I have just reread Poul Anderson's
The Boat Of A Million Years, Chapter
I, and posted about it but not mentioned Stonehenge because we have covered this before. See
here. We hover on the brink of Chapter
II which is set in China. The Chinese New Year takes a long time to start. We had a concert in the Grand Theatre last Sunday and there will be street performances, including the dragon, today. This will always be associated in our minds with Poul Anderson because of his character,
Adzel.
There is no doubt about the setting of II, The Peaches of Forever, because, in its opening sentence, the Emperor sends an inspector from Ch'ang-an:
"To Yen Ting-kuo, subprefect of the Tumbling Brook district..." (p. 33)
- where it is early summer. Nowhere could be further removed from the northern climes where Pytheas and Hanno voyaged in Chapter I. Clearly from the start, Boat is a novel about mankind throughout the world and its history.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
About all I can think of here is something trivial, the word Anderson used, "district," is also often rendered into English as "county."
Ad astra! Sean
"Traditional administrative district" would be about as good... 8-). Bureaucracy in China is -ancient-.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that has been good and bad for China. Good, in that a strong civil service tradition has been a force for stability and good order; bad in that it could lead to ossified, purblind resistance to heeded change, or being the instruments of brutal tyrants, like the Maoists.
Ad astra! Sean
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