The building you see in this photo housed the Italian Consulate in Shanghai in the 1930s.
The climax of the first part of my book happens here. Continue reading
Category Archives: Armchair adventuring
Guideways of the Montains and Seas
Again on the pleasures of research.
I’m currently reading with much pleasure A Chinese Bestiary – Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas, a University of California book that reprints an ancient Chinese bestiary, edited by Richard E. Strassberg.
This is a compendium of strange creatures that was compiled between the 4th and the 1st centuri BCE, and was later re-edited, expanded and variously repackaged.
The English edition uses the woodblock prints from the 16th century version, and is highly entertaining. Continue reading
Small kingdom, great book
Armchair Traveler is a publisher that promises to drain my meager resources in the next few months. An imprint of Haus Publishing, they have an extensive catalog of travel books and travel memoirs.
I’m currently reading Martin Uitz’s Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdon of the Thunder Dragon, that they published in 2008.
Austrian Uitz was a travel writer, tour guide and mountaineer – he died in 2007,aged 55, from a heart hailment, and the book (originally written in German) was published as a commemoration to his travels and achievements. Continue reading
The Return of Feng Shui
For me, Feng Shui, the Roleplaying game, remains one of the best gaming systems and gaming universes ever.
Few other games have granted so much fun to me and my players.
Designed to allow players to engage in the furious action of the classic John Woo or Tsui Hark movies, bringing together in a single coherent setting everything from heroic bloodshed to wuxia, Feng Shui was the ultimate action roleplaying game, a perfect blend of elegant mechanics and jaw-dropping worldbuilding.
And now it’s back – and Feng Shui 2 is being financed through a Kickstarter.
As usual, WordPress does not allow me to post you the snazzy animated link… so we’ll make do with a static picture.
I paid my ghost money to the Dragon already.
I invite you to do the same.
Related articles
Fifteen impossible things before lunch
… well, maybe not fifteen.
The idea is doing the rounds, here in the Old C Block of the Italian Blogsphere – list fifteen (or twenty) things that happened to you, and that would never work in a story because they are too implausible.
Aw, c’mon, they would say – that’s just too much!
My friends are doing it in Italian, I’ll do it in English, just because.
As I said, I can’t assure you I’ll make it to fifteen. Continue reading
Again on the joys of research…
I said it in the past and I’ll keep saying it – the best part of writing historical adventure is often doing research.
A few years back I taught a course on Taoist Culture for the Italian-Chinese association in Turin.
It was a short introductory course, based on my somewhat non-systematic study of Taoism and Zen – something I started as an “interest” in the mid-80s.
The course was well received – and with the money I got from it I decided to buy me something I had desired for a long time: the four volumes of Thomas Cleary‘s translations of the Taoist Classics, published by Shambhala Publications. Continue reading
Learning Chinese
They say the first day of September is the true “New Year’s Day”, when it comes to work and projects.
It might well be.
It’s certainly true for me – autumn is always a highly-charged time of the year, as far as I’m concerned.
Pity it’s not the same for my country – so, while I’m still sending out CVs and running around looking for a new job, I look around and I keep busy.
And that’s the reason why, in two weeks, I’m starting a course of Chinese. Continue reading
Karavansara 