the way we might refer to such exotic
locales as Samarkand.

For many years, the Talas River in (I think) former Russian Turkestan has
had that sort of a ring for me, purely because of a mention I found of a
critica (but largely forgotten, it seems) battle fought there in 751 CE by
the Chinese imperial armies under a Korean general, against the armies of
Islam, advancing east for a change. It seems that the two armies circled
each other for some time, but instead of just scuffing up the dust, they
pillaged many old established city states to the point of destruction.
(Including, if I remember right, Bukhara)

Anyway, when they eventually fought, the Arab armies came out on top.
Instead of settling their new conquest, though, they headed for home, as
some major dignitary had just died. The Chinese forces retired to the
capital at Chang-An to regroup, but the An Lu Shan rebellion in 755 nearly
desroyed the T'ang, and certainly kept the military occupied.

As a result, much of central Asia was just left devastated and void, and
the formerly settled inhabitants just weren't there to resist when the
nomad came down from Baikal in the succeeding centuries.

Incidentally, according to Joseph Needham, two of the Chinese captives
taken back to Egypt after the battle were paper-makers by trade, and that's
how the Islamic world got paper.

While it's a long way from the British / American axis that Mark was
targeting, I'm always amused to find myself hankering still after this
locus of the exotic in the middle of the Eurasian landmass, when just
around the corner from my house here in Cork is the site of the old castle
(Sean Dún = Shandon) where Spenser overnighted, and Raleigh, and Penn, and
Cromwell, which might seem exotic enough for many in "foreign parts".

Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles,
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not brave to be a king
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?

(Kit Marlowe's downstairs too, lollygagging with the T'ang)

And even Cyril Tourneur came to Cork to die. Perhaps it was the Florida of
Jacobean times?

Cheers,

Trevor

(And I'll really make an effort never to accuse anyone else of irrelevance,
ever again!)

>Sorry, didn't mean to take your thread off on a tangent--if I did,
>though I thought one of the topics you introduced was how places
>become exotic (peaches) and then sometimes lose their bloom. Mainly,
>I was answering your question about glamour, but maybe I should have
>mentioned working at the decidedly unglamorous job of nurse's aide
>in a (non-academic, working-class) Amherst clinic during those years,
>just to establish my creds. for speaking of the town.