Showing posts with label "SOS". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "SOS". Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2016

China

Tomorrow, Lancaster will celebrate Chinese New Year, complete with street procession and dancing dragon. It is good to live in a multicultural society.

China is a big country that maybe does not get a lot of attention in Poul Anderson's works?

In "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the large quadrupedal alien, Adzel, performs the Chinese dragon in street parades while he is a student on Earth.

In The Broken Sword, the supernatural beings of different national traditions coexist and (I think that) Chinese beings are mentioned.

In Rogue Sword, Lucas has returned from Cathay.

China is more civilized than Europe here.

In The Boat Of A Million Years, one of the immortals is Chinese. See here. Thus, his introductory chapter is set in China.

In "SOS," Pitar Cheng leads a Great Asian space fleet.

Finally, not to ignore our ever-growing food thread, in exchange for his dragon performances, Adzel:

"...has an unlimited meal ticket at the Silver Dragon Chinese Food and Chop Suey Palace."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Technic Civilization Saga: The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 195.

What have I missed? (See comments.)