Lop Nur Journals: Several thousand words worth of pictures

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Several thousand words worth of pictures

hi all. I've made it to Urumqi, after a couple of days of nonstop travel and bureacracy. No lifechanging experiences, so I'll just post some happy snaps for now. I've no huge agenda in Urumqi, so I think I will just spend a day or two adjusting to the accents, the temperature (7 degrees outside as I write, not what i'm used to), and to the idea i'm on holiday. in lieu of a soliloquy, some photos...

Waiting for the plane in Taipei:

From the back of a tram, Hong Kong:

1 Comments:

Long time no see. Put some more photos up when you get the chance. Lucky me, work is sending a few of us to Shanghai in January. How cold does it get? I guess I should pack some long sleeved things if I can find them as it is in the forties here at the moment. All of us are going to go (and by that I mean three people, Ryan, Clint and myself) Anything particularly recommended?
Newman

By Anonymous, at 9:31 am

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Maurilia

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits; admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At time even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

Italo Calvino

Lop Nur Journals

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Several thousand words worth of pictures

1 Comments:

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