Anthony Burgess began his wonderful series of novels, The long Wanes Day (aka Malayan Trilogy ), with Flaherty, a lieutenant of British police, pointing his colleague Nabby Adams (and dog Nabby, cough, supposedly because he keeps under people's feet) in the right direction.
(Remember, the story takes place in Malaysia.)
" 'Is? They would not know the East, they saw .. . that's where the east is there, he waved his hands wildly in the dark night. "there, in the west. you were not there, so that you do not know. Now I ' was. Palestine Police of the end of the war until we packed. it was the East. You were in India, and it is not more than that is ... "
This illustrates the contradiction between perception and cultural geography, which places Australia and New Zealand, away from the "East of Suez" in the "West" and the south Asian countries -west, and until recently, African countries, even as far north west as Morocco, in the "Middle" or "Middle" "East".
The book title refers to the British Empire on which the sun supposedly never set. When he did, it can be said to have been in the East, if the Hong Kong discount was his last flicker.
Traditionally, the "West" was considered extensive, rationalist, materialist and technically superior, while the "East" was timeless, spiritual, mystical exotically, and technically backward. To quote Kipling, "Here lies a fool who tried to hurry the East." The Chinese, for example, were considered patient, cunning, and "inscrutable" clever at hiding their emotions.
However, the Japanese, with their technical innovation, not conformed to this stereotype, with the founder of cyberpunk literature, William Gibson, for example, see Japan as the perfect simulacrum to our techno-cultural future wired. And if you want to see "inscrutable" Chinese, only YouTube videos cults Parliament Taiwan.
The confusion between "east" and "west" also occurs on a more mundane level. - Writers get the right mix, they never do with "north and" south "For example, a crime writer, Eric Ambler, criticized another, Ian Fleming, to confuse the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus in Istanbul, but Ambler himself in his classic the Mask of Dimitrios / a Coffin for Dimitrios , the Turkish army was advancing in 1922 Izmir / Smyrna from 200 miles to the west, which would put them just outside of Athens, the last place on earth, they wanted to be .
another example is in the supplement Millennium Asian Wall Street Journal , which gave the impressive statistic that "1621: spices bought for the equivalent of 227 $ West Indies to sell for $ 2 million in Europe. "Now you do not need to chew cloves to know that the Asian Wall Street Journal must have been referring to the" India ".
And talk millennium, here is a true story. New Year in 2000, a group of students Bandung International School, on vacation in Bali, got up early and went jogging in Kuta Beach to watch the sunrise over the millennium. Yes, Kuta Beach ... After some time, and no sun, one of those expensively educated geniuses realized Kuta facing west.
To be honest, they could have an intercultural statement. They could have said that in our school, the difference between "east" and "west" has little importance. Or they could have been even more apocalyptic millennially. In Islamic eschatology, one of the signs of the end of the world in that the sun rises in the west ...
"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky are being held with great judgment seat God
But there is neither nor West, border nor breed nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face
tho 'they come from the ends of the earth "
therefore, do not take the first line out of context, and certainly our mission, including" strong men and women "who read Jakarta Expat , is to take and mix the best of" is "and" West "in a tolerant world culture, friendly and tasty.
unless all this is reversed. during the last millennium, a crowd of pilgrims and seekers, including figures such as Paracelsus, Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Husein Rofe, is the "Journey to the East", seeking wise in Asia could shed light on the meaning of life.
Imagine, now, our researchers, abandoning the soulless materialism of Asia / Pacific, crossing the Bosphorus and fortified with talismanic garlic, paving their ways westward through Transylvania and the Carpathians. Some will take the northern route, reveling in esoteric ceremonies Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken in Germany; others will take the southern route through France and Rennes-le-Chateau, mixing in his mysteries magdalenian known.
Then our pilgrims go through in Britain, full of western promises, and absorb the vibrations of these holy sacred sites such as Glastonbury, Bardsey and Rosslyn. Finally, they will blend into the Celtic dreamtime, and in a cave or Hebridean island in the Atlantic, meet wise as Bono aging, Shakin 'Stevens and Billy Connolly, who will complete their quest by providing their own real point measuring compass.