User talk:Sideming
6/29/2007
Hi again, Si de ming. No, I didn't think we were getting into a wrangle about bai and bhel-.
Your knowledge of China and Chinese casts all sorts of interesting lights on this book. Pynchon doesn't explicitly take the action there, but the whole Silk Road storyline is anchored there. And I notice he's rather careful not to blend Chinese and Japanese (and Uyghur and Turkmen) people, too. Even those who regard Tibet as totally autonomous of China at the time of the action have to see Shambhala in China's, um, do I want to say shadow? No, not shadow but maybe penumbra is OK.
What I've learned from the wiki has sent me off to read a number of other books. Do you know if there is a useful history of central and eastern Asia I could take in? (I think the last I read on the topic was one of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels, highly respectable historical fiction but not history per se.)
Thanks for the fine entries.
