Missionary memoirs

One of the books that I'm reading at the moment is Cyling Home From Siberia, Rob Lilwall's tale of his epic 30,000 mile cycle ride back to the UK via Siberia, Japan, Australia and Europe. There'll be more on the book in a future postingbut I was interested by some comments he makes about Christianity in China, while cycling down the eastern side of the country.

Prior to communism (1949), China was a popular destination for Western missionaries. This was something that became apparent as I started sifting through the Guardian/Observer archives for Those Who Dared. Books by missionaries recounting their attempts at converting the heathens of the world were regularly reviewed, at least in the early part of the 20th Century.

Forget about the modern misery memoir - these tales make seriously depressing reading. Take With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple (1902), the 'pathetic story' of Susie Carson Rijnhart and her missionary husband in Tibet. On the long road a journey to Llasa, their child died, transport beasts broke down, they were abandoned by guides and finally Mr Rijnhart was murdered by robbers. At least it resulted in a book that, as the reviewer put it, was 'above the average of missionary narratives'.

Filthy English

Exploration of the English language is about the best reason I can give for posting this. Last night saw the official launch of Peter Silverton's Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing, at the Sir Richard Steele pub on London's Haverstock Hill. The book's a learned, yet extremely entertaining, piece of work but it's contents are just too outrageous to repeat on a family blog. I'll give one example though. Apparently Tibetan swearing invokes the family but harks back to pre-modern practices. A common and very strong insult is phai.sha.za.mkhan - i.e you ate your father. More on Peter's blog.

The world's most remote place

Last April, the New Scientist revealed that the world's most remote place is on the Tibetan plateau (34.7°N, 85.7°E). From here, it is a three-week trip to the cities of Lhasa or Korla - one day by car and the remaining 20 on foot.

This fascinating fact isn't the conclusion of some epic expedition but rather a new maps based on a model which calculated how long it would take to travel to the nearest city of 50,000 or more people by land or water. The model combines information on terrain and access to road, rail and river networks, as well as factors such as altitude, steepness of terrain and hold-ups like border crossings slow travel.

One of the conclusions of the study is that less than 10 per cent of the world's land is more than 48 hours of ground-based travel from the nearest city.

There is some interesting commentary about the story on the Time to Eat the Dogs blog including Michael Robinson's point that: 'Nineteenth century maps still occasionally showed regions of Terra Incognita. But twenty-first century maps have no blank spaces left. The New Scientist maps offer, in their measure of “most remote” a modern equivalent.'