Travels with Beth, Alli, and Supriya

Under the Surface

By Beth Green

Sliding under the water on a scuba dive is like a vacation within a vacation for me. The rumble of boats’ engines and the slapping of waves against hulls is replaced by the calming, even sound of your own breath. There’s no space for worrying about the land-bound when you’re on a dive. Will your flight leave on time? Did you apply enough sunscreen? Where did you put your credit card after the bar last night? The surface world is only a few yards above your head--but its mundane problems can wait until the end of the dive. The world narrows, focuses, until the only thing of import is what’s in front of your mask. Here, a colony of brightly colored fish circle the crevices of their anemone home, suspicious of the curious scuba diver, who hovers, amazed by the play of sunlight on the surrounding bright green sea grass.

Photo taken by Beth Green at Balicasag Island, Bohol, Philippines. Contact Beth on Twitter @bethverde or via her website bethgreenwrites.com.

Life’s Journeys

By Alli Sinclair

My journey with Novel Adventurers is not unlike the other journeys I’ve taken in life. I did lots of research, set out with a rough plan, and allowed myself to go with the flow and, most importantly, meet and learn from others along the way.

My writing, too, has travelled a few interesting roads since starting this blog. I’ve now signed with a wonderful literary agent and I’m working on a New Adult romantic adventure and an adult series that weaves present-day stories with historical. Luna Tango is my first book in this series and hopefully it won’t be too long before you see it on the shelves! You can find me here: https://www.facebook.com/AlliSinclairAuthor
with the latest updates of the wonderful journey called life!

Thank you all for joining me on my travels, and I look forward to hearing about yours!

The Big Picture

By Supriya Savkoor

Over the past three years of blogging at Novel Adventurers, I’ve had the thrill of circling the world many times over, experiencing vicarious adventures through our fascinating co-bloggers and guest contributors as well as sifting through my own travel memories.

We have covered much ground in this space. Hands down, my favorite topic has been all the overlap in cultures and customs. In particular, I’ve had the opportunity here to follow the many diverse paths that East Indian culture has traveled over the millennia. Through this lens, global communities that I previously knew little about—Cambodia, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Iran, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, and Ethiopia, to name just a few—now feel as familiar to me as India itself and taught me how small our world really is.

Case in point: the woman featured prominently in the photo collage at left is Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the first elected female prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. She is the seventh prime minister of this tiny Caribbean country, and the second, after Basdeo Panday, of ethnic Indian descent. In 1889, her great grandfather left India and became a girmitiya, a term that describes the many Indian slaves taken to former British colonies and eventually settling there after gaining their freedom. Persad-Bissessar  took her oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts, although she says, “I have no specific church as such. I am of both the Hindu and Baptist faiths.”

 
Stories such as these, however far away in time or distance, are a part of my cultural heritage and travels. I hope they help inspire your own.

Science Fiction--Just in English?

When I saw the Star Trek movie reboot in 2009, I was one of the first people in the world to be able to see it in the theater.  I was living in China, and, excited to be able to get to a premiere of a film before my friends commented on it on Facebook, I decided to go to a midnight showing at the cinema in our small town. 

In the early 2000s, I’d been a reporter covering the midnight showings of the new Star Wars movies in the US, and I had great memories of people dressing up in costumes, getting their lightsabers confiscated by ushers, and making the movie an event rather than just another film to see. 

The cast of Star Trek.

However, I had a feeling that Star Trek wouldn’t have the same cult status in China. 

And I was right. 

We had booked our tickets in advance--but there was no need. Dan and I were two of only a handful of people in the large theater. At first we guessed that this was because it was a premiere, and premieres in China are often shown in English, with Chinese subtitles. But no, as it turned out, we’d be watching the film in Mandarin. Good practice for our language skills, but not much for helping us grasp the nuances of character and plot. 

Since then, I’ve been wondering how different cultures view science fiction. I know there are Chinese authors of science fiction, though I have never found a translated book I could read in English. And I have heard that Avatar is one of the top-selling movies in China of all time, right after Titanic, which was the first Hollywood blockbuster to be released in the Middle Kingdom. But, the percentage of science-fiction films coming from China seems to be much below the percentage of science fiction being produced in English language film studios. 

Much of Looper takes place in China.

It could be because science fiction is ill-regarded in China. In 2011, it was announced that Chinese censors were going to ban movies featuring time travel. This may be why, some industry insiders suggest, the films Looper and Iron Man had such large chunks of plot set in China. This inclusion perhaps greased the wheels and made censors more friendly to the idea of letting the movies release to their huge population of cinema-goers. 

What are your experiences with science fiction in other cultures? I’d love to hear about some books or movies you’ve enjoyed. Leave a comment below, or Tweet me @bethverde. 

A Taste of Traditional Chinese Medicine

A TCM pharmacy.
Photo by Sam Steiner.

By Beth Green

Many times when you visit the doctor or pharmacy in China, you’re given a choice: traditional treatments made from herbs and mysterious ingredients, or Western-patented pharmaceuticals.

The first city I lived in in China, in Southern China, had a specific hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine (often just called TCM). At the bus stop outside it, passengers boarded wearing white bandages stained with brown poultices. Pharmacies usually featured both the comforting little rectangular boxes of pills that spelled out the ingredients in both Chinese and English and large dispensaries full of odd natural items that often looked like hedge-clippings or leftovers from a taxidermist’s shop. The air near the hospital and in the pharmacies had a distinctive smell—bitter and earthy.

I was always curious about experiencing TCM, but luckily I didn’t really need a doctor’s opinion in China until the second year I lived there. We’d just moved to a rural city in Southwestern China, with different weather and different food. My skin was not reacting well to the changes—and, distressingly, I’d picked up impetigo from some of the children I was teaching. After an Internet self-diagnosis of skin cancer (my self-diagnoses always include the worst possible interpretation of symptoms), I asked a co-worker to take me to the hospital across the road and see what a real doctor said.

At this hospital, and others I’ve been to since, when you come in to register you pick whether you want to see a nurse for a few yuan, a nurse with more experience for one yuan more, or a specialist doctor for a whopping seven yuan (about a dollar at that time). Not one to skimp, I chose to visit the specialist dermatologist.

The dermatologist had no waiting room; all of her patients grouped together in her small office on stools and listened avidly to her diagnosis and recommendation for the other patients while waiting for their names to be called.

When it was my turn ( I was extremely conscious of the ten pairs of ears and eyes in the room) the doctor didn’t ask me any questions other than if my skin itched. I had my co-worker explain my difficulties but she simply nodded, had me stick out my tongue, and made a note.

“Will you take TCM?” she asked me in Chinese.

“It’s not cancer?” I replied.

She laughed, and so did the other patients behind me.

A TCM store in Hong Kong.
Photo by Brian Jeffery Beggerly.

Relieved of that, at least, I said, “sure, why not?” and so began a six-week course of TCM. The doctor explained that I would see results less quickly than I would if we used Western medicine, but that hopefully I’d experience better skin and more energy after using the TCM.

The treatment was in part restrictive: I had to limit my intake of spicy and oily food, milk products, sugar, and caffeine. I had to eat more green vegetables. So far so good.

It included a topical treatment, which involved combining a paste with the clear contents of a glass vial, stirring it, and then applying it daily to affected areas with a delicate wooden stick. The glass vial was the most frustrating, because it didn’t have a lid: you had to break the tiny top off of it without shattering the rest of the vial and dropping glass shards in the paste; without dropping it on the floor, smashing it and getting glass splinters all over the bathroom; without cracking it and cutting your fingers. It took a few times—and return visits to ask for more medicine—to get this right.

I was also told to up my vitamin intake, which I could thankfully do with nice, comforting, Western-looking tablets.

And I had to drink four servings of a special brewed medicine every day.

The prescription for all this medicine was several pages long, because the doctor listed twenty-some ingredients.

I knew that the prescription was lengthy, but I didn’t realize what exactly was in store for me until my co-worker and I went to the pharmacy counter to pick up the medicines: three plastic shopping bags full of powders, leaves, and twigs.

“Um, what do I do with this?” I asked my friend.

“You cook it,” she said.

Um, yeah.

Medicines before they are cooked.
Photo by Bernhard Scheid.

Luckily, the town had one pharmacy that catered to people who were as incompetent as me in the medicine-preparation department and with a little negotiating, the proprietors agreed to cook up and bag my medicine, even though I hadn’t purchased the initial ingredients from them. It took them a day to prepare, but soon I had about four gallons of a root beer colored drink, hermetically sealed in several dozen small plastic baggies.

I was told to keep this refrigerated and drink it hot every day under certain conditions that I forget now. To warm it up, it worked best if I put a baggie in a bath of hot water for a few minutes, then snipped a corner off the plastic and slurped it out in one foul-tasting go.

Or, sometimes I put it in a coffee cup and pretended I was drinking really bad filtered coffee.

It was a fussy, bewildering way to find a cure, but the impetigo cleared right up, and soon my skin was behaving itself too. I went back to the doctor several more times, for more medicine, until finally she gave me the all-clear.

I have always wondered what was in the medicine she prescribed, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy it worked.

What experiences have you had at foreign hospitals?

Silk Road Ruminations

By Beth Green

While the sun made its way down behind the far hills, I crouched by a rock wall in a long-destroyed temple in the middle of the JiaoheRuins and imagined.

What had happened in this place?

I examined the crumbling wall. Were these striations and grooves in the rock from the wind alone? Could an army have destroyed this, or was the destroyer the oldest kind of enemy--time?

Half-left houses, their dark doors and windows eyes in melting giants' faces, leer at us but the city doesn't seem sad. It's a playground, a carnival of history. Here, Silk Road caravans rested on their way east or west. A dozen empires ruled and fell. Religions waxed and waned. How many people lived here, died here, sat just here and had the same thoughts that I did?

A map and historical description near the park's gate describe Jiaohe's high-sided rocky island as 'a willow leaf' pointing north. The residents, who were ousted by the Mongols in the 13th century, lived far above the flowing waters, protected by high cliffs on both sides of the river. The main gates led visitors up through the residential districts to the government buildings and then out to the temple district on the very tip of the willow leaf . The monasteries probably housed tens of thousands of Buddhist monks, centuries before Islam made its way along the Silk Road to XinJiang. Each morning they’d look out over the river that branched on either side of their city and catch sight of caravans of traders leaving the oasis for the Taklamakan Desert to the south.

A version of this post was first published as part of a travel blog about Beth's life in China.

To read more, follow this link to Travelpod.com. 

A Portable Exhibit: Review of Steve McCurry's "Portraits" for iPad

By Beth Green

The best art exhibition I’ve seen recently fits in my travel purse.

A photo collage tribute to McCurry's "Afghan Girl"
by Flickr user francisshanahan. 

While nothing will replace for me the experience of seeing art in the flesh—of examining a larger-than-life image in a quiet, contemplative atmosphere and the fun of puzzling out what the artist and the curator want me to “get”—I am blown away by the quality and enjoyment factor of the photographs exhibited in the “Portraits” app for iPad, a collection of images of faces and places by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.

If you don’t recognize his name—I didn’t—you’re sure to know at least one of his photos shown in this touch-screen gallery visit: “Afghan Girl,” the 1984 portrait of a green-eyed Pashtun refugee. It was on the front cover of National Geographic magazine in June, 1985, and is likely the magazine’s best recognized image. Many people liken the photo’s intensity to that of the “Mona Lisa.”

Swiping through the 100 images collected in the app, it’s clear that the intensity in “Afghan Girl” is one of McCurry’s signatures. Traveling the world for National Geographic—you can search the app for photos from different countries by tapping a map and browse receipts and scrapbook-worthy tidbits of his travels in another section—McCurry has captured the profundity of people’s life experiences again and again. Elderly believers in France hoping for a miracle cure in Lourdes. A little girl pounding grain in Niger.  An eleven-year-old bare-chested gold miner in the Philippines. In his frank images, the viewer can interpret the stories of whole lives.

In the integrated 23-minute video narrated by McCurry, he says that he chooses his subjects for the depth of expression on their faces. While he’s walking on the street and browsing crowds for potential people to approach with his request for a portrait, he looks for the “intrinsic story written on their face,” he tells us in the video. I was surprised that McCurry says most of his portraits are taken in just five minutes; since he tends to find people who are busy or on their way to another place, he doesn’t want to ask for too much of their time.

Some of the people featured are ones we know are busy: activist Aung San Suu Kyi, actor Robert De Niro, and author Paul Theroux. But most of the portraits are of humble, everyday people, featured in their workday clothes, going about their business. There’s the Tibetan woman by a fighter jet in Lhasa, 2000; an engineer with clasped hands in Kashmir; a woman selling paintings from her car in Italy; Dubliners waiting for a bus.

After I get past the intensity of the eyes in these pictures, the next element that draws me in is the sense of place from the photos; the feeling of anticipation, of guessing what scenes are beyond the borders of the portrait. The woman practicing her cello in the mirror in France—is she about to give a performance, in her red jacket? Does the boy at the door in Mauritania invite McCurry to go inside, or is he too shy? Why is the Burmese woman, with her neck elongated by rings, laughing?

It’s amazing that, in the short amount of time McCurry says he is able to capture these street-side images, he’s able to harness the light in such a way that each one looks like a studio portrait. In the app’s video, he cites Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio as his inspiration. What would these painters have done with a camera, I wonder? Probably something similar to what McCurry does.

The app is available on iTunes, and, at time of writing, is free to download. For non-iPad-toting readers, many of McCurry’s excellent travel photos can be seen on his blog and on his Facebook page.

History: Reread and Rewritten

By Beth Green

One of the biggest thrills for me when researching a place to visit—whether for tourism or for living abroad—is reading about its history. I have written here before about reading a book just because I like the setting. But I also seek out works of both fiction and nonfiction to flesh out my concept of what a place was like at particular moments in time.

Following is a short list of a few historical books about China I often recommend to friends and other travelers.

* Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang, is one of those sweeping, epic tales that makes you want to flip right back to the start after finishing the last page. Part memoir, part novelized biography of the author’s mother and grandmother, Wild Swans tells the story of a family as well as a nation. From her grandmother’s bound feet to her mother’s work with the Communist Party, and finally to Chang’s emigration, Wild Swans illustrates the great changes China has undergone better than any other book I’ve read on the subject. At the time I read it, the book was banned in China. I got it from an expat friend, who got it from a friend, who brought it in from Hong Kong. And yes, I passed it on.

*Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng’En. Often called just Monkey when in translation in the West, this is one of the four great classical novels of China. It describes the pilgrimage of a monk from China to India, on a quest to bring Buddhist scrolls back to his homeland. There is evidence the monk, Xuan Zang, was a real historical figure, but I’m guessing that the tale’s other characters are not: Sun Wu Kong, a monkey king; Zhu Bai Jie, an awakened pig; and Sha Wu Jing, an immortal general fallen from service in the heavenly court. If you travel in Xi’an or the western parts of China you’ll often find references to this party’s legendary journey.

*River Town and Oracle Bones, by Peter Hessler.  These two books about journalist Hessler’s experiences, travels, and friendships in China since the 1990s are titles I often recommend to people who ask me for something to read about China’s contemporary history. (I mentioned River Town in my post about the Yangtze River, here.) Hessler moved to a small town in Sichuan province in the 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer. His books reflect the amazing cultural and social changes that have taken place since that time, and also the changes in his own perceptions of China. He’s got a third book now, Country Driving, which I keep meaning to read.

*1491: The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies. Probably known to my friends and family as the book I love to hate, I often recommend people read this book even though I doubt it’s historically accurate. (I’m not the only one. There was considerable controversy about this book’s claims.) Basically, the author asserts that China discovered the Americas and Antarctica before Columbus. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility, but then Menzies goes on to say that the Chinese influence from landings and shipwrecks on their voyages forms the basis for much of indigenous tradition in the Americas.

That’s where I get skeptical. However, what is fascinating to me about this book is the reception it got within China—my students loved it. The government loved it. It was featured on the news. It was widely available for sale (unlike Wild Swans, as I mentioned above, which features actual history.) So I recommend this book, because it has resonated with a huge population—it shows what they would like their history to reveal. Menzies followed up this book with two books I’ve yet to read:  1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance and The Lost Empire of Atlantis.

Do you have some favorite titles about the history of a place? Add them in the comments!