Letter from Chongqing, by Jessica Wang

Chongqing means 'Double-Happiness'. After three months in Australia, I returned to this, my hometown, with fresh eyes.

The late autumn sky of November is clear at night, especially after rain. The night-view is illuminating: rainbow beams come from the rows of skyscrapers, waving near and far. Sprays of rays intercept each other. Lights from a myriad of traditional homes form layers of vertical lines stretching along the mountains. Straddled across the rivers, muddy docks called Chao Tian Men berth hundreds of ships with whistles. The wharfs were founded in the Ming Dynasty, and face the capital of Ming, Nanjing. The rivers converge; the Jialing River is dark-green, and the Yangtze River flows light-brown.

The night panorama of the city is drawn as a collection of glimmering castles, curving around the silhouette of the mountains. Trucks pierce the night with harsh lights; that is the city, either constructing or dismantling. My friend takes a photo of the night-view, a mixture of the modern and the traditional, a time-crossed illusion.

The clock strikes 10.00am. I get up to meet my friends. The air-train emerges in the raindrops. Along Jialing River, I see skyscrapers dominating the city as well as the traditional old apartments. As we drive up a hill, small, new buildings appear from behind the skyscrapers. Cobblestones pave the way. The tawny wooden terraced houses stand close along the slope of the mountains, snaking.

Vaguely in the mist, the aged rock stairwell covered in moss starts from a bend, meandering all the way to the rock abodes. People walk up and down; none are riding bicycles. Some older ladies in cloaks or raincoats are picking up recycled-garbage. Unemployed bands are performing beneath the eaves. Two ladies in Louis Vuitton and Chanel are having coffee. Several old men hold birds in cages, humming and strolling past the coffee shop.

A 'Bang-Bang Jun,' a Stick Man, is coming towards my car. He is dangling two bags of rice for his customers. The bags are tied with a hempen rope on a bamboo stick across his shoulders. You only find these men in Chongqing. They wear green canvas shoes and ragged clothes, short and strong. Usually several of them stand together, waiting for someone to scream 'Bang-Bang!' at them. 'Bang Bang Jun' shuffle through the city, but there are not as many as before.

Half the road I am driving on is being repaired. Above me, ropeways slide across rivers, working as Citycats in-the-air. There are more bridges and underpasses than roads, and roads sweep high above the buildings. Flyovers look like Chinese knots. Nearby, traditional Chongqing dwellings – ‘diao jiao lou.’ They adjoin the rivers. ‘Diao jiao lou’ means to build wooden houses on firtree posts in the pattern of cornrows. Most of them were constructed in the 1930-1940s, and show the belief of balancing 'yin' and 'yan.' The empty space created by the firtree posts between the ground and the houses symbolises the female – the 'yin.' The house embodies the male, the 'yan.' 'Diao jiao lou' zigzag through many alleys. You may think you've reached the end of the lane, then suddenly there are more houses around another corner.

The author: Jessica Wang is a student in Creative Writing at QUT.

Letter from the Jungfrau, by Sharyn Pearce

The highlight of our visit to Switzerland was always going to be a trip to the Jungfrau (the Maiden, for those of us who don’t speak German), the highest mountain in Europe where you can buy special postcards stamped “The Top of the World” and gaze in awe – weather permitting – at the marvellous mountains, still snowclad in midsummer, despite the encroachments of global warming. When we emerged at the top, courtesy of a system of trains and funiculars, all running like the proverbial clockwork, we were confronted with the spectacle of hundreds and hundreds of Indian tourists led by guides waving red flags. Most of the women were in colourful saris and many sported bare midriffs, despite the intense cold. All these people were on their way to the Bollywood Curry House, which must surely provide the highest altitude somosas in the world. A glance at the Lonely Planet guide explained the phenomenon: apparently Bollywood musicals require spectacular scenery, and now that Kashmir is no longer available, the canny Swiss have stepped in. Currently more Bollywood films are being made in Switzerland than anywhere else in the world, and packaged tours take Indian movie-fans in the steps of their idols. Insulated from the Swiss culture and food (which is pretty ordinary by the way – I can see why Indian food appeals), these tourists have their pictures taken in spots where celluloid heroes spectacularly sang their love for each other, and then they return home with these visible records of their journey.

The following day we went to the Schilthorn, another mighty mountain in such an extraordinary part of the world. This time the attraction was not Bollywood but Bond, James Bond. The revolving restaurant at the top of the Schilthorn was used for the final climactic scene in one of the early Bond movies, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which starred George Lazenby, the only Australian actor to take on the famous role. The fact that the movie was a dud hasn’t deterred Bond fans from journeying there, eating a meal and getting a t-shirt as proof of their journey. Once more the view is the secondary attraction only – although this time it’s the Bond brand which dominates the tourist traffic.

I mused to myself that Switzerland was now a place where the celebrated scenery was clearly marginalised by the filmic associations, but one final visit reassured me that at least one Swiss icon remains a tourist magnet in its own right. On our journey out of the country we went through the St Bernard Pass and stopped to see the kennels where the legendary St Bernard dogs live with their owners, the monks who for generations have helped travellers lost in the snow. Or rather they did – the monks have now mostly gone, and the giant dogs are there only for the summer months. A major tourist attraction, these dogs may be approached, patted and photographed. For generations the top dog has been named Barry, and the most famous Barry of them all, Barry the 3rd, who was responsible for over 40 rescues, has been stuffed and mounted. In this place Barry rules, okay, and at last Switzerland seemed real to me.

The highly-regarded Barry the 3rd

The author:
Sharyn Pearce lectures in Literary Studies at QUT.

Review

Fullerton, Susannah. Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia 1836-1939. Sydney: Picador, 2009.

Brief Encounters collects the experiences of eleven literary travellers to Australia, beginning with Charles Darwin’s arrival on the Beagle in 1836 and ending with HG Wells’ departure in 1939. Darwin was a young man of 26, while HG Wells was, in his own view, rather too old for such a long journey—he was 72. Both looked at the place through the lenses of their own, very urgent obsessions: Darwin, it seems, saw only rocks; HG Wells couldn’t stop talking about the Germans.

These two figures of scientific speculation and controversy frame an eclectic gathering, but one united in being well-known and well-regarded. Less talented but perhaps equally interesting travellers are left out, but we are given an intriguing assembly nonetheless: Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Jack London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and DH Lawrence. They are each allocated rooms of their own, so to speak: a chapter per author works very well for this book, producing an integrity of episodes that helps avoid forced comparisons and contrasts.

That said, the reader can look for crossovers easily enough, because the chapters all follow the same pattern: where the authors were in their lives and careers when they arrived; what Australians of the day thought of the authors; a summary of the authors' travels and what they had to say about the country; the appearance of Australia in the authors’ subsequent literary output; and a summing up of the visits’ impact on both the authors and Australians. Thus, when reading of Robert Louis Stevenson and his desire to ‘travel for travel’s sake,’ (p. 103) one remembers that Joseph Conrad was also a natural traveller, a man who only felt at ease with himself when he was on board a ship (p. 83). Likewise, Rudyard Kipling and DH Lawrence meet in their vision of Australia as a place where they could sort themselves out or at least examine themselves more clearly.

Fullerton is an excellent host to the authors she had collected, and one of the great appeals of this work is its diplomatic, welcoming tone. Criticisms are received much more politely than at the time they were delivered, in part because some of the sting has gone out of them over time; but all the same, there is a good will shown throughout this book that others might not have managed. Fullerton seldom indulges in a defence of Australia, generally accepting the authors’ views as legitimate in their historical context. Mark Twain is the only outright hypocrite of the group, with his real feelings about Australia only revealed two months after his departure, when he commented that the native Australian ‘was as vain of his unpretty country as if it were the final masterpiece of God, achieved by Him from designs by that Australian. He is as sensitive about her as men are of sacred things—can’t bear to have critical things said.’ (p. 194) Fullerton does not, even on this occasion, fall into that trap.

Nevertheless, a discernable lift in the writing comes in chapter ten, with DH Lawrence’s arrival in 1922. Lawrence did everything one could want of a literary visitor: he loved the place, stayed for decent length of time, wrote a book based on his experiences, and left happier than he’d arrived. All of this lends the Lawrence chapter a feeling of relief; perhaps this reader’s as much as Fullerton’s.

Fullerton’s simple, eloquent mode of descriptive writing is exemplary, particularly in the summaries that she gives of the journeys and of the comments that the authors made along the way. In fact, Brief Encounters makes you wonder whether argument isn’t sometimes overrated as a mode of discourse—Fullerton’s flowing and well-paced descriptions seem to me just as urgent and engaging, especially in the context of popular academic writing.

Where I might disagree with Fullerton is in the matter of this book’s ultimate impact, which, in the Postscript, she alludes to in this way: ‘If this book encourages you to go and read their [the literary travellers’] works, then I’ve achieved my purpose.’ (p. 369). This, I think, slightly misses the point, which lies less with the promotion of great literary works than with the fascinating nature of the meetings that have occurred between Australians and very good writers who have visited us from England and America.

That, I suppose, is a more precise end result. But it is certainly one that is worthy of the lengthy treatment given here, as it is during these encounters that we are given a rare gift, an intelligent and well-intentioned international perspective of who we are and who we might become. And that, ultimately, is the contribution made by Brief Encounters: this book reminds us of the possible benefits, to both travellers and hosts, of cultural encounters.

Craft: on the personality of the traveller

One of the questions faced in all forms of non-fiction writing is how much of the writer's own personality, experience, and viewpoint to include. Do you more or less leave yourself out, and allow the nature of your interest in a place to define who you are to the reader? Or, given that the work is also about you, is self-reflection a valid part of the literary journey?

A general answer to the problem may lie less with narrative voice than structure. A clear structure tells you how much of yourself to include.

Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island is structured around the author's final revisiting of the places in England that he's lived, before he and his family move back to America. The present journey is a farewell to England, and, as in the case of farewells in real life, it is natural to reminisce. His anecdotes, often gently ridiculing of both himself and the English, become the basis of a traveller's observations and analysis, and not the heavy-handed projection of himself onto the subject. Thus, although you are reading about Bryson for the entire book, you end his Notes thinking that you know more about the country than you do about him.

In William Dalrymple's The City of Djins, an extended stay in old Delhi is undertaken with an historian's sense of place, and the structure that the author adopts is to visit places in the city in roughly their historically chronological order. As part of this visiting of the past, Dalrymple tells us about the various problems and adventures of setting up and moving around in Delhi, and his landlady and his regular taxi driver become key characters. In the main, though, the historical quest is allowed to dominate: this is a story of a city's layers, and Dalrymple's function as a narrator is to unearth those layers for us.

The Snow Geese by William Fiennes is different again. His reason for travelling is actually to think about the nature of home, and so his growing homesickness during the journey is not a personal diversion but rather the delivery of a homecoming that the book has been meditating throughout. The structure of the work is a footsteps one, or, in this case, wing flaps. Fiennes is following the snow geese on their migration across North America and into the Arctic Circle. Their homecoming coincides naturally with his need for his own.

What these three examples have in common is an easy relationship between structure and personal content. And the lesson for travel writers, if we think of it in terms of craft, is to define your role as a character in terms of the task you've set yourself as a traveller. Are you, like Bryson, a humorous spectator; like Dalrymple, a chief investigator; or, like Fiennes, the philosopher with an eye for detail?

I'm sure there are other possibilities.

The books:

Bryson, Bill. Notes from a Small Island. Black Swan, 1996.

Dalrymple, William. City of Djins: A Year in Delhi. Flamingo, 1994.

Fiennes, William. The Snow Geese: A Story of Home. Picador, 2002.

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Letter from Vienna, by Vivienne Muller

The Habsburgs, I am told in the guide book on my last day in Vienna, were obsessed with death. I think of this as we enter the Innere Stadt and walk towards the magnificent Stephansdom, the neo-Gothic church modelled on the St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. The previous day I had spotted its spires and belltower from the Belvedere palaces, and death, then, as now, was already in the picture. Upper and Lower Belvedere, two baroque palaces separated by gardens and walkways, were built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a great patron of the Arts. The upper palace, later transformed by that most energetic of Habsburg royals, Maria Theresa into an art gallery housing the extensive Habsburg collection and opened to the public in the late eighteenth century, was at one time the residence of the ill fated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 was reputed to have triggered WW 1. I remember my history book at school with a very dramatic pictorial reconstruction of that momentous event, and remain puzzled even now as to how that one small death could eventually lead to so many.

When we reach Stephansdom, coming into the heart of the square on which the cathedral both squats and towers, I am struck by the way it wears its black mouldy exterior like a second skin. Inside the interior reminds me, as cathedral interiors often do, of the way life and death lie in ornate proximity in the carved and painted narratives of Christian faith and fear that decorate its naves and pulpits, its side chapels and altars. An elaborately carved stone pulpit in the centre of the church with its exquisite filigree work also features a line of toads creeping up the curved banisters held at bay at the top by a barking dog. There is some comfort in this eerie symbolism. But it is the dank catacombs beneath the church that in my present mood attract me more, for what lies beneath the church are the remains of the dead – a sprinkling of priests and cardinals, the caskets of a couple of the Habsburg rulers (the rest of the clan are in the Kaisergruft which is our next stop) and the bones of the many thousand who died of bubonic plague and were thrown hastily into pits beneath the church to prevent contamination of the living. Our young guide, admirably proficient in languages, and eager to alert us to the seductive grisliness of death, tells us that the Cathedral was closed for several years because the smell of the decaying bodies penetrated the interior. They spread them with quicklime and waited. I think of the creeping toads and the spreading black stain on the outside of the church as I head for the exit.

Confronting death: the author and the shadows

The Kaisergruft (Imperial vault), situated under the Capuchin Church of St Mary of the Angels and part of the massive Hofsburg Palace complex in Vienna, was especially built as a final resting place for that large and fascinating royal dynasty - the Habsburgs. I am particularly keen to see the sarcophagus of Maria Theresa, the clever and much admired woman who was Queen of Hungary and Archduchess of Austria, continuing the Hapsburg line into its hyphenated state with her marriage to the Duke of Lorraine. She lies in her tomb with her devoted husband, Francis, surrounded by the varied sized coffins of her large family of 16 - plus governess. The Kaisergruft is one of the most popular attractions in Vienna, an ‘uncanny’ sight/site, so in terms of obsession with death, the Habsburgs and I are not alone! We are greeted at the entrance booth by one of the Capuchin friars, caretakers of the crypt, who takes our money and leads us into a lift which descends into vault below. Rows of elaborately decorated coffins line the path to the main attraction - the large alcove dominated by the massive sarcophagus of Maria Theresa. Nothing quite prepares for this experience – I am in awe of its majesty but moved at the same time by the way in which the layout of the coffins around the couple’s tomb approximates a happy family gathering. And it does not stop there. On top of the tomb are life-size sculptures of Maria and her husband sitting up and exchanging some fiery banter with each other, looking for all the world like a quarrelling couple - barking dogs keeping the toads at bay. The intimacy inspires me. I consult the guidebook. It tells me Maria Theresa married for love. As we leave the Kaisergruft, I suddenly remember that among the wonderful paintings in the collection at Upper Belvedere, the piece everyone mostly comes to see is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.

The author:

Vivienne Muller lectures in Literary Studies at QUT.

Great Journeys: Colin Thubron in Central Asia

The obvious thing to say about Colin Thubron is that he is a wonderful stylist. I am a believer in stating the obvious. He is a wonderful stylist. There are sentences in all of his books that unlock such perceptiveness and compassion that I find myself filled not only with writer's envy but a particular sort of melancholy, the kind that only detailed, lyrical description can produce (in me, anyway):

'South from Samarkand a broad road ran fifty miles to Shakhrisabz, over an outlying finger of the Pamir. Beyond foothills rose a wraith-like curtain of mountains whose pelmet was lost in a cloud. As my crammed taxi started to climb, the crags surged unsteadily about us in the mist. Everything paled, until the web of our splintered windscreen overlay only a water-colour softness beyond. Sometimes the road reverted to a cracked causeway unchanged since Soviet tanks moved down it to Afghanistan in 1979. All around, the mountain-scarps hung in disease-looking palisades of flaking rock. Then we topped the pass and stared down though haze. A sandy fox watched us from the mossed rocks. Nothing else stirred. Half an hour later we arrived in Shakhrisabz.' (p. 187-88)

The unity of this paragraph is created by a simple device, a clear topic of description: the fifty miles from south of Samarkand to Shakhrisabz. Thinking of it this way, you almost feel the author doing a job. We hear his thinking: he wants to describe a section of the journey; it's worth about a paragraph; he can list the following things from his diary. But these two stylistic qualities, the clear topic and the paragraph's functionality, also allow the richness of the prose to be light, easily consumed, and paced. He doesn't labour the point: after all, a paragraph for over fifty miles of travel is hardly slow-going prose. But just to be on the safe side, as if to clear the page of any romance, the landscape comes with a reminder of the colonizations to which is has been subjected.

A stylist, yes, but is Thubron also a great traveller?

The Lost Heart of Asia (first published 1994) is a treatise about the effects of communism in Central Asia, and there is no doubt about Thubron's passion for the humanity that exists beneath the layers of ideology, politics, and power. What marks this as a great journey, though, is the author's willingness to be led astray, both in terms of his itinerary and his views. Have a look, for example, at the movement in chapter 2. We begin with intensely Thubronesque descriptive writing--the view of the Karakum desert from a train window--but, thankfully in a way, we end in the company of a reluctant drunk:

'Whatever happens, I thought, I mustn't sleep. Then I slept.' (p. 50)

Beautiful prose isn't enough to save you from the local spirits. I think that's a very good sign in a great journey.

The book:

Thubron, Colin. The Lost Heart of Asia. Penguin, 1995.

Letter from Macleay Island, by Sam Martin

On the barge to Macleay Island I read the Saturday sports supplement, not knowing that Adam Gilchrist’s memoir, True Colours, was sitting on the backseat.

You cannot get sea sick on the Bay Island car ferry. It is slow and steady, making steadfast progress from Redlands Bay, servicing the four islands which make up the Bay Island group. Macleay, Russell, Karra-Garra, Lamb. It sounds a lot like a 1980s Canterbury Bulldogs backline, but in real life is a little rougher. There’s a tradition of car burning on Macleay, while some liken the main street on Russell to that of an old Western, with locals drawing their curtains whenever a stranger crawls into town.

I found none of this, however. We arrived at the dock, drove off the ferry and made our way to the other end of the island. The main drag takes you right down the middle of the island, so much so that you can hardly see the water, and feel at times like you’re driving through some part of rural Queensland. It is a ten minute drive from one end to the other; the whole trip is framed by trees, beach houses which look onto the bitumen, and For Sale signs.

We reached the house at the northern end where we would stay for the weekend. It is just around the corner from Pat’s Park, which hosts a netted swimming area, and a jetty. The house itself is an old Queenslander, moved there from one of the old house farms up near Burpengary, back on the mainland. It was brought over in two pieces, on two barges, in the middle of the night. The house is a little dusty, as no one lives here during the week, and the verandah opens up at the back and overlooks mangroves, a tiny bay, a wooded point, and then all the way across the bay, back to Cleveland, Mt Cotton, and the mainland.

I set myself up on the back deck with Adam Gilchrist, rested my feet on the table. At one point during the day, morning turned into afternoon. At another, I ate. And then at one other stage, two lorikeets flew past on their way to a wattle tree. I stayed like this, looking back towards Brisbane, for the weekend.

The Brisbane elite: the author and Stuart Glover exchange passes

The author:
Sam Martin is a colleague of mine at QUT.

Great Lines: Jason Elliot

Afghanistan occupies a powerful, constant place in the imagination of English travel writers. Perhaps it was Robert Byron, in his highly influential The Road to Oxiana (1937), who established the country as a crucial reference point and testing ground for writers. Or maybe the literary interest came out of an earlier fixation, one borne out of the wars of the nineteenth century and reinforced during later conflicts.

A recent contribution is Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light (1999), from the introduction of which comes this sentence:

'It was the strangest thing, but as soon as we'd stepped out of the little plane onto Afghan soil, I felt as though some inner clock of mine, which had stopped since I had last been there, began to tick again: it was like going into a room which has stayed locked while the rest of the house has been lived in.' (p. 12)

Here are six reasons why I like it.

1. At 60 words the sentence is long. I find this ignoring of the shorter is better rule interesting. It makes Elliot's use of punctuation a central part of his style, and in this way connects his writing to earlier, often criticised traditions that value rhetorical flourish.
2. The punctuation creates a three-part sentence, an idea with three aspects, a house with three rooms.
3. Momentum is carried by the conversational tone of the first part, a tone that loosens the sentence structure and establishes a reason for the tighter, increasingly figurative tone of the second and third.
4. The similes are given purchase by the opening idea of physical arrival, and the expression and expansion of a link between the exterior and inner worlds of the writer. Physical arrival triggers an inner change.
5. I understand what Elliot means: he expresses an idea that I can relate to my own experience of returning to Iceland, my country of birth.
6. In its staggered movement from the outer to inner worlds, and in the sense of loss that it evokes, the sentence reminds me of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945), a personal favourite.

The book:

Elliot, Jason. An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan. Picador, 1999.