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Nolan Winthrop

Nolan Winthrop


Recent entries

Beijing, China

The city chokes the breath from you

The city chokes the breath from you: in the summer the heat and the dust and the smog take your breath away, and not in a pleasant manner. Caught up in an orgy of construction, particularly due to the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing resounds with a symphony of construction, a cacophony of percussion beats, of clashing cymbal strokes, and the shouts of builders.

No doubt, the city’s ancient sites, such as the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City are worth visiting, although sometimes battling the crowds to get there made me wonder whether it was truly worth the effort, but ultimately, I found Beijing, like most other locations in China that I have visited, quite unpleasant.

over 6 years ago

Shanghai, China

And what, my dear, lies behind the glitter?

I spent six weeks in Shanghai during the winter of 2004, from late November to early January, and found myself bitterly disappointed with the city.

The city was noisy, dirty, and polluted. I’m estimating that those six weeks breathing in that carcinogenic soup they have the temerity to call “air” has decreased my lifespan by at least a year.

It felt desperate: a city struggling to claim for itself a modernity it did not deserve, a cosmopolitanism that it had not yet achieved. It was a glittering vision, no doubt about that: a skyline of buildings clawing their way heavenwards, trying to ignore the mud that clings to their feet. I wonder, though, what truly lies behind the glitter, the desperate pursuit of something that it had not yet achieved.

After six weeks in Shanghai, I was glad to depart, and I doubt I will be looking back at it.

over 6 years ago

Iowa City, Iowa

A truly charming little city

I did not really expect much from Iowa City. The name itself seemed to speak of a singular lack of imagination. Yet, two weeks after I visited it in 1989, I had fallen in love with it. I visited it again in 1995, and found that my initial impressions of it were not that far off the mark. The writing program is simply to die for.

over 6 years ago


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