Happy New Year
Happy New Year to all my readers, friends & colleagues – I think 2010 is going to be a good year. If the Gods smile kindly on us it might be the year when the Poet & The Murderer finally becomes the movie that many people said it was destined to be. Lorrie Sheehie, the screenwriter, is ensconced in her house in Fulham as I speak, tweaking and cutting and editing the final rewrite. I am also hoping that the time & effort invested in making some of my long-form journalism available on Kindle & other digital platforms is going to pay off. It’s a fantastic thing for writers to be able to take back control of their words and directly sell them to readers, without the intervening agency of giant media corporations. 2010 will also hopefully see the rewrite of my book, The River of Desire, a journey through Patagonia, based on a journey I made for National Geographic Magazine some years ago. Finally, I hope that Luce Acres, a story based on my mother’s experiences during WW2, will get the necessary advance for me to give it my full attention. 2010 might also be the year I get married again …. more on that anon. But for now, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and that at least some of your own dreams will come true in the next twelve months.
Simon Worrall was born in Wellington, England and spent his childhood in Eritrea, Paris and Singapore. He has written for publications all over the world, including National Geographic, Smithsonian, London Times, The Guardian, Paris Review, GQ, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Conde Nast Traveler, Maxim, Playboy,Die Zeit and the New Statesman. He divides his time between Herefordshire and the East End of Long Island.
Good luck with those projects. I’ll look for The River of Desire.
Hi Ralph – Happy New Year to you ! I hope 2010 will be a good one for you. Where are you exactly ? I assume in China? Still married to Sue ? How’s your adorable boy ? Will reply at greater length to your previous comment when the hols are over. We are deep into english christmas/new year festivities right now. S
A quick reply to those questions. Siew, Thomas and I live in Vancouver where we’ve been since 1988. Thomas is 27 and doing well though currently neither employed nor in school. (Enjoying some time at home). Siew and I celebrate our 30th June 2010. I’m a Chinese instructor at a college in Vancouver and have been there (Douglas College) almost 22 years. (started the year we came back)–more later.
Happy New Year Xinnian kuaile!
Ralph
God, so sorry not to have got to this earlier, been busy with the pub. of my new feature, Cybergate, which I have been working on for a year: an important story, as you will see, that ended up in Maxim ( of all places). Great to hear your news. Will reply at greater length soon ! Best regards to Siew & Thomas ( how time flies, eh ?!). Love Vancouver. Have a close friend there, Michael Chechik, dir of Omni Films, who do a lot – nostly nature docs. – for Canadian TV. Zaijian! ( Have been in touch with Li Xia, btw – crazy and brilliant as ever, had to remove her from my Skype page as she kept calling & talking for hours) S
Simon
Good to hear that Li Xia is “still crazy after all these years”–she fought bravely against Wang and Song and company. I remember her asking us to help her get her revenge for how they treated her in that assembly.
We’ve been in China a bit more recently 2008 and 2009–during the summer 09 the three of us did parts of the south including Xiamen where we’d both taught 85-86 and then on to Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Guilin and finally Nanning. I know a writer in the last and I’m translating some of his short stories.
Of course, we all have mixed feelings about China. The material progress is good in a certain sense–it’s good to see that Chinese can now enjoy a decent level of material comforts–remember when we visited Qi who lived with his wife and child in a damp concrete box of a place in the basement of his school? I remember you remarking that in the West he would have (as a teacher) a nice little flat with the usual amenities. Of course this material progress has come at a price both to the environment and the culture. I don’t think I could live in China for very long stretches at a time. And it remains a totalitarian state, something the West conveniently ignores as it laps up the goods mfg there.
We’re happy in Vancouver–a nice city to come home to when we get away it which in the last ten years has been pretty frequent-though not on your scale. We’ve managed a number of trips to Europe and have a few favourite spots in Italy. Retirement is 2 years away if I go at 65 (63 in May) which should permit more trips to Europe.
When I get a chance, I’ll scan some of the pictures from the Dalian year and post them somewhere on the web–I have a me.com site (an Apple thing) which is one choice.
I’ll look for the Cybergate piece–I bought a number of your pieces for my Sony digital reader (yes–I am still fond of such things–perhaps more so) and will look for others. Good luck with your work.
Ralph
Ralph, thanks for the swift reply, I am psyched that you are one of my ebook customers, which one did you buy ? Any comments ? Would love it if you post reviews @ Kindle or Barnes & Noble, or wherever you got it. I am a huge fan of these things, though not so much as a reader ( I love books) but as a writer, the chance to sell long-form journalism like this, which is sitting around on my computer, doing nothing, is a fantastically empowering thing. I plan to have about 30 things up in the next months, all gleaned from stories I have done, people I have interviewed etc. It’s totally the future, I think – partic with Apple about to dive into the market with the Tablet/Slate ( my 90 yr old aunt lives next door to the parents of the British chap, Jon Ive, who designs all the cool gadgets for Apple, whom she refers to as ” Mister Ipod>”!) – particularly for my son’s generation. Having brought him up in the States, I always said his was the first genration since the invention of moveable type for whom the book was not the primary source of information or diversion, it had all moved to the screen & the computer. Just waiting for the first cyberDickens to serialise a best-selling book digitally.
There’s a lot to talk about re. China. I have the same very mixed feelings about the place and am constantly amazed at the naievty and greed of the West. I think that experience with Li Xia branded my soul, so to speak, as regards the true face of the place ( and I don’t think much has changed in terms of political freedom) and I think that we will one day pay a very heavy price for abandoning our own democratic standards to make money in China: the dragon we have been feeding will one day come back to bit us in the ass. Indeed, there was a very interesting piece in one of the Brit papers the other day about China emerging as the major new investor/development force in Africa & elsewhere, but don’t expect democracy: they will be exporting a very different idea of development built around authoritarian, centralised government & curtailment of individual liberties, which may well prove more attractive than the western model. I will send you the link if I find it again.
I vowed not to return after Tiananmin until this govt. was thrown into jail but I did got back two years ago to do a story for NG, maybe you saw it, on the Tang shipwreck ? I was also in Singapore & Indonesia, had a wonderful time and was impressed by the extraordinary growth in China but wary of being taken in by it, too. Was in Guangzhou and an interesting place called Quanzhou, which used to bea big port in ancient times and now makes most of the world’s underwear ! Sadly, the magazine butchered the piece but one day I will put the story I wanted to write up on Kindle. It came out in NG last year if you want to look it up.
Better get on – Cybergate ( my latest venture ) is starting to heat up. It’s a big story, with huge implications ( sometimes I think, for my safety!), so I hope it turns into something more than a brief blip on the radar.
All best to the family – and do come and see me in England when you are over, assuming I am not on Long Island. S
Simon,
China is in someways a naked version of the U.S. Like the latter it vacuums up the world’s resources to keep itself afloat. Unlike the U.S. it makes no pretense to being a democracy. They probably regard democracy as a sort of scam, something used to hoodwink the masses into thinking its running the show–which is not too far off.
Of course what we have as a democracy is preferable by far to their system. China frightens and worries me. It could easily evolve into another fascist state of the classical type sans the overt racism. As China expands (and the rest of the world (part. the U.S.) shrinks, it’s going to want to assert itself on the world stage in the same manner that the U.S. does. Some of their ideas about “a civilized society” are laudable but they are far from a model of such a society.
Worst though, is the possibility of a conflict between China and the U.S. since I don’t see the latter going down without a struggle.
The world gets messier and messier.
I’ve got the Hepburn and Updike interviews on my Sony and Poet in book form. (and will write some reviews.) I still love books (and have thousands of them) but ebooks are “nifty”. Stephen Fry has a similar weakness.
Have you read Junot Diaz’s “Oscar Wao”?–I’m a huge fan of that book. Always looking for converts.
I read the NG piece about Quanzhou and the Tang shipwreck and liked it. We were in Quanzhou this past summer.
Glad to see you’re doing well. You mention personal safety issues with regard to Cybergate. I wondered about that after Poet, that perhaps the Mormons had issued a “fatwa” against you. Churches of whatever stripe are the enemies of reason and hence of the future of mankind. Keep your head down!
Take care
Ralph