A friend who was leaving the country returned a copy of “The Telling” by Ursula K Leguin to me when I drove her to the airport, so I found myself reading it again. I have to ration reads and rereads of UKLG books, as mercifully prolific as she remains there can only be so many. Last night I hammocked out and read it by porchlight while it rained, I read it slow and enjoyed it as much as ever, given such a good start I’ll probably go through right to the end.

(I’ve just learned she has a new book out! I’m finding a used copy for travel reading as soon as I finish writing this.)

I’m getting away from my point. The point is that the last couple times I read it, I didn’t clearly pick up on the (fairly obvious) China/Tibet theme of the book. This time I did because 2 nights ago we watched “The Cry of the Snow Lion” which I was expecting to be either dry or sanctimonious and managed to be neither. It’s quite a good account of the recent history of Tibet in the face of Chinese annexation efforts. Painful and quite beautiful. Probably it doesn’t give the Chinese side as vigorously as it could, but it’s quite possible that the Chinese actions have been horrible enough that it isn’t necessary or appropriate to carefully apportion screen time to the two sides. In any case I learned a lot that I didn’t know about a very significant subject that has fallen out of faddishness.

We have a visitor at the center, a Chinese national who worked here before and is back for a few days. He’s staying at the farmhouse but ended up not coming to watch the movie, I’m unclear whether he was invited and declined or wasn’t invited or whether or not he was aware of the nature of the film. Discussing it with the other watchers, I learned I know very little about Chinese public attitude towards their government and other countries, or Chinese government attitude towards who they will or won?t allow to visit other countries.