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Photos by Clio Williams

One of my pleasures in travelling, when I can do it, is to match my route with that of a historical character. When my boy, Alexander, was young, I took him on several journeys in pursuit of his famous namesake, the Great – travelling from Macedonia (Chap One: the Origins) through Western Turkey (Chap 2: Liberating the Hellenic States) and even on to Pakistan (Chap 34: The End of the Known World) where we trekked over the Hindu Raj and Pamirs. Our route on that trip also coincided with another historical path, that of the Victorian geographer, George Hayward, who was murdered by the villagers of Darkot in Chitral in 1870: we celebrated the 128th anniversary of his death by challenging the descendants of his assassins to a game of cricket – which they won by one run.

In more recent years I have made fewer historical match-making excursions , tending to spend my holidays in my house in Italy. So I was not expecting much when last autumn I went on a business trip to New Zealand.

The one chance to get away from the inside of government offices and meetings with companies was a weekend in the Malborough Sounds – that maze of creeks and islands at the northern tip of the South Island. Old friends – John and Avenal Mckinnon – had a holiday house on one of the islands. John and I shared a personal bond known only to those who have sat in a room together and recited the sound ‘Ma’ a hundred times in four separate tones – the first lesson of any student learning Chinese. It had been some years since he had been New Zealand’s Ambassador in Beijing and I was looking forward to catching up with him. I was also keen to see their son, Sasha, whom I had known all his life. I had attended his christening nearly 30 years before in St John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong and more recently his wedding to Rhiannon in the same place. Malborough Sounds itself had a lure for me: it had been to the Outward Bound School there that I had sent my own two children in their gap year before university.

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I was expecting a relaxing time reminiscing over a glass or two of fine New Zealand wine, and taking walks in a landscape of great natural beauty.

Well I got that, all right. Double Bay, where the McKinnons had their comfortable bungalow, was cut off from the rest of the world by the wide waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. It could only be reached by motorboat. Once there, we were alone among thick woods leading to high hills behind us and a rocky promontory between two stony beaches, inhabited only by tiny oystercatchers– and it was idyllic. The sunset over the sound, the shapes of far off islands fading into violet twilight, had a beauty that might even have cheered up Robinson Crusoe, though he, poor fellow, did not have the benefit of John’s cellar.

It was as we were sipping a glass of Oyster Bay before dinner that I congratulated John on having discovered such paradise in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s not the middle of nowhere,” he replied. “Believe it or not, this bay and the ridge above it was the setting for one of the most important geographical discoveries ever made – maybe the last important discovery in the mapping of the Earth.”

“You’ll have to explain that one,” I said.

And he did, with the aid of a huge volume of Captain Cook’s Journal of His First Voyage.

The key date was January 23rd 1770. Captain Cook had sailed his ship, the Endeavour, across the Pacific with the intention of mapping the Great Southern Continent, which, so the wisdom of the time had it, incorporated Australia and stretched eastwards – but crossing the great expanse of water on their way they saw no signs of a continent or ‘Mainland’ . Arriving at the North Island their first thought was that New Zealand was a missing part of the main, but when they sailed southwards they found themselves in the confusion of the Sounds. This intrigued them. The only other explorer who had been to New Zealand was the Dutchman Abel Tasman who had sailed along the west coast of both islands without confirming whether the land eastwards led to more sea or linked to the Southern Continent. He did not identify the passage between North and South Island as a strait, but marked it on his map as an inlet or bight. The possibility did occur to Cook, however, that this might be a through passage leading to the ‘Eastern Sea’ ie the Pacific, in which case New Zealand would not be part of any continent but an island far away from anywhere – and this would put in doubt the whole concept of a Southern Continent. On the 22nd January, Captain Cook, with two of his scientists, including the future President of the Royal Society, the botanist Joseph Banks, set off in small pinnace from their anchorage in Queen Charlotte Sound. The Captain’s journal and Banks’s diary tell the story:

Extract from Cook’s Journal (January 1770)

Captain James Cook

MONDAY 22nd. PM and in the night had Variable light airs and Calms, AM had a fresh breeze Southly and Clowdy weather. In the morning the people were set about the necessary business of the Ship and I set out in the Pinnace (accompanied by Mr Banks and Dr Solander) with a view to examining the head of the inlet, but after rowing between 4 and 5 Leagues up it and finding no probability of reaching or even seeing the end the wind being againest us and the day already half spent we landed at noon on the SE side in order to try to get upon one of the hills to View the Inlet from thence.

TUESDAY 23rd. PM Winds Southerly a fresh breeze. Agreeable to what is mentioned above I took one man with me and climed to the top of one of the hills but when I came there I was hindred from seeing up the inlet by higher hills which I could not come at for impenetrable woods, but I was abundantly recompenced for the trouble I had in assending the hill, for from it I saw what I took to be the Eastern Sea, the main land which lies on the SE side of this inlet appeared to me to be a narrow ridge of very high hills and to form a part of the SW side of the Strait. The land on the opposite side seem’d to trend away East as far as the Eye could see, to the SE appear’d as oppen sea and this I took to be the Eastern. I likewise saw some Islands lying on the East side of the Inlet which before I had taken to be part of the Main land. As soon as I had decended the hill and we had refreshed our selves we set out in order to return to the Ship and in our way pass’d through and examined the Harbours, Coves &ca that lay behind the Islands above mentioned. In this rout we met with an old Village in which were a good many houses but no body had lived in any of them lately, we likewise saw a nother that was inhabited, but the day being far spent so that we had not time to go to it but made the best [of] our way to the Ship which we reached between 8 and 9 oClock. In the night had much rain with Clowdy hazey weather which continued by intervils untill noon.

Extract from the Endeavour journal of Sir Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

1770 January 22.

Made an excursion today in the pinnace in order to see more of the Bay.
While Dr Solander and Myself were botanizing the captn went to the top of a hill and in about an hour returned in high spirits, having seen the Eastern sea and satisfied himself of the existence of a straight communicating with it, the Idea of which had Occurd to us all from Tasmans as well as our own observations.

“Well, that was very interesting,” I told John, “but how did it prove that there wasn’t a Southern Continent?”

“Well, it didn’t exactly, but what he saw proved that New Zealand was not part of it, and his later voyages confirmed that one didn’t exist. That was the last piece of the puzzle as far as the mapping of the world was concerned. It was that climb to the top of the hill that was the first evidence to Cook that perhaps the Continent was a flight of the imagination and the mapping of the world, bar a few odd archipelagos, was actually essentially complete.”

“And he climbed the hill from this bay?” I asked.

“That’s what Cook’s editor Beaglehole thought, though some opinion has it that they set off from Umuwheke Bay, which is just down the coast a little bit. Anyway, Cook’s Lookout, where he made his observations is directly above us and just to the left. You can climb there tomorrow morning– from here!” he finished triumphantly. “Oh, by the way, the discrepancy in dates between Cook’s entry and Banks’s entry may be because one of them did not take account of what we now call the date line as Banks’ 22nd must correspond to Cook’s 23rd.”

“Thank you, I’m glad we sorted that one out,” I said. “But Captain Cook and Joseph Banks spent a night on this beach? This place is important?”

“I take my stand that in world historical terms, Arapawa Island is immensely important,” said John, “and not just because two generations of Williamses have visited us here!”

At that point Avenal and Rhiannon called us to supper. Next morning, guided by Sasha and Rhiannon and their dog Daphne, I climbed the path to the Lookout, my heart bursting with pleasure and pride that I was walking in the footsteps of Captain Cook…

Unless he actually climbed up from Umuwheke!

Discovering New Zealand

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Last year, my son, having just enlisted in the Army Air Corps, spent an exciting few weeks on board HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s only aircraft carrier, during a combined military exercise off the coast of Scotland. It was to be the ship’s last voyage.

A week or so ago he sent me a poignant notice that had gone out to potential buyers of the Ark Royal, days before it was formally scrapped.

It saddened me. A ship has a soul and a dry dock is a cemetery.

I recalled how in 1976 I once rounded a cliff on the East coast of Taiwan not far from the port of Hualian. It was a bright sunny day and sky and ocean were an arching expanse of life-giving airy blue, and every shape on shore was etched with light and shadow.

There below us in a breaking yard was an ocean liner – dazzling, white, with fine lines, knife-like against the background of hills.

Only closer inspection showed that the great yellow funnel was hanging at a gruesome angle, and all the masts were gone.

With a shock I recognised her. She was SS Chitral. She had been the pride of P&O’s Far East passenger run. In 1962 I had celebrated my ninth birthday on her. My mother, brother and I had spent the whole summer travelling in her from Yokohama to Southampton. She took me to boarding school.

My mind was flooded with memories: islands at sunset in the South China Sea, the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong, Hindu temples in Singapore, the snake temple in Penang, a boy climbing a coconut tree in Colombo, the lights of Aden glinting in a velvet dusk, mysterious lines of camels plodding by the Suez Canal, turbanned Gully Gully men producing chicks from my ear in Port Said, a baboon looking solemnly at me from on top of a rock in Gibraltar.

It was a different age then. The buildings in Hong Kong were colonial and rather small, it was normal to take rickshaws, and all the Chinese ladies wore cheongsams. In Singapore the men wore white suits, or crisp shorts and long socks. The East was green, mysterious and deeply romantic, even for a boy of nine. It was full of colour and smells. Later I was to recognize something of Kipling’s era in those memories. I was experiencing the British Empire in its final fading – but at the time it did not seem like that. It was a journey through an illustrated school atlas, opening up a very diverse world, a bigger book of life.

And central to everything was the ship we were travelling on, the shuttle that carried us between all these different tapestries. For those five weeks it was our home. While my mother bathed blissfully unconscious of us on the sun deck, my six-year-old brother and I explored every deck, every galley; we tried every hatch, every ladder. Once my brother caused consternation by climbing one of the masts; he had to be rescued by a sailor.

I close my eyes now and I recall her. Her spotless wooden decks on which we played quoits, cricket and sack races, and where at the end of the voyage there was a fancy dress party; the swimming pool full of salt water; the tearooms facing the main deck where you had to walk softly because here were the grown ups – quiet, faded men in grey suits, waistcoats and white moustaches with ladies in flower dresses and hair styles that now you only ever see in Agatha Christie episodes on television. In my memory they were always taking tea and biscuits. (Oh, that rich, wonderful tea. Sweet and spicy. P&O tea. I’ve missed the taste ever since).

But the pride of her was in the bow, as she ploughed proudly and confidently through and over the grey and green hills of the waves. And the soul of her was in the stern, where I would stand for hours, tasting the salt on my lips, feeling the wind in my hair, watching the gulls blown above my head, while the flying fish and dolphins kept pace with us, skimming the foam of our wake.

It was liberty, a feeling that infinity was something you could touch – the first time I was ever really conscious of the potential that life had to offer – and it was all the generous gift of this marvelous, beautiful ship.

Under a huge, unimaginable sky that rolled on forever…

Fourteen years later, a young man feeling my way into adult life, I stood on a cliff, looking down at my once proud travelling companion, my ocean steed, broken and shamed in her death throes, and again experienced something new, and shocking: a sense of mortality.

The Jietai Temple, hidden in a valley of the Western Hills outside Beijing, was built 1,300 years ago during the Tang Dynasty. Its courtyards are full of ancient trees. One, the Sensitive Pine, is more than 500 years old and trembles all over if you touch a single one of its branches. The monastery is beautiful at any time of year, and there is nowhere more sacred anywhere in China. It is a place you can go if you are troubled, or to meditate, or for a picnic, or, on a day like today, to take your child to build a snowman.

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Travelling in a country the size and complexity of India is like stepping into high surfing rollers. One find oneself buffeted by all sorts of sensations and experiences, and one suspects that there are many things going on out there that are impacting on one’s life, without much idea of what they are.

This is particularly so in the time of change that is today’s world. Having lived through thirty years of China’s opening up and reform, somebody like me is in a position to gauge from memory of China’s economic transformation exactly at what stage India is now. One has read the GDP figures, only a notch of growth down below China’s, in the newspapers but once in India one can actually smell the growing prosperity. Just by looking around – at the infrastructure and building work on the outskirts of towns, at the sort of shopping malls sprouting in city suburbs, at the new brands of cars on the roads, as well as the IT savvy of everybody around – one can sense more or less exactly how far behind India is from China in economic terms. I would say nine years, ten years, maximum fifteen years, and India seems to be moving faster and catching up quicker. This is palpable change. And good to see.

What is not so good to see is the impact of events happening outside the country, which are also influencing people’s thoughts, and without their necessarily being aware of it, the course of their lives.

This is of course not unique to India. We live in a global world now. Proverbial butterfly wings are fluttering in overdrive affecting every corner of the planet. Looking in the papers this week at the pictures of violent riots in Cairo I recognized the streets where only nine months ago I wandered bearded and carefree, in a surge of confidence about the new novel I was researching. I did not know then what difficulties I would have selling it because of seismic changes in the publishing industry – nor that the Titian sunset I was watching from a dhow on the Nile was at least partly the result of an exploding volcano in Iceland. I naturally had no idea whatsoever what sort of political earthquake would occur in Egypt itself before a year went by, and nor did the people living there.

In India, the effect of those outside forces are palpable, for those whose job it is to handle foreign relations nightmarish. As my wife and I dazzled ourselves with palaces, moving from Jaipur to Delhi to Agra and back, apparently fancy free tourists, the ominous back story of India was never far behind, hitting us every time our taxis came up to a hotel and beretted, caped police opened bonnet and boot,  and every time we went into the lobby and were X-rayed and searched, and every time we heard the same conversation – in snatches of dialogues in Jaipur between Indian intellectuals to packed halls of the literary festival, in the ruminations of a retired Indian diplomat friend in the recesses of New Delhi’s Gymkhana Club, in the lecture topics pinned on the walls of the Indian International Club, in the editorials of every newspaper we read. It could be summed up by a single word: Pakistan!

The intensification of security into every aspect of life is a direct result of the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai the year before last, but it seemed to me that it is the deterioration within Pakistan itself, the creeping Islamic fundamentalism, the paralysis of Pakistan’s leaders to resist it, that is draining the Indian people of hope and fuelling a growing paranoia. The assassination of a liberal governor in the Punjab has scared everybody, especially because the Pakistan Government failed to condemn the crime, scared of religious backlash if they did. People are asking themselves: how, in this situation, can conflict be avoided? With nuclear weapons in each country’s arsenals how can a Mahabharata-like war of extermination be diverted? What new terrorism is being planned? And what alternative does India have except to resist? The burden was always the same. “If there is another incident,” (such seems to be the quaint Anglicised Indian word for catastrophe or atrocity) “then, dash it, we will have to bally respond, chin to chin and toe to toe, and no quarter.”
 

 
Our visit happened to coincide with India’s National Day.

Watching the parade on the television in our hotel room, there was something heroic about the columns of red coated lancers, yellow tunic-ed Camel Corps, fantastically whiskered, arm swinging Rajputs, frowning gold turbaned Sikhs and intense young men in leather caps on tanks – all individuals, roll-called like celebrity footballers at a match : Captain Rajsinder Singh of the 7th Tank Brigade, Sergeant Moti Rao of the 3rd Rocket Troop, Major Jamil Bahadur of the Mahratta Cavalry on his horse Ashoka. Names like these rolled off the announcer’s tongue, accompanied by stern close ups of knit brows and firm jaws. And, to me at least, it was all so wonderfully human. These flesh and blood Indian soldiers were worlds away from their robotic equivalents in Tiananmen Square. These were not superhuman emblems of State power. They were sweaty, straining individuals. In English terms: ordinary squaddies.

They marched down the Mall from the Vice Regal Palace to India Gate, chests heaving, eyes wet with emotion as they swung their right turn salutes to their President. Inevitably, with all those Nineteenth Century uniforms, a person of a historical bent like me was naturally thinking back to the Raj. I am sure I felt just as emotional as many Indians watching this. After all, the show in its outward form, was as English from the snapped salutes to the bark of officer on parade as my son, Alexander’s graduation ceremony from Sandhurst last year! Furthermore, when observing these warriors in their ranks, I was aware of a long unbroken tradition dating back to the sepoy army of John Company in the 1840s. And I have an even closer, personal link. During the Second World War, my father, who was a Gunner stationed in India and attached for a while to the Sikhs, would have seen, perhaps participated in, just such a ceremony.

Watching the passion and loyalty brimming in the features of each trooper passing in front of the President, my sense of identification deepened. I remembered that men of my father’s generation had marched off to war in a state of idealism. In that era of conflicting political ideology, British soldiers were Socialists to a man: my father would often tell me that when Mahatma Ghandi was being escorted to prison by the British Army, he and his fellow officers, stationed along the roadblocks, would stand at full attention as the car containing the Mahatma passed by, giving him the full , boot-crashing salute usually reserved for the Viceroy because they revered this enemy of theirs who preached and practiced peace. The army were not deflected from their duty, but in their hearts they supported Indian Nationalism, because they thought it was fair and good. These were the men who later voted out Churchill for a welfare state utopia in the khaki election of 1945.

Now my own son is in the British army. In one year or two years, when he’s completed his helicopter training, he will be following in his grandfather’s footsteps, probably to serve in the same Sub Continent if the present situation worsens and the Taleban have their way. And that fills me with pride, because he is my son – but it also makes me immeasurably sad. This is a new world. The 57 years of peace and security that I’ve taken for granted for most of my life now seems stretched and brittle, past its sell by date. Not that my generation deserves much sympathy: we baby-boomers probably had the easiest ride in the history of humanity – but it’s our children who will face whatever apocalypse comes.

This week Egypt is in the spotlight. A battle is going on which, whatever the outcome, will shape the Middle East for the rest of our lives, and even though it looks as if the reviled Mubarak will go, the outcome is still in the balance. Egypt is on the cusp of disaster and hope. It could go either way – for the country, for the Middle East Process, for the stability of the world.

The sentiments of the protestors in Tahir Square are deeply moving. It is the very ordinariness of what they want that strikes to the heartstrings – the simple desire for liberty that we have seen expressed many times in our lives – at Tiananmen, on the Berlin Wall, in the Ukraine, in the words of Mandela or Martin Luther King – but which, so many times, after the euphoria of revolution (call it whatever colour of the rainbow you like) never actually seems to become fully realized or is distorted or leads after a few years to a worse tyranny than the one it replaced. There is a potential here, if the working and middle classes of the Middle East really can unite across each country and kingdom the extent of the whole Region. They might be able to get rid of dictatorship, negate the influence of al Qaeda and solve the Palestinian-Israeli tensions… But cynical experience inclines one to pessimism.

I found little optimism in India about its future relations with its neighbours. Pakistan is a sore on the brain. It is highly suspicious of its fellow Asian giant louring over the Himalayas and sending probing ships from its naval base in Myanmar. Nevertheless, the extent of mistrust between China and India surprised me. I had hoped that the recent Wen Jiabao visit to New Delhi might have cleared the air for greater cooperation – but not according to any of the Indians I talked to, who seem to believe, to a man, that there was nothing behind the high sounding words. The mistrust lies too deep now. Here is the negative slant that the Times of India put on what was actually a very carefully balanced debate between Isabel Hilton and my wife, Hong Ying, on China at the Jaipur Literary Festival http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Superior-mindset-of-Chinese-is-worrisome/articleshow/7363547.cms and here is an article written by an Indian China expert Jayadeva Ranade  http://www.dnaindia.com/world/analysis_when-hu-played-sumo-with-obama_1501523, on what the Indians see as an unchanged situation after the summit in America. The prejudice and fear is restrained, but it is there. Similar suspicions seep out of China’s State controlled media, and this in turn conditions the thinking of both populations.

I can’t help but be sympathetic to the Indians. The atmosphere in Beijing, where we live, is very different today from what it was a few years ago – and it is not for the better. The strutting nationalist sentiment which has been growing since many Chinese were disappointed by the world’s response to their Olympics has now become more prevalent following the West’s disgrace during the Global Economic Crisis. For those foreigners doing business here, protectionism, corruption and the tighter demands for technology to be handed over can sometimes be uncomfortable, and I find even old friends within the Chinese Government are paying lip service to the new chauvinism, or at least not contesting the hotheads. The chip has become arrogance and it will be decades before the tensions of China’s sudden rise onto a world stage subside again

So I’m no more than SANGUINE about the prospects in 2011, but at least the spirituality and passion I found in India has restored my batteries and inclined me to at least have some hope – if not about the world situation which will blunder on as ever, but about a shared humanity, and a growing understanding that it is  the small things in life that we must value most.

In Beijing tonight the sky is clear but it is freezing cold.  Every few minutes the air is rocked by an explosion, as somebody or other lets off a cracker or a firework. It is like the sound of battle. The sky at midnight on Feb 2 (Chine new Year) was little different to the tracery of rockets and flares I watched from a similar balcony on June 4th 1989 – but today the explosions are not destructive. They are actually an expression of hope. Those responsible may be the nouveau riche of today squandering their money in cordite, but the tradition is old and respectable: the demons of the past are being driven away so we can look forwards to a better future. At least symbolically. But that is a start.

My best wishes to everybody for a happy Year of the Rabbit.

Late last month I attended the Jaipur Literary Festival, where my wife, Hong Ying, had been invited as a speaker.

It was my first time to visit India and, what a start! The ‘Pink City’, as Jaipur is distinguished among the Rajastan states, is a modern provincial capital of several million people, as chaotic and noisy as any other town in India – but its fairy tale centre is preserved intact, meriting the adjective ‘fabulous’ that is found in every guidebook. There are times when one looks up and the film set surroundings transport one back in time. We played truant from the literary proceedings whenever we could. We wandered the markets, luxuriated in the splendour and beauty of the palaces and fortresses, and climbed to the top of that most magnificent of Follies, the Hawa Mahal, the luxurious façade built by an indulgent rajah for his concubines so they could peer through the lattices at the goings on of the outside world without breaking Purdah. From its turrets, the city below, so well preserved, reminded me of towns in Italy where one needs only to step off the high street to become lost in mediaeval lanes. In old Jaipur the highways themselves are mediaeval lanes, elephants and camels mingling with the traffic and bazaars on either side.

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The sense of fantasy extended to the literary festival. Located in a palace it seemed organically to have grown into a mediaeval fair. It was a bustling, heaving mass of colour. Jugglers and musicians performed in one garden compound and elsewhere stalls sold everything from copper ornaments to saris. Entrance was free, so thousands milled from tent to tent, their numbers swelled by neat crocodiles of red uniformed Indian schoolchildren who had come en masse to hear the famous authors (I did like talking to them, so intelligent, so polite and well read – what a joy to find that children READ in India today, unlike in Britain and America!). They had come to hear luminaries from all over the world– two Nobel prize winners (J M Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk), Booker prize winner, Kirin Desai, and a host of other great names – Richard Ford, Martin Amis and Vickram Seth, while Hong Ying and Jung Chang were representing China. This was very much an international festival – but the atmosphere was overwhelmingly Indian. Local writers outnumbered foreign ones by more than three to one – and it was fascinating to wander from tent to tent overhearing snatches of Urdu poetry, arguments about obscure verses of the Ramayana, and debates about everything from Indian cooking to the ghastly situation in Pakistan.

Strange therefore that the Times of London decided to pick out an old racist cinder from the fire to make the extraordinary claim in its pages that the Festival, now in its sixth year, was an attempt by a literary ‘Raj’ led by organiser William Dalrymple to take control of Indian literature (Indian writers presumably doffing their turbans to nabobs like Martin Amis and Patrick French) – http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2882685.ece). Of course this ridiculous charge was easily and vociferously rebuffed, mainly by Indian writers sending articles in response (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2882850.ece) while apologetic British authors at the festival penned pieces, saying no, on the contrary, Indian English is now a self-standing language of its own, one that will dominate the 21st Century as English English did the 19th and American the 20th and so on (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article2886681.ece).

It was a storm in a teacup, but the controversy did not quite go away. More embarrassment was to come when in a panel discussion which he had rather cryptically titled ‘Out of English’ the great Turkish Nobel Prizewinner, Orhan Pamuk made the same claims all over again, criticizing the Western establishment of being patronizing to foreign authors (“When I write about love I am talking about something human and universal, but English publishers label it Turkish love. ”). His attack on cultural imperialism might have gone down better if he had not been so surly and overbearing to the lesser breed of non-Nobel-prize-winning writers on the panel (two Africans, two Indians and a Vietnamese). But the young novelist, Rana Dasgupta, who was chairing the session, stood up to him and told him he was living in a time warp. To complain of those sorts of racial attitudes might have been valid ten years ago but not today. Dasgupta, who is a management and marketing consultant turned author and essayist, a British Indian born in Canterbury, with a shower of prizes to match Pamuk’s, is very much a citizen of the 21st Century. It was interesting to see that he rather than the great man had the sympathy of the crowd.

Personally I was delighted to have it confirmed that Indian and other Third World writers have reached a stage of exuberant confidence in themselves and are moving away from historical resentments and chips to tackle the pressing problems of today. Steeped in the traditions of Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare that I am, I am thrilled that the English language, far from being a restriction on non native English speaking writers, has taken wings and has become a means to make literature truly global – and internationally relevant – for the first time.

We were privileged to experience the reality of this a little later, when the other Nobel Prize Winner, J M Coetzee, stood up to speak. The South African writer is now a white bearded but very limber old man, lean and wiry, tall and still, and almost monk-like in his self effacement.  He stood at the rostrum, refused to give any opinion about anything, and read us, in a precise, academic voice that neutralized his personality but gave space for every word to live, a story about a mother and son, a house full of cats and a Spanish exhibitionist. In so doing he demonstrated the magical truth that whenever a good story is being told it hypnotizes everybody who hears it. During the forty five minutes it took to read there was not a cough or a rustle from any of the 300 people crowded into the tent:. He did not give us any answers, nor much hope, the philosophical conversation between mother and son in the story led nowhere, the son left baffled by the uncomfortable complexities of living and his inability to understand a fellow human being, even his mother, but we in the audience were as humbled as we were inspired, because for that forty five minutes we were absorbed into a rich, deep and shared humanity.

I have never sat at anybody’s feet before, as I was literally doing in front of Mr Coetzee because all the chairs in the hall were filled, but they were certainly feet worth sitting under. It was a life affirming experience, and somehow very appropriate that it happened in India.

Sadly, there are still many countries left out of the magic circle, for the dubious disadvantage that they failed to be colonized and therefore are without recourse to an easily translatable European language, so in this sense Mr Pamuk is right, not regarding willingness or attitude of English publishers and readers but for the technical reason that translators are in short supply. A glaring example is China, whose literature at the moment appears to be represented abroad by the few authors, mainly expat, who choose to write in English (such as Jung Chang, who was at the Festival; Ha Jin and Sun Shuyin). But, with a tiny amount of exceptions like Yan Gelin, these writers are hardly known in their homeland. Meanwhile only a fraction of Chinese writers who write for their own people in Chinese are known in the West. The lucky ones include Gao Xingjian, but he had to win a Nobel prize to get his heavy tome published abroad, and a few others, eg Hong Ying, Su Tong, Yu Hua, Ma Jian, Yan Gelin and Mo Yan – but there are many more out there whose reputations are enormous in China but who have never been translated. Not for lack of will but because of the lack of good translators. In America about eight Chinese novels are translated each year – many by academic houses – while translated novels from Japan, the size of a single Chinese province, exceed twenty.

Of course, there are some pools of chauvinism left behind by the receding tide. During Hong Ying’s presentation at the Festival she described how no publisher in Britain dared originally to print her “K: The Art of Love,” because how could a foreign author write with understanding about anything as sacredly English as the Bloomsbury Group? The success of the novel when it did eventually come out in English proved the how wrong they were. However, these issues are fading now. At events like Jaipur, hands are clasping in understanding across the Continents. The English language is the catalyst – but in itself it is not enough.

Beachhead advisor Adam Williams is the fourth generation of his family to be living and working in China. Get his take on the big economic and cultural shifts happening in China, and what New Zealand companies need to know to be successful in the market.

Watch the video below or click here to view on the NZTE website.

Wishing you
a very merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year

Adam Williams

On a temperate June evening three years ago, I was having dinner with my friends and guests, Stephen Bradley, then British Consul General in Hong Kong, and Count Florian Von Hirsch, a merchant banker from Bavaria and London. We had chosen the I Piceni Restaurant, in the hilltop village of Ortezzano, with its fine views of the snow-capped Sibillini Mountains, the dark blue line of the Adriatic and below us the long valley of Val D’Aso. Olive groves, orchards and vineyards were already fading into shadow as the twilight deepened. The night air was fragrant with flowers. We were tired and hungry after our afternoon’s tramp through the Le Marche countryside. As Stephen and I pored over the tantalising menus, Florian had taken on himself the more pressing business of choosing what wine we should consume.

“This one,” he said decisively, his finger pressing the page.

“La Regina del Bosco,” murmured the waiter approvingly. “A good choice. A very good choice,” he added.

“Sounds very regal, Florian,” said Stephen.

Florian shrugged. “It is probably just another Rosso Piceno.” That was the generic name for the local wine we had been drinking during the last few days. I had filled several flagons from a pump in one of the roadside cantinas near Offida. It was easy on the palette, but like the food in this part of Le Marche – the heavy polenta and lasagne, pecchorino cheese, pasta, lamb and fennel, spicy prosciutto and wild boar – there was a rustic solidity about it. Le Marche’s charm is its blend of poet’s landscape and peasant traditions. Many people come each year to find an escape in what the tourist brochures call “Italy’s best kept secret.” It’s a step back in time, but the mediaeval world one finds oneself in is that of the contadini or peasant… Food is by definition ‘slow.’ So is everything else. But over the last few days we had adjusted to this pace of life and were quite comfortable to be without any expectations.

We had just tucked into the spinach ravioli when the waiter came and poured the wine

“It’s not bad,” said Florian. There was a look of surprise on his face.

“It’s not bad at all,” echoed Stephen, frowning.

I held up the dark liquid in the bowl. It was so dense it was ink-like, with only a few flecks of ruby caught by the candlelight. I sniffed. Its bouquet was nothing out of the ordinary. Then I sipped and started at the sharp tannic sensation on the tongue, but almost immediately any hint of acidity was suffused in an explosive burst of forest flavours – cherries, berries, plums, and other mustier ones that I could not recognise. They seemed to grow in strength as the wine swirled round my cheeks, leaving a subtle afterglow of crushed scents, that lingered in the mouth long after one had swallowed.

“Not plonk,” said Florian.

“Certainly not,” I said. I filled my mouth again. I had never experienced such a sense of physical texture in a wine, as if it was not liquid but fine cloth or leather. I had a sudden vision of gleaming wooden cabinets and shining palace floors – all the while new tastes were emerging like proud courtiers or shy debutantes presenting themselves to a prince – or a queen.

“Regal is right,” Stephen murmured. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say this was a grand vin.”

Florian was waving at the waiter to bring the bottle. He laughed when he saw it. With his hand over the label, he smiled archly at each of us in turn. Then, taking his hand away, he said, “Then who do you think IS the grande dame, this queen of the wood?”

We leaned our heads into the candlelight to see better. On the white label above the legend was a picture of a tiny bird.

“It’s a kingfisher,” I said in astonishment.

Stephen had his glasses on. “No, look at the pointed bill and the wedge tail. Well. Well. I know what it is. It’s a bee catcher, a little bee catcher. La regina del bosco must be the colloquial Italian name for it. There’s modesty here as well as charm, and a most ironic sense of humour. You know, this is a grand wine, in every way.”

Florian slowly nodded. “I can think of several London clubs which would consider it an honour to have a wine like this on their table.”.

As the pasta came and then the lamb and the fish and finally one of I Piceni’s magnificent dolce, the little bee catcher accompanied us throughout. I can’t remember whether we ordered one more bottle or two – but Florian seemed quite sober as we drove on the empty, moonlit roads through the Val d’Aso and up another mountain to my home.

Later that summer, when there were different guests and I was looking for a special wine for my table, I remembered the Queen of the Wood and her magnificent mantle of taste, but I could not find it in any of the shops around us and all my enquiries about where it was made foundered. I persevered. It took a few weeks but eventually I found three bottles in a wine shop by the gate that leads out of the piazza in Amandola. And when we drank them I found the wine was as superb as I remembered.

A year passed. I was back in Le Marche again. I had still not lost my hope that one day I could find the cantina where this excellent wine was made. There were many quality wines in Le Marche – the Verdicchios, some of the wines of Conero, one or two of the more expensive Offidas – but none that had got under my palette like the little bee catcher. The long summer passed. It was on the last day of the holiday that I was talking to my neighbour, Emidio, Force’s expert on jazz and good food. As usual he was dressed in shorts and vest. His white straggly beard hung over his chest and his hair was drawn back in a pony tail. Dark shades covered his eyes but could not hide the humour of his expression. He was standing with his big dog on the broken masonry outside his house while I stood by my front door in the narrow alley below. Our conversation perambulated as usual over several subjects before settling on food and drink. I told him of this wonderful wine that had eluded me.

His look was deadpan. “La Regina del Bosco? From the Dezi winery?”

“Yes, I think that’s the name on the bottle. Don’t know where it is, though.”

“It’s over there,” he said. He was pointing towards a range of hills.

“Where?” I thought he was fooling me.

“There,” he said. “Servigliano.”

I was stunned. “That’s only five kilometres away,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You mean all this time… My God, can we go there?”

“Yes.” A wide grin was crossing his cheeks. He made an ironic bow.

“Now?”

“Your car or mine?”

In five minutes we were racing down the hill. The coastal plain unfolded. We crossed the Ponte Maglio, then up through fields of sunflowers to Santa Vittoria in Matenano, and down again through farmland towards the ancient walled city of Servigliano, above which, within spitting distance was my elusive winery, which now I realised I had driven past more times than I could remember without being even aware that it was there.

The stocky figure of Stefano Dezi stepped out of the family’s ivy covered house, the keys to the cantina in his hand. On the table before me stood four bottles – the great Regina del Bosco, made from the finest Montepulciano grapes in our own local soil; another grand wine, Solo, made from the gentler Sangiovese; a blend, Dezio, which sold at a cheaper price and which Stefano generously marketed as a vin ordinaire – like all his wines it was more than that, much more; and finally there was a white, Solagne, which afterwards I was to discover was as good a companion to seabass or any other fish as I had drunk anywhere. There were smaller, thinner bottles too, containing the Dezi olive oil, as grand a vintage in its way as the wines. Stefano was splashing some of the oil onto the dry bread that would accompany our tasting.

Deftly he opened the bottle of Regina and rinsed it round a tall glass before pouring. I looked up at the paintings on the walls, between them the framed plaques and citations, and all the prizes dating backing decades.

I realised that the man pouring for me had in 2008 been voted Italy’s Best Wine Maker of the Year, of course, for La Regina Del Bosco, my local wine.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

Dezi Winery

• Winner “Italian Wine Maker of the Year 2008″
• Dezio, Solo, La Solagne, Regina del Bosco
• Visit the Cantina for Tastings, Demi Johns, Half Cases.

History

The Dezi Winery was started in the 1950s by two brothers, Romulo and Remo Dezi in farmland that has been in their family since the 13th Century. The family motto has always been that wine is one of the greatest pleasures in life.

Today, the family continues to promote this philosophy, striving to produce quality grapes in the vineyard and ultimately, superb wines in the cantina.

In recent years, Remo’s son, Stefano Dezi, has gone to great lengths to convince his family that they needed to work harder in the vineyard, refurbish the cellars and purchase expensive French oak in order to put their winery on the map.

The Dezi winery now plays a distinct role in the panorama of quality winemaking from the Marche region. In 2008 Stefano Dezi won the industry’s most prestigious award and became Italian Wine Maker of the Year

Address

Behind walled town Servigliano up hill towards Curetta, Sant Vittoria.
14 Contrada de Fontemaggio

Tel/Fax: 0734 710090/ 348 4930312