The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

by Simon Winchester

Overview

A stunning tour of China, its people, and its history. Chosen as one of the best travel books of 1996 by the New York Times Book Review.

Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, the Yangtze River, the symbolic heart of China pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Connecting China's heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. To travel those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China, and Simon Winchester takes us along with him as he encounters the essence of China--its history and politics, its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and its people in remote and almost inaccessible places.

The River at the Center of the World is travel writing at its best: lively, informative, and thoroughly enchanting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312423377
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/01/2004
Edition description:	Second Edition, Revised
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	318,196
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Simon Winchester is the author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa, among many other titles. He lives in Massachusetts, New York City, and the Western Isles of Scotland.

Hometown:

New York; Massachusetts; Scotland

Date of Birth:

September 28, 1944

Place of Birth:

London, England

Education:

M.A., St. Catherine¿s College, Oxford, 1966

Website:

http://www.simonwinchester.com

Table of Contents

	In Gratitude	ix
	Author's Note	xv
	Prelude	1
1	The Plan	7
2	The Mouth, Open Wide	33
3	The City Without a Past	60
4	The First Reach	89
5	City of Victims	113
6	Rising Waters	141
7	Crushed, Torn and Curled	160
8	Swimming	186
9	A New Great Wall	212
10	The Shipmaster's Guide	253
11	The Foothills	270
12	The Garden Country of Joseph Rock	291
13	The River Wild	331
14	Harder Than the Road to Heaven	356
15	Headwaters	387
	Afterword: The Yangtze	395
	Suggestions for Further Reading	399
	Index	405

Editorial Reviews

Winchester is a storyteller...romantic enough to make us yearn to be there with him.” —The Washington Post

“Winchester is an exceptionally engaging guide...at home everywhere, ready for anything, full of gusto, and seemingly omnivorous curiosity.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Another home run.” —Los Angeles Times

“At one time or another, many of us, I suspect, have wanted to be Simon Winchester, to lead a life that was equal parts Jan Morris and James Bond.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Winchester is an exquisite writer and a deft anecdoteur.” —Christopher Buckley

From the Publisher

"The delicious strangeness of China," as Winchester puts it, is as much the subject of this absorbing account of a personal journey as is the Yangtze River, the third-longest in the world and the entry to China's heartlands. Along its banks, some of the most important events in the country's history have played out, and the river occupies a singular place in the national psyche. In 1994, Winchester followed its course from the East China Sea to Tibet by boat, car, train, plane, bus and foot; but this is more than an ordinary account of a traveler's pilgrimage, although it is a must for any visitor to China. Wryly humorous, gently skeptical, immensely knowledgeable as he wends his way along the 3900 miles of the great river, Winchester provides an irresistible feast of detail about the character of the river itself, the landscape, the cities, villages and people along its banks. Most notably there is Shanghai, once "the most sinful city in the world," now an economic powerhouse rivaling Hong Kong; Wuhan, where the 1910 revolution began that brought Dr. Sun Yat Sen to power and where Mao Ze Dong, at 70, chose to make his famous swim; the Three Gorges, where a great, controversial dam to rival Aswan is being built; and Chongquin, once Chiang Kai-shek's smoggy and furnace-hot capital. Finally, Winchester made his way to the great river's source 15,000 feet high in the mountains of Tibet. A journalist who has written extensively about Asia (Pacific Rising; The Sun Never Sets) and spent nine years in Hong Kong making frequent visits inland, Winchester is comfortable with the country's long, complex history and politics, and he writes about them with an easy grace that defies the usual picture of China as an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A geographer by training, Winchester, the Asia-Pacific editor of Cond Nast Traveler magazine, decided that traveling from the end of the 3,965-mile Yangtze River toward the source would allow him to journey deep into the heart of China. The trip also takes him back in time as he moves from ultramodern coastal cities like Shanghai to the still underdeveloped interior. Along the way, he and a valued Chinese companion-guide, Lily, travel through polluted urban industrial cities, flat plains, and some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the world. Winchester includes lucid discussions of topics related to geographic areas of the river: a fascinating account of tea in Lushan, once a tea-growing center, and an excellent chapter on the controversial decision, universally condemned by environmentalists, to dam the river and flood, among other things, the scenic Three Gorges. His work is a vivid account of the Yangzte as it will cease to be when the dam is completed. An interesting, informative, well-written account; highly recommended for public and academic libraries.Caroline A. Mitchell, Washington, D.C.

Library Journal