The horse that leaps through clouds / Eric Enno Tamm.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tamm, Eric Enno.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spies--Russia--Biography.

Spies.

Social change--China.

Social change.

China--Description and travel.

China.

Silk Road--Description and travel.

Silk Road.

China--Politics and government.

China--Social policy.

Tamm, Eric Enno--Travel--China.

Tamm, Eric Enno.

Tamm, Eric Enno--Travel--Silk Road.

Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf Emil, 1867-1951--Travel.

Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf Emil.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (744 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Subtitle on cover: Tale of espionage, the Silk Road, and the rise of modern China

Place of Publication:

Vancouver, B.C. : Douglas & McIntyre, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim--who decades later became the President of Finland--boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Tsar Nicholas II to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynasty's sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last Tsarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled almost every facet of China's modernization, from reform of education, foreign investment and industry to the military, Muslim borderlands and Tibet's struggle for independence. On July 6, 2006, writer Eric Enno Tamm boarded that same train, intent on following in Mannerheim's footsteps. Initially banned from China, Tamm devises a cover and retraces Mannerheim's route across the Silk Road, discovering both eerie similarities and seismic differences between the Middle Kingdoms of today and a century ago. Trekking overland 17,000 kilometres to Beijing, he runs a gauntlet of political and geographic extremes including some of the world's hottest deserts and cruellest dictatorships. Along the way, Tamm offers piercing insights into China's past that raise troubling questions about its future. Can the Communist Party truly open China to the outside world yet keep Western ideas such as democracy and freedom at bay, just as Qing officials mistakenly believed a century ago? What can reform during the late Qing Dynasty teach us about the spectacular transformation of China today? 'Study the past if you would divine the future,' wrote Confucius. Tamm's epic quest turns out to be a cautionary tale."--Book's website.

Contents:

Eurasia

St. Petersburg: The Secret Agent

Azerbaijan: The Nobels' Prize

Turkmenistan: Fear and Loathing

Uzbekistan: The Great Game Redux

Kyrgyzstan: Travels on the Synthetic Road

Western China

Kashgar: Mission Impossible

To Khotan: Oases and

To dunhuang: Treasure Hunt

Hexi Corridor: Barbarians Inside the Gate

Lanzhou: The Chinese Renaissance

Labrang: Stoned

Northern China

Xi'an: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics

Henan: The Harmonious Countryside

Taiyuan: Opium of the People

Wutai Shan: The Wanderer

Inner Mongolia: The Soot Road

Beijing: Reawakening

Epilogue: To the Finland Station.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781553656388

1553656385

OCLC:

656132998