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Reading in Shanghai
A few weeks (July 13th) back I read at the 14th International Conference on the Short Story, held this year in Shanghai's East China Normal University, alongside the wonderful New Zealand writer, Frankie McMillan, and China's Asia Booker Prize winner, Su Tong. Because my most recent collection, The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, will be published in Chinese next year, I chose to read the book's title story rather than going with something new.
The real joy of the conference was in renewing some old friendships and forging new ones, but it was over all too quickly. And with the whole immense country beckoning, my travelling companion and I set out on the road. China is an astonishing and, at times, overwhelming experience, such an assault on the senses.
On buses and trains we went a little way west first, to the strange and fascinating water-town of Wuzhen, then all the way north, first to Beijing and then up into Inner Mongolia, delighting in getting to see such a foreign country up close and immersing ourselves, even if just in small ways, in such an immensely different culture. We had burnt days and days of thunderous rain, mosquitoes made a banquet of us, and I ate things that wouldn't get next, nigh or near a plate in Ireland (and at times paid the inevitable price...), in back alleys where we could almost hear the serenade of rats. We also came to understand, if we hadn't already, that people might wear different faces but our hearts all keep to the same hopeful beat.
I am already plotting my next visit...
The real joy of the conference was in renewing some old friendships and forging new ones, but it was over all too quickly. And with the whole immense country beckoning, my travelling companion and I set out on the road. China is an astonishing and, at times, overwhelming experience, such an assault on the senses.
On buses and trains we went a little way west first, to the strange and fascinating water-town of Wuzhen, then all the way north, first to Beijing and then up into Inner Mongolia, delighting in getting to see such a foreign country up close and immersing ourselves, even if just in small ways, in such an immensely different culture. We had burnt days and days of thunderous rain, mosquitoes made a banquet of us, and I ate things that wouldn't get next, nigh or near a plate in Ireland (and at times paid the inevitable price...), in back alleys where we could almost hear the serenade of rats. We also came to understand, if we hadn't already, that people might wear different faces but our hearts all keep to the same hopeful beat.
I am already plotting my next visit...
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