Dear Reader,

I feel grateful for my travel reading, for stories on politics, history and culture that help me seek truths in the spaces between texts and landscapes. And for all the fiction - family sagas, historical novels and murder mysteries that teach me even deeper truths about a country I visit.

This week I travel from Hong Kong to Mainland China with my husband to attend the Canton Fair. We board the China Ferry in Hong Kong, sailing up the South China Sea into the delta of the Pearl River and further upriver to Canton.

The skies are grey and it’s overcast. Two hundred years ago, on this very Pearl River, I picture British ships loaded with opium on their way to Canton (now Guangzhou). Soon after come the British warships from the South China Sea, fighting for their right to sell opium to the Chinese people. I read these waterway scenes from Amitav Ghosh’s fantastic historical novel River of Smoke set during this time :

“...the greatest of Canton’s suburbs is the river itself! There are more people living in the city floating bustees than in all of Calcutta... their boats are moored along the water’s edge, on either side, and they are so numerous you cannot see the water beneath.”

Today there are no bustee boats and no people. Instead, my very first view of Mainland China is barges full of containers and gigantic construction cranes that line both sides of the river and in the distance, factory chimneys and rows of skyscrapers.

I am reading The Water Kingdom by Philip Ball, an absorbing journey of geography, music, poetry and painting, all through the lens of China’s rivers. This connection between water and Chinese identity seems even more real as I sail into the country on this grey morning.

Guangzhou feels........

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