Harmony Express: Travels by train through China
- Date
- Wednesday 12 February 2025, 16:15-17:30
- Location
- B.08 Parkinson Building, University of Leeds
- Category
- Talk
Join us for a talk about train travel in China today, co-hosted with the student-run East Asian Research Society (EARS). Our speaker, Thomas Bird, graduated in Chinese from SOAS, and is currently working in East Asia as a travel writer and journalist (including 15 years in based in Mainland China) and has written for BBC Travel, South China Morning Post and many other outlets. He has also co-authored over 20 guidebook titles including The Rough Guide to China as well as numerous Hong Kong and Taiwan titles.
During lockdown he penned a book based on five years traveling China, Harmony Express: Travels by Train Through China which was published by Earnshaw Books and this will be the focus of his talk. He recounts travelling to China's extremities — north to frozen Manchuria and the Russian frontier and south to subtropical Yunnan exploring the relics of French colonialism. He took superlative trains, the "maglev" China's fastest that flies into Shanghai; the world's highest, the "Sky Train" from Xining to Lhasa, as well as China's slowest train — a narrow gauge steam engine, which still chugs through the forests of deepest Sichuan, all the while recording what he saw and who he spoke to.
All welcome, but please sign up on our Ticket Tailor page. Tea/coffee available from 4pm.