Earlier today I bc'd Andrew in China to recommend a fascinating essay in the
current New Yorker, LETTER FROM CHINA: Walking the Wall
An obsession with a mythic structure.
Peter Hessler
Unfortunately it is not accessible online from the NY'er.
However, the essay reads like a study in translation, as the writer follows
this independent American scholar up and on to parts of the wall - which
apparently has never be a continuous wall, but composed of several sections,
and kinds of materials. There are still tablets to be found in which poets
and clerks account the point in history in which parts were completed. But,
no one in China, apparently, has ever taken on the complete specifics of
its history, its function in relationship to the most often marauding
Mongols, etc. Not unlike this leadership of the USA, rarely did anyone in
any of the dynasties try diplomacy as a possible way to create peace with
the Mongols, opting for cultural superiority to be untainted as a
non-bargainable position.
So here this American - with no financing - is taking it on as a life
project, it seems. The article is neat because much of it is walking among
terrain (rocks, brambles, et al), and examining/translating the diversity of
walls as a fresh and various version of China's history.
From real things and tablets to the library into ancient texts this guy
(name?) has put himself into one hell of a myth defying labyrinth.
Another walker!
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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