Book Review by Tony Hodge
Harmony Express by Thomas Bird
The book being reviewed was penned by a local author and so should resonate with Wenvoe residents. Although he was born and raised in Penarth, his parents Bernice and Bob Bird moved to the village some years ago and when he returns from his base in east Asia, it is to Wenvoe that he comes. He writes for the South China Morning Post and the Taipei Times, and he has contributed to many travel books including the Rough Guides to the Philippines, Thailand and China.
That’s the introduction, here’s the review.
This is a wonderfully descriptive travel book that deals not only about the author’s travels in China by rail, but how he opens up the whole China experience about the people he travels with or encounters along the way and their beer, food, pop music, a bit of romance here and there – the whole package in fact. He compares and contrasts the ultra-modernity of the new mega-cities with the almost feudal existence in the rural areas. And when he gets to Tibet, well what a world he describes for us.
Soon after starting to read the book, and knowing next to nothing of this vast country, I decided that I needed a map to put the places mentioned into geographical context. After some research I lit upon the Periplus Travel Map of China (published in Singapore) which assisted me enormously.
And what journeys Bird takes us on as he traverses the rail network (and by bus where there is no railway). He treats us with his insights about the most overwhelming of the new megalopolises to the somewhat edge of existence habitations elsewhere. It matters not that some of these rail routes were initially constructed by the French in their Indo China Empire days or along the super highspeed maglev show stoppers at the cutting edge of modernity.
He presents a writing style that blends the narratives of genre defining travel writers – from Bill Bryson’s laugh out loud to the offerings of others: Bruce Chatwin (What Am I Doing Here) and Paul Theroux (The Great Railway Bazaar). It is to be noted that both of the latter wrote about the region as it existed some decades earlier, so another compare and contrast exercise naturally ensues. And if this book goes into a second edition, then I suggest that it includes a map of the salient cities and some photographs.
Tony Hodge