Black Dragon River
A Journey Down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires
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Black Dragon River
Kup za 21,04 €
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Czyta:
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Steve West
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Autor:
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Dominic Ziegler
A remarkable journey down the Amur River, revealing the history and culture of a region that is once again becoming one of the world's most contested regions
Black Dragon River is a personal journey down one of Asia's great rivers. The world's ninth largest river, the Amur serves as a large part of the border between Russia and China. As a crossroads for the great empires of Asia, this area offers journalist Dominic Ziegler a lens with which to examine the societies at Europe's only borderland with East Asia. He follows a journey from the river's top to bottom and weaves the history, ecology, and peoples to show a region obsessed with the past - and to show how this region holds a key to the complex and critical relationship between Russia and China today.
The Amur crosses terrain legendarily difficult to cross. Near the river's source, Ziegler travels on horseback from the Mongolian steppe into the taiga, and later he is forced by the river's impassability to take the Trans-Siberian Railway through the 400-mile valley of water meadows inland. As he voyages deeper into the Amur wilderness, Ziegler also journeys into the history of the peoples and cultures the river's path has transformed.
The known history of the river begins with Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongolian empire a millennium ago, and the story of the region has been one of aggression and conquest ever since. The modern history of the river is the story of Russia's push across the Eurasian landmass to China. For China, the Amur is a symbol of national humiliation and Western imperial land seizure; to Russia it is a symbol of national regeneration, its New World dreams and Eastern prospects. The quest to take the Amur was to be Russia's route to greatness, replacing an oppressive European identity with a vibrant one that faced the Pacific.
©2015 Dominic Ziegler (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.Not only the history of this place is incredibly more rich than I imagined or knew of. It was fascinating to recount my grandfather’s vivid stories of more than 10 years slavework in Siberia against the historic panorama that Ziegler offers on top of his recent travels through these unforgiving lands.
What bothered me increasingly, was the biased undertone wherever he talks about anything Russian. Sometimes very subtle, more often than not blunt. Even talking about Russians who treated him kind and gave him everything they had out of hospitality, Ziegler seems to be having to admit it through his teeth, if not reporting about it distant with somewhat cool irony.
And he does seem to have his heart in his right place.
The metaphor about Putin visiting the new build highway to Wladivostok and stopping periodically along the way, comparing him with a dog, who stops to urinate to mark his territory, is really the lowest point of his loathing.
It makes this great book look unworthy of its grand scope so far. But maybe it makes sense. When two Russians tell him, that an Englishman is most welcome in these parts, compared to an American, If they only knew, that historically the British were and still are the greatest Russophobes, covered though. With an American instead, they could, given a chance, be true friends.
Well written and researched, unfortunately with a somewhat Russophobic andertone.
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