Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A man who goes to extraordinary lengths to tour China
Behind The Wall
What you need to know before your trail
Having learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on a 10,000 mile journey from Beijing to the borders of Burma. He travelled through the wind-swept wastes of the Gobi desert and finished at the far end of the Great Wall.
What Thubron reveals is an astonishing diversity, a land whose still unmeasured resources strain to meet an awesome demand, and an ancient people still reeling from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.
Travel Guide
Thubron’s trail of the capital:
Bejing
Something impersonal and unfinished pervaded the whole metropolis of Bejing
Tiananmen Square
The alleys flood into Tiananmen Square as streams vanish into the sea No urban space I had ever seen struck me with the same sense of aridity.
Forbidden City
To the north, rose the Giant gate from which Mao Zedong, on October 1 1949, proclaimed the birth of a new nation. Entrance way to the secret precincts of the Forbidden city, this was the gate from which the emperor’s edicts used to be lowered to the outer world in the beak of a gilded phoenix and obeying it, the yellow tiled roofs of that timeless sanctity still shone and multiplied among their trees.
The Fragrant Hills
He ventures up here on a cable car lift and sees the happiness birds
Wangfujing Street
The street with the curious name which means well of the Princes Residence – this was once the artery of palaces but is now a motley collection of brick and concrete – the shopping centre of Bejing
Wait until he ventures out in to the rest of the country……
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Behind The Wall
Destination: China Author/Guide: Colin Thubron Departure Time: 1980s
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