January 2011
14 posts
The Urumqi outdoor gear shops used to be interesting little places, cluttered with a weird assortment of innovations and dodgy knock-offs. That seems to have changed over the last couple of years. They’ve become a depressingly homogenous bunch, with little except an array of expensive imported ‘name’ brands; MSR stoves, Gerber knives and hardware, US brand boots and cagoules....
There’s a certain school of thought displayed by the western media pundits who infest China, usually the ones who opine from the eastern seaboard on business matters. China’s rise is inevitable, they say, due to its efficiency and organisation. In any event, they continue, it’s far more open and ‘free’ than we in the west think it is. These commentators, who...
It seems I might be able to send posts to the blog via email and, while experience suggests I won’t be able to edit them from here, I will at least be able to see how they turned out using a proxy website. I’m currently negotiating the frustrating minefield that is ‘foreigner’s registration’ with the local cops, on which more later. …
Poles apart
When it comes to trekking poles, I’m broadly in agreement with Grant Hutchison (an oldie but a goldie). The sight of someone wearing a little daypack tip-tapping their way along an innocuous track with two poles always has me scratching my head in a bemused fashion. However, I’ve come to appreciate the use of one pole, set up long like a staff, when negotiating rough ground, deep snow...
The Lotus Eater
A few months back, a friend gave me a copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Lotus Eater’ to read. In the time since it’s really worked its way under my skin. Coupled with the knee problems I experienced during the autumn, it made me reappraise what I’m doing.
Time to retrain and rejoin, as Dr Song would put it, ‘the world of men’. I need a base to research this...
