Slow boats to China

by Gavin Young

Book Overview

Seven months and twenty-three agreeably ill-assorted vessels are what were required to transport Gavin Young, by slow boat, from Piraeus to Canton. His odyssey teemed with excitement, adventure and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0091460506
• ISBN13: 9780091460501
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A minor classic of travel literature

Gavin Young (b. 1928, d. 2001) was a British journalist and travel-writer. He spent much of the 1950s working in the Middle East, primarily Iraq and the Arabian peninsula. He then was a correspondent for the "Observer" for about twenty years, during which time he covered 15 wars or armed conflicts, including harrowing stints in Vietnam. In 1979, Young conceived the idea of traveling from Europe to Canton by boat -- just about any available boat except long-distance passenger or cruise vessel. For the most part he had to work out his itinerary leg by leg, ship by ship. The boats (there were over twenty of them) ranged from large freighter, to dhow, to ferry, to forty-foot launch, to sailing cargo ship, to "kumpit". At times he was foiled in his mission of progressing by water and he had to resort to airplane, train, bus, or even taxi to get to a port from which he could continue his journey. Among the memorable and exotic ports visited were Alexandria, Egypt; Jedda, Saudi Arabia; Pamaji, Goa, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Port Blair, Andaman Islands; Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia; and Zamboanga, Philippines. SLOW BOATS TO CHINA (the "voyage" took seven months) is his account of the trip. It is a minor classic of travel literature, chock full of colorful anecdotes and personalities. The book is well-written, if not brilliantly so. Young is worldly, but never cynical. Indeed, what most distinguishes SLOW BOATS TO CHINA is Young's good nature and his open-minded embrace of what he encounters, as opposed to the condescension or sour whining and deprecation that seemed to mark so many travel books of the '80s and '90s. En route Young experienced a number of adventures, including baking for days on a disabled dhow on the Arabian Sea, a storm that threatened to capsize his forty-foot launch on the Indian Ocean, and a boarding of the kumpit in the Sulu Sea by a gang of Moro rebels who threatened to hijack the vessel. But the experience I probably will remember best from the book (and which Young probably valued most from his trip) was the camaraderie and friendship that developed with most of the captains and many of the crew members, including Baluchis, Maldivians, Tamils, Filipinos, and Chinese. Although Young's voyage occurred only thirty years ago, SLOW BOATS TO CHINA is, I fear, a picture of a world now gone -- a more exotic and heterogeneous world, more open to wonder, not nearly as inundated and homogenized by the process of globalization as the world today. Alas, the book currently is out of print, but if you like leisurely, literate, and informative travel books, it is worth seeking out.

Classic travel

One of the best travel books I have read. A must read - unique insights, Gavin Young is a real traveller and certainly not a tourist. A perfect antidote to writing from a modern world that divides time between work and vacation.

One of the Truly Great Travel Books

It's the story of an epic journey, interspersed with anecdotes from an well travelled and highly eventful life. As a war correspondent he has a story to tell and a fascinating friend in every port. GY conveys the excitement and fascination of travel: the sense of wonder one has even when viewing the most mundane of sights: the feeling of privilege one has at being allowed to see people in their own environment. But he is no grinning simpleton, the frustrations of dealing frequently with pompous officialdom, the squalor and discomfort, the danger are all vividly represented. What I admire most is the principle message of the book, which we should all live by: we in the West lead lives of extraordinary privilege: we should be grateful for every day that we don't starve; every day we don't have to do back breaking labour to maintain a squalid standard of living; every day we live free from fear. This is travel writing of the highest calibre.