Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China
    Unavailable
    South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China
    Unavailable
    South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China
    Ebook333 pages6 hours

    South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China

    By Bill Porter

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “The perfect choice for anyone and everyone interested in all things Chinese.” —Library Journal
     
    South of the Clouds takes readers on a journey to southwestern China, a province where as late as the 1990s the people still followed millennia-old ways of life. Originally conquered by the Mongols and eventually introduced to foreigners as a vibrant setting for trade, Yun-nan, “South of the Clouds,” became a critical crossroad connecting East and West.
     
    In 1992, Bill Porter left his home in Hong Kong to tour the small towns and major cities of Yun-nan, starting with a ten-hour boat ride up the West River and continuing by bus and bicycle, train and tractor, and often, on foot. He visits Bulang Mountain, where the local people have no written language of their own, so they send their children to live as monks in nearby temples to learn Tai script. In Dali, a small town turned urban center, he describes a massive museum built to show off the city’s new wealth, only to have half its halls left empty and unvisited. He attends weddings and celebrations, and endures rice wine hangovers.
     
    This is the story not only of one man’s journey, but of a spread of land with a thousand years of human history—“as satisfying as any trip by Paul Theroux” (Kirkus Reviews).
     
    Includes photographs
     
    “Porter uses his personal charm and fluency of the language to uncover hidden gems . . . His journal-like entries will spark curiosity about this varied region, filled with warm and very human inhabitants.” —Booklist
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 1, 2015
    ISBN9781619026667
    Unavailable
    South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China
    Author

    Bill Porter

    Bill Porter was born in Russellville, Alabama, and grew up 20 miles north, in Sheffield. He went to the University of the South, and while he did graduate eventually, it took a while because he liked to travel in the spring. He also spent some time in the Marines to avoid the draft, after which he got married and finished his last few credits at Columbia in New York. It was there in the summer of 1964 that he read Vermont was losing population, so he and his wife Ruth headed to the green mountain state and drove all over, delivering his resumé to newspapers. The Rutland Herald hired him at $50 a week as a beginning reporter, and three years later he was the assistant managing editor. In 1973 he moved to Barre as the managing editor of the Herald's sister paper, the Times-Argus, and in 1985 he went out on his own as a writer. He prepared the annual report for Green Mountain Power for twelve years and won a prize for every one. While he was freelancing he also built up his farm, learned to be a pretty good mechanic, wrote a novel, and started Bar Nothing Books with Ruth. Bill had Alzheimer's for five years before he died in 2022, but he never stopped working on the farm.

    Related to South of the Clouds

    Related ebooks

    Asia Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Life In The Fast Lane

      Jul 20, 2023

      Life In The Fast Lane
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Great Divide

      Oct 24, 2021

      The Amur River is the 10th longest river in the world. It rises in the mountains of Mongolia, near Genghis Khan’s birthplace, and flows into Siberia before meandering south-east towards the Pacific, forming the border between Russia and China, before

      4 min read

    • Article

      Famous Travellers

      Dec 2, 2021

      Wang Zhaojun is a popular legendary figure from the Han Dynasty who is regarded as one of the ‘Four Beauties’ of ancient China. In 33 BCE, Huhanye, the Khan of Mongolia’s Xiongnu tribe, approached Emperor Yuan to make peace. He wanted to cement their

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Legend of the Lost Pilot

      Aug 22, 2017

      XICHANG, China _ Almost everybody in Liangshan knows the story of the American slave. During World War II, it went, an American aviator crash-landed near a village. The villagers had never seen a plane before, and they'd never seen a foreigner. Some

      12 min read

    • Article

      Next Stop: who Knows?

      Mar 12, 2024

      Next Stop: who Knows?
      11 min read

    • Article

      Children Of The Tide

      Mar 18, 2021

      Children Of The Tide
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cruise Control

      Oct 16, 2018

      Cruise Control
      11 min read

    • Article

      A Desert Odyssey To The Pearl Of The Silk Road

      Jul 29, 2021

      Making my way slowly along the cliff face, I gazed at the ornate facades of each temple I passed on my way to the upper-tier caves. As I entered the first cave and stared up at the swirling feitian—the flying Apsaras of Buddhist art, I wondered how m

      2 min read

    • Article

      An Authentic Celebration

      Jul 6, 2023

      An Authentic Celebration
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mission Vietnam

      Nov 27, 2020

      When you look at a world map, Vietnam is an S-shaped land mass next to the South China Sea, bordered by China to the north and Cambodia and Laos to the west. We flew from Denpasar in Bali (see go! #172) to Ho Chi Minh City. The humidity smacked us in

      7 min read

    • Article

      New Horizons

      Oct 5, 2023

      Following in the footsteps of ancient Chinese navigator Zheng He, Chinese Nobel Literature Prize winner Mo Yan arrived in Kenya in late July. “When Zheng and his fleet landed in the area of Kenya some 600 years ago, he saw giraffes and mistook them f

      3 min read

    • Article

      TRAVELLING WITH Ben Quilty

      May 26, 2019

      TRAVELLING WITH Ben Quilty
      3 min read

    • Article

      Divine Threads

      Jun 17, 2019

      Divine Threads: The Visual and Material Culture of Cantonese Opera By April Liu in Collaboration with the Museum of Anthropology Richmond: Raincoast Books, 2019 ISBN: 978-1-77327-023-4 $60.00 Hardcover Opera is an art form that presents a multi-senso

      2 min read

    • Article

      Slavery And The Silk Road

      Dec 2, 2021

      Susan Whitfield is Professor in Silk Road Studies at the University of East Anglia and Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She is a former curator at the British Library and the author of several b

      4 min read

    • Article

      Reviving the Past

      Apr 13, 2023

      In Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient port to the south of the Oujiang River. After more than a year of archaeological excavation, a site consisting of wengchengs (enclosures for defense usually outside

      4 min read

    • Article

      Seeing China face-to-face

      Jul 1, 2020

      Seeing China face-to-face
      2 min read

    • Article

      Hard Times On The Black Dragon River

      Nov 25, 2021

      STRETCHING FOR AN ESTIMATED 2,826 miles from its Mongolian source to the Pacific Ocean on Russia’s east coast — acting as the border between Russia and China for more than 1,000 miles — the Amur River is believed to be the tenth longest on the planet

      4 min read

    • Article

      Along Rivers and Through Prairies

      Oct 1, 2023

      Before Dr. Robert Moore (RIGHT) became an educator at Washington University in St. Louis, he was a historian who worked for the National Park Service for 40 years. He enjoys doing historical research and using architectural drawing programs to create

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Grand Adventure

      Jan 21, 2021

      A Grand Adventure
      7 min read

    • Article

      China’s Greatest Explorer

      Jul 14, 2022

      China’s Greatest Explorer
      7 min read

    Reviews for South of the Clouds

    3/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words