For more than a century and a half, Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels (a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world’s great civilizations). Written in the mid-18th century, Dream of the Red Chamber was the last of the four great novels of Chinese literature …

THINGS GET REARRANGED – The world changes subtly as it goes around. The morning coffee aroma feels like the glow from a honeycomb, while outside the window the olive grove still soaks in the twilight mist. Tiny footsteps follow faint sounds to distant places, but the fisherman has returned and is sitting in the courtyard, watching a bird foraging in …

Published in the 14th century, The Water Margin introduced the vernacular form and style which the others would adhere to. The novel is set in the Song dynasty and depicts a group of outlaws who eventually go on to serve the Emperor in battling foreign invaders. It was based on the real life story of the outlaw Song Jiang, who …

LETTER TO A FRIEND – Let me tell you about these sheep. In many ways they are like the ocean creatures you know so well: in the benevolence of the creator, they bear children, each has a face of a lad or an old man. These days they are on the hills, a tight flock, a warm flock, with a …

Leave me alone, novel of Chengdu (historically, Chengdu has been the center of China’s food culture, and is famous for its laid-back lifestyle), is an unflinching, darkly funny take on love and life in modern China. It’s the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, …

THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Wumeng likes to sing after a few drinks, and he always sings the same old song. I’ve heard it many times, but still can’t remember a word of it. Wumeng dreams of building his own empire, calling it The Great Yunnan Kingdom, but the soberer he gets, the more his empire looks like a castle …

For your clothing? Shanghai’s latitude relative to the equator is about the same as New Orleans and the climate is classified as humid subtropical. Shanghai is a huge city with several district articles containing sightseeing, restaurant, nightlife and accommodation listings. With a population of more than 23 million, is the largest and traditionally the most developed metropolis in Mainland China. …

When your geographical horizon extends – for business or pleasure – you have the wonderful opportunity to hear you inside, like the perfectly proportioned man (created by Leonardo da Vinci), correlating the symmetry of human anatomy to the symmetry of the universe. What you see, hear, eat and feel, it’s all inside the Vitruvian approach to life. String instruments from …

KOLOMAN SOKOL 1/3 – Koloman Sokolwas (largely considered one of the most prominent of Slovakia’s contemporary artists), he was born in a poor family, in Liptovsky Mikulas. Sokol’s father died when he was very young. He attended the private schools in Kosice and in Bratislava, as well as the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where a real breakthrough in …