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Now that the book is launched, its time to get back to the Grand Tour of China, Korea and Japan. Our next stop is one of the original 7 treaty ports forced open to trade in the aftermath of US Commodore … Continue reading
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Please check out my new companion blog: http://www.romanceofthegrandtour.com. So…after two and half years of working on this, it is my pleasure to announce that my new book, The Romance of Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in Southeast Asia, is … Continue reading
This gallery contains 13 photos.
The grande dame of the Nagasaki hospitality scene was the former Belle Vue Hotel, situated just off the Bund, at the edge of Glover Hill, in the Oura Foreign Settlement. It was the second oldest Western-style hotel in the city, established … Continue reading
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Quite unbeknownst to most visitors, Nagasaki is a historic centre of pilgrimage for Japanese Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. The city centre is quite literally bursting with temples of all kinds, particularly around the foot of the various hills in the … Continue reading
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Nagasaki has the oldest existing Chinese settlement and community in Japan, consisting of Chinese migrants (from primarily the Fujian province) who crossed over in the early 1600s, during the final years of the Ming Dynasty. They have assimilated so well … Continue reading
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In 1858, Japan signed the Harris Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States of America. The Treaty Port Era had begun for the Land of the Rising Sun. Five ports were forced open … Continue reading
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Dejima 出島, which literally means “out -” or “exit-island” in Japanese, was an artificial, fan-shaped island reclaimed from Nagasaki bay by order of the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu 徳川 家光 in 1634, to house those errant Portuguese, whom, ostensibly in the … Continue reading
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From the Korean Peninsula, we hop on a ship over to the islands of Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun; to the very first treaty port in Japan – and quite likely the oldest colonial port city anywhere in Asia, … Continue reading
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Last week, I popped into the Museum to admire the whale bone in its natural history galleries, dropped by a streetside stall to have a cup of teh tarik (pulled tea) and – it being the Chinese Lunar New Year – also visited the … Continue reading
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The Westin Chosun Hotel is the grande dame of Seoul’s hospitality scene. It originated as an act of cultural desecration. In 1913, the Japanese destroyed the Hwangudan Altar – Seoul’s equivalent of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, where the … Continue reading
Dream Of A City 