Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler

Oracle Bones is Peter Hessler's second book and is even better than the first one (called River Town). What I like about the book is that it connects distant lands and time periods, from Western China to Canton and to America, from the neolithic oracle bones to modern teachers. Big leaps in time and space, but somehow still connected into a single narrative. At the same time, this is not a single narrative but a collection of individual stories, sometimes seemingly unconnected, yet still flowing in the same direction.

Another fun thing is that Hessler steps out of the realm of stereotypes. Almost anything he writes about is atypical, the people, the circumstances, the times. So anything you look at, if you look close enough, is quite different from the general category it is in.

The term "oracle bones" refers to the tortoise plastrons used by the ancient diviners of the Shang dynasty. They cracked the bones and divined on the basis of the cracks. In the process, they also scratched short sentences onto the surface of the bones, and these are today the earliest examples of Chinese writing.

Hessler's Oracle Bones is a book about how China's present mirrors its past, and vice versa. If you were to read a book about China, read this one.

Foreign devils on the Silk Road

By Peter Hopkirk.

Foreign devils on the Silk Road is one of the very few good books on the subject of the exploration of the Silk Road. This one is about foreigners exploring Chinese Turkestan (or Xinjiang, Sinkiang, Hsinkiang, High Tartary, Chinese Tartary, etc). Whichever region has so many names is bound to have had a busy history.

    

This is a wonderful book, with lots of vivid stories of the foreigners exploring China's westernmost province. This was a truly multinational project, to map out the Tarim basin and to clear it out of its archaeological treasures. There were the British, the French, the German, the Russians and the Japanese. By the time the Chinese woke up from their daze of domestic disturbances, the best pieces were already out of the country. Today they claim this to be their national treasure and resent the fact that it had been stolen from them. Well, it was not, all of these people were acting in full support of the local government, with passports and whatever permissions needed at the time. This was simply something that was OK at the time but was not afterwards. You cannot sell me your grandma's antique vase and then start badmouthing me for having stolen it from you, can you? But this is what I think, Hopkirk is actually quite sympathetic with the Chinese side of the story.

Foreign devils is very well written, Hopkirk used to be a journalist. This is why I find his malicious treatment of the Japanese Otani expeditions surprising because although admitting that it is mostly based on hearsay, he still goes on to depict Otani and his followers as but a bunch of spies. Especially Tachibana is described in unfavorable colors, as ever being "up to his old an unpriestly tricks."

Aurel Stein on the Silk Road

By Susan Whitfield.

Although the title says it is about Aurel Stein on the Silk Road, it is also a very nice and convenient resource about Stein's life in general. The narrative is arranged around contemporary photographs which make reading a whole lot easier than it would be in a strictly academic book.



Aurel Stein was a Hungarian-born explorer who became a naturalized British citizen and was even knighted for his accomplishments. His four expeditions to China were a major enterprise the consequences of which are still felt both in China and Britain. The Stein collection the bunk of which is now housed at the British Library, the British Museum, and the National Museum of India in Delhi is still bitterly missed by the Chinese who see these as stolen goods. Thus although Stein has been a major celebrity in his lifetime not only in Britain and the rest of Europe but also in the US and even Japan, he gradually grew to represent an evil of mythical proportion in the eyes of the Chinese.

But Susan Whitfield's Aurel Stein on the Silk Road is not so political and she does well to avoid these touchy issues. This nice book contains a wealth of information about Stein's life, his work as an explorer, and the exploration of the Silk Road in general. Definitely worth reading.