After much chiding from friends new and old, and after increasingly abusing the medium of Twitter for pseudo photo-essays, this luddite is trying the blogging world to share some of the fruits of the exploring I am lucky enough to be setting about in China and South East Asia.

A mostly amateur Greco-Roman Classicist by background, with interests coalescing around linguistics and the Hellenistic worlds of the Near (and sometimes Less Near) East, I come to this new Sinological world as a novice and 外行. I hope that, at the least, this will provide a platform to share some of the more recherché and esoteric places and people I find, and that in a humble way my thoughts and observations provide a different perspective from the normal tourist commentary (in English) or schematised and uncritical tone in most publicly available (Chinese) sources.

Most importantly, I hope that it inspires some people to ask the questions that I haven’t, point out what I have missed, and join me in understanding the nuggets and jewels of provincial China.