In River of Smoke, the Indian author Amitav Ghosh banishes one of his characters, a French orphan, to a ship anchored near Hong Kong, then just a “wild, gale-swept” island off the coast of Macau. Paulette spends nearly the entire novel waiting there for news of a rare flower, the Golden Camellia, from a friend in Canton’s foreign quarter — “threshold of the last and greatest of all the world’s caravanserais.” In the 19th century, these South China Sea ports bustled with people on their way to someplace else, and Ghosh meets me in the 21st century equivalent — a New Delhi airport-hotel bar called Savannah.
Tag Archives: rare
Rain Forest Tribesmen Just Want to Be Left Alone
Nine ironwood spears protruded from the lifeless body of Luis Castellanos when it was found in March, near a jungle road. Castellanos, 37, was the third poacher of rare woods murdered in this remote patch of eastern Ecuador since 2005.
Got Yttrium?
Mark Kristoff has rare-earth minerals in his blood. His father was an executive with Molycorp, which owned and operated the biggest American rare-earth mine, near the Mojave Desert town of Mountain Pass, Calif