A Fortune-Teller Told Me Earthbound Travels in the Far East

by TERZANI, TIZIANO

• ISBN13: 9780609809587
• ISBN10: 060980958X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-23
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

“An utterly charming and engaging travel book that offers vivid portraits of unusual corners of Asia, told by a skilled raconteur whose eyes were open wide.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Warned by a Hong Kong fortune-teller not to risk flying for an entire year, Tiziano Terzani—a vastly experienced Asia correspondent—took what he called “the first step into an unknown world. . . . It turned out to be one of the most extraordinary years I have ever spent: I was marked for death, and instead I was reborn.”

Traveling by foot, boat, bus, car, and train, he visited Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Geography expanded under his feet. He consulted soothsayers, sorcerers, and shamans and received much advice—some wise, some otherwise—about his future. With time to think, he learned to understand, respect, and fear for older ways of life and beliefs now threatened by the crasser forms of Western modernity. He rediscovered a place he had been reporting on for decades. And reinvigorated himself in the process.

Author Biography

For thirty years, Tiziano Terzani has lived in Asia, reporting on its wars and revolutions as Far East correspondent of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Born in Florence, he was educated in Europe and the United States. Since 1994 he has made New Delhi his base.

Table of Contents

Map	ix
A Blessed Curse	1	(10)
A Death That Failed	11	(7)
On Which Shore Lies Happiness?	18	(14)
The Body Snatchers of Bangkok	32	(14)
Farewell, Burma	46	(18)
Widows and Broken Pots	64	(14)
Dreams of a Monk	78	(15)
Against AIDS? Raw Garlic and Red Peppers	93	(18)
The Rainbow Gone Mad	111	(15)
Sores Under the Veil	126	(11)
The Murmurs of Malacca	137	(14)
An Air-Conditioned Island	151	(17)
A Voice from Two Thousand Years Ago	168	(16)
Never Against the Sun	184	(13)
The Missionary and the Magician	197	(17)
Hurray for Ships!	214	(14)
The Nagarose	228	(13)
Buddha's Eyelash	241	(17)
The Destiny of Dogs	258	(14)
A Ship in the Desert	272	(9)
With My Friend the Ghost	281	(21)
The Peddlers of the Trans-Siberian Railway	302	(8)
Better than Working in a Bank	310	(10)
The Rhymeless Astrologer	320	(7)
TV for the Headhunters	327	(10)
New Year's Eve with the Devil	337	(14)
The Spy Who Meditates	351	(15)
Epilogue: And Now What?	366	(2)
Index	368

Excerpts

Life is full of opportunities. The problem is to recognize them when they present themselves, and that isn't always easy. Mine, for instance, had all the marks of a curse: "Beware! You run a grave risk of dying in 1993. You mustn't fly that year. Don't fly, not even once," a fortune-teller told me.

It happened in Hong Kong. I had come across that old Chinese man by sheer chance. When I heard his dire words I was momentarily taken aback, but not deeply disturbed. It was the spring of 1976, and 1993 seemed a long way off. I did not forget the date, however; it lingered at the back of my mind, rather like an appointment one hasn't yet decided whether to keep or not.

Nineteen seventy-seven . . . 1987 . . . 1990 . . . 1991. Sixteen years seem an eternity, especially when viewed from the perspective of Day One. But, like all our years (except those of adolescence), they passed very quickly, and in no time at all I found myself at the end of 1992. Well, then, what was I to do? Take that old Chinese man's warning seriously and reorganize my life? Or pretend it had never happened and carry on regardless, telling myself, "To hell with fortune-tellers and all their rubbish"?

By that time I had been living in Asia solidly for over twenty years -- first in Singapore, then in Hong Kong, Peking, Tokyo, and finally in Bangkok -- and I felt that the best way of confronting the prophecy was the Asian one: not to fight against it, but to submit.

"You believe in it, then?" teased my fellow journalists -- especially the Western ones, the sort of people who are used to demanding a clear-cut yes or no to every question, even to such an ill-framed one as this. But we do not have to believe the weather forecast to carry an umbrella on a cloudy day. Rain is a possibility, the umbrella a precaution. Why tempt fate if fate itself gives you a sign, a hint? When the roulette ball lands on the black three or four times in a row, some gamblers count on statistical probability and bet all their money on the red. Not me: I bet on the black again. Has the ball itself not winked at me?

And then, the idea of not flying for a whole year was an attraction in itself. A challenge, first and foremost. It really tickled me to pretend an old Chinese in Hong Kong might hold the key to my future. It felt like taking the first step into an unknown world. I was curious to see where more steps in the same direction would lead. If nothing else, they would introduce me, for a while, to a different life from the one I normally led. For years I have traveled by plane, my profession taking me to the craziest places on earth, places where wars are being waged, where revolutions break out or terrible disasters occur. Obviously I had held my breath on more than one occasion -- landing with an engine in flames, or with a mechanic squeezed in a trapdoor between the seats, hammering away at the undercarriage that was refusing to descend.

If I had dismissed the prophecy and carried on flying in 1993, I would certainly have done so with more than the usual pinch of anxiety that sooner or later strikes all those -- including pilots -- who spend much of their lives in the air; but I would have carried on with my normal routine: planes, taxis, hotels, taxis, planes. That divine warning (yes: "divination," "divine," so alike!) gave me a chance -- in a way obliged me -- to inject a variant into my days.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Excerpted from A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East by Tiziano Terzani
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