Since Go Too Far East began back in 2006, my whimsically named, would-be travel blog has evolved into many roles, from “the digital diary of a backpacker with a blog” to a column on communication, a portfolio of freelance articles and even an online platform to syndicate my book, The Future History of Travel.

Along the way, I’ve changed too. Perhaps one reason is that old adage among old China hands, that if you visit China for a week you can write a book on China; if you visit China for a month you can write a magazine article on China; and if you visit China for a year you can barely write a word. Whatever the reason, I’m now writing less about going too far east and focusing more on fiction, like my new book.

That’s why, with this post, Go Too Far East is coming to an end. But I have started a new website: Timbucktoo.net.

Like Go Too Far East, Timbucktoo.net also refers to a far away place. Timbuktu, the fabled city of Arabian myth, is actually a real place in modern day Mali, but it has assumed legendary status in the English lexicon as an expression for any inaccessible, mysterious or exotic destination.

As I have done on Go Too Far East, I will continue using Timbucktoo.net whenever I go too far with a rant that’s not fit to be published anywhere but my own platform. But Timbucktoo.net is not just a blog; it is primarily an online outpost for the occasional freelance article and, most importantly, future fiction projects. In theory, the main difference is that, as a website rather than a blog, Timbucktoo.net will be updated less frequently but contain high quality content (though in practice I have not been frequently updating Go Too Far East lately anyway, which is part of the reason behind this change).

Thank you to everyone who has checked out Go Too Far East over the years and enriched the content with your comments. Look for more from me at Timbucktoo.net.

But no sooner does Douglas Coupland set up Player One’s orderly world than he relinquishes that simple world to chaos.

It comes in the form of a news ticker on the lounge’s television – and things go downhill at the speed of cable news: a bomb is detonated at the OPEC summit, crude oil skyrockets, a mushroom cloud, an unknown assailant…

Just a few hours ago, everything was so normal (a word on which Player One declares all out war). The single mom was waiting for her Internet hook-up, the bartender was looking forward to shaking the hand of a self-help guru, the renegade pastor was wondering how long it would take his flock to find the church fund missing, and the autistic knock-out blonde was Googling mice breeding.

All the while, the reader is visited by the voice of Player One. Player One is not bound by human limitations of time or space. He (or she?) jumps between tenses and perspectives, fast-forwards the story at will, and considers the drama unfolding in the airport hotel lounge with both uncommon insight and strange detachment, leading the reader to the inextricable conclusion that whoever or whatever It is knows the end of the story.

“Much of what normal people think of as art is simply the establishment of repetitive structures that become interesting when they are broken in some way,” one of the characters realizes.

Player One is a textbook example of how writers deal with big events by focusing on the little lives of the people caught inside (i.e. almost any war movie). The book quickly leaps from the limited worlds of its characters to an omnipresent narrative about the underpinnings of the universe, the purpose of life and the nature of time.

Player One is about what it really means to be human – no small task. What sets Player One apart from other stories with such lofty goals (2001: A Space Odyssey, Tree of Life) is that Coupland manages to bring it all back together into a neatly packaged Hollywood ending where the bad guys get what they deserve and the good guys live happily ever after (relatively speaking for an oil-depleted dystopia). That he does so may be anathema to some critics. It may also be Coupland’s own way of critiquing a race of beings who are conditioned, programed, destined or doomed to wrap their humanity, their very existence, around a story.

No symbol is more synonymous with China than the dragon.

But from a foreigner’s perspective, China’s preoccupation with the dragon seems misplaced. After all, the dragons in our bedtime stories were terrifying, fire-breathing beasts with bared fangs and razor-sharp claws. Dragons are portrayed as predatory, demonic creatures. One only needs to look at the ominously titled murder mystery novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to see how dragon imagery is still used in popular culture to symbolize something disturbing and sinister.

When China released a postage stamp earlier this month bearing the fearsome image of a dragon to commemorate Chinese New Year, it inadvertently portrayed the country’s national identity as intimidating.

In contrast, Chinese families are enthusiastically affixing red paper cut-outs of dragons to their doors, couples are hurrying to conceive a “dragon baby” and the country is bracing for an estimated five percent increase in births.

It does not take a Sinologist to see that something has been lost in translation. The reality is that the differences between the dragons of Western culture and what the Chinese call lóng are so pronounced that they warrant a new translation.

Firstly, dragons in Western culture are always the enemy. In the story of Beowulf, slaying the dragon is the duty of king. However, the lóng is a king according to Chinese mythology. In ancient times, the emperor was perceived as embodying the spirit of the dragon because the Chinese consider it fierce and fair. Not only is it powerful, but also wise and benevolent.

Also, the dragons depicted in Western culture are reptilian. Their appearance evokes scaled, slimy, slithering creatures that most people find repulsive. In Chinese culture, the dragon has a ferocious face, yet its form is aerial and movements are fluid. It is usually depicted as gliding through the air without wings. It is a spiritual creature and, on occasion, the dragon has even been known to assume different forms in nature, from hurricanes to humans.

Finally, while dragons in Western culture breathe fire from their mouths and nostrils, in China they gush water. When rain falls, storms brew, or a twisting column of wind spins over the water’s surface – it signals the dragon’s arrival. It comes as no surprise then that the Chinese term for tornado literally translates as “dragon swirling wind.”

Dragons may have their differences in Western and Eastern culture, but the real monster is miscommunication.

In 2012, there will continue to be many points of contention between China and the West. But in a world where the global economy increasingly depends on China, the West can no longer afford such misunderstandings. Foreigners need to grasp a knowledge of China that goes beyond outdated archetypes and mistranslations, and China needs to find new ways of expressing age-old ideas.

It is time for us to embrace the Year of the Lóng.

Beijing’s northeast county of Miyun, known for its reservoir and the idyllic Simatai section of the Great Wall, recently caused controversy when it announced plans to build an English-speaking town where Putonghua is banned.

The 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) project still hinges on government approval, but is ostensibly aimed at promoting tourism among China’s Anglophile students. It has drawn the ire of Web users, but why is everyone so upset and what is a better way forward?

As a foreigner living in China, I am in no position to disparage the value of immersion in learning a language. Indeed, a few months on the campus of a Chinese university did more for my Putonghua than years of Spanish classes back in US. But what is the next best solution for Chinese students studying English who are not able to immerse themselves in English overseas?

The proposed solution seems to be bringing the language environment to the students. By constructing 16 city blocks of traditional European architecture where English is the exclusive language spoken, the project’s developers hope to lure language students and other tourists who want to experience life outside China without leaving Beijing.

But without even breaking ground, a sensitive historical issue for China has already been unearthed.

Illustration: Peter C. Espina

The “unequal treaties” imposed by Western powers on Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) China created spheres of foreign influence on sovereign Chinese territory that continued until World War II. One only needs to read J.G. Ballard’s 1984 novel Empire of the Sun to see examples of life in foreign concessions such as the Shanghai International Settlement. A frequently quoted epitaph from the era is a park sign that read: “No dogs or Chinese allowed.”

It’s understandable why any place in China labeled “no Chinese” would be offensive. What in another country might be just another quirky theme park idea in China is a reminder of an insulting chapter of history. I suspect it might not be greeted any more fondly in other countries, where people also do not appreciate being told what not to do.

I often ask English-speaking Chinese people how they learnt English in the hopes of applying their secret method to my own Chinese language studies. Surprisingly, I have not found any correlation between English fluency and overseas study. I have also not found any correlation between English fluency and academic major. Rather, the secret appears to be “watching American TV shows.”

The fact is that simply being in a foreign language environment is not enough. There are some Chinese people who never studied overseas yet speak English better than their counterparts who studied overseas. Watching foreign films and TV shows, reading foreign books and websites – this is the best way to immerse oneself in English.

Miyun should be commended for its willingness to bring the world to Chinese people’s doorstep, even if it’s already been done online. Through the power of the Internet, Chinese Web users already have the opportunity to experience foreign cultures or spread Chinese culture, converse with their peers in English or any other language they wish to learn.

Rather than telling people what not to do on their holiday, a better way would be to make the Internet more open so that people can learn what they want to learn any day.

My new book, The Future History of Travel, is not just the story of a road trip in a world on empty – the book has story of its own, the story of the rethinking of a blog and the evolution of a blogger.

I started writing my blog, Go Too Far East, in preparation of moving to China and beginning a new job. It began as a convenient way to stay in touch with friends and family without flooding their inboxes with the email equivalent of “want to see our honeymoon pictures?” (no). That was 2006, the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, and blogs – especially China blogs – were in their heyday. Go Too Far East grew into “a digital discussion of a backpacker with a blog,” a website that weaved together travel tales, scenes from everyday Beijing life and a peak into the world of communication in which I work. A year later, Go Too Far East had made Media magazine’s top 10 blogs list – though just barely at No. 10.

The blogosphere was changing. Trying to keep up with readers’ Internet-size appetite for fresh content was was a burden even for the most prolific of writers. At the same time, readers’ tastes (mine included) were changing. Facebook had become the preferred platform for keeping in touch. It boasted everything a blog had with one important addition, a built-in audience. I still visited blogs sometimes, and I knew other people did too … just not the blogs that people wrote about themselves. The problem with the blog was not the blog – it was the content. Drawing readers to my domain would require something original. Thankfully, it just so happened that I, the blogger, was also looking for something new.

The obvious solution was exhibitionism. But you can only take off your clothes once, and after that it’s forever old news. So I decided to keep that option under wraps and, instead, write fiction.

Fiction gave me the flexibility in my writing to be a little more exciting than everyday life. Just a little. It allowed me to not just use my memory, but my imagination. Like any good blog post, fiction is ultimately still confessional, still a pulpit for my own perspective. But in fiction, the confession is couched in the context of far more interesting characters and just slightly more exotic locations.

My intention was to syndicate a story online, one chapter (or post) at a time, not unlike Dickens and other authors whose works were originally published piecemeal in periodicals. But being my first attempt at fiction, I opted to draft the whole story before I began blogging it. And boy am I glad I did.

Writing a book is a b****. A story, as I would soon learn, is a piece of precision engineering. It requires fine tuning. Mix your metaphors or misplace a plot point and your story meets the fate of a bad joke or, even worse, Transformers 3. Most challenging of all, there are no instructions. But by reading a lot of books and getting a little help from my wife and her master’s degree in literature, I eventually pieced it together.

Three years later…

With a nearly finished, albeit rough, manuscript in hand, I was finally ready to blog the book. I had purposely left the last chapter unwritten so that the ultimate conclusion could be responsive to the conversation that would unfold in the comments section. I posted a chapter each week right up to the penultimate chapter – all the while frantically rereading, revising and even rewriting the story as it unfolded online. The merits. The mistakes. Everything. Suddenly, public nudity did not seem so embarrassing.

I discovered that creating a story and storytelling are two different things. Like songwriting and singing, it is best when the artist can do both. But each have their own reward. Coming up with the perfect twist after struggling by yourself with a particular plot sequence, satisfying; discussing your latest chapter over coffee with someone else who has read it, exhilarating.

A lot of people asked me why I was releasing it for free online. Wasn’t I afraid of copyright infringement? As long as I am given credit, then no. To quote Tim O’Reilly (via Cory Doctorow), “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” For me, this book was about reinvigorating my blog, telling a story, interacting with the audience – things I could not have done if I had been hawking the manuscript to publishers.

Where does that leave the future of the book? Is the blog history?

Soon, the book will be available in print and ebook formats. It will be under a Creative Commons license so that readers can copy it, share it, even remix it as long as they give me credit and don’t make any money (without cutting me it, Spielberg!). But it will no longer be free.

I blogged the book for free because I was eager to engage with readers. But now, the best way to engage more readers is to set a price. To be honest, I would prefer to make the content free so that everyone could read it – but at this stage in my writing career, everyone won’t read it. Price is a function of marketing, and just as too high a price can turn away potential readers, so can too low a price turn them off. I’ve given a lot of thought to a price that reflects my belief in the quality of the content and takes into account the physical length and format of the book, keeping in mind that I’m a new author and people have a right to try before they buy.

So what you can expect within the next couple of weeks is a free excerpt to be made available on this blog. The print edition, at a slender 128 pages, will be available on Amazon for a lean US$6.99. Also, the ebook will be available for Kindle, iPad, Nook and other e-readers for 99 cents because, let’s face it, ebooks should be cheaper. But please be patient as there are technical hurdles to getting the book for sale across so many different channels.

As for the blog, well, Go Too Far East isn’t going anywhere. Even if it is somewhat out of fashion, I still enjoy having an open mic for my thoughts. It’s a repository for the freelance articles that I publish, the future stories I hope to write and whatever miscellaneous musings do not belong anywhere else.

What The Future History of Travel has done is spoil me for non-fiction. Recording my thoughts, speaking my mind on my blog – it just no longer seems as invigorating as the challenge of expressing myself through fiction. So even when it’s not a story, expect it to be told more like one.

To be continued.