Skip to main content

Shrinking Horizon/Shifting Horizon

(Pandemic, demagogy and geopolitics collide)
A friend has an Uncle who, in the early 1970s, won the Pools and went and travelled the world.  Postcards sent home include one from Afghanistan, taken soon after crossing the border from Iran.  That's two countries most people wouldn't think of visiting, right now, and a border most would would rather not cross.  And postcards from Afghanistan!  Do such things still get made?
I've been to Hong Kong on three occasions.  Thanks to unrest, Hong Kong had ceased to be a tourist destination before the pandemic emergency.  Fast forward to today, and I don't know when/if I'll be going back to this favourite (and most photogenic) city.
I've been to mainland China once.  I have a friend who lives and teaches in Shanghai.  I have a multiple entry visa, valid through to August 2021.  That visa wasn't cheap, so I'd rather it didn't go to waste.  Likewise, I don't know when/if I'll be going back to China.  Once the pandemic lifts, we may well have a deteriorating geopolitical situation.  Because of what is happening in Hong Kong, a war of words between Britain and China has started.  I have no idea how this is going to develop or how welcome independent British tourists will be in six months time.  I guess much depends on what happens in Hong Kong, and also on how the border dispute between China and India develops.
Of course, in the land where a common refrain is "too many people," the dynamics of tourism, for foreign visitors, is a little unusual.  They don't need my money.  The Chinese internal market for tourism is huge.  Unlike Spain, where the Spanish by themselves would struggle to sustain their own tourism industry, China has no such problem.
It would be sad if this part of the world somehow became harder to visit in the coming years.  I regard the area from the West Coast of India to the East Coast of Japan, extending South to Australia and New Zealand as being economically, artistically and culturally the most exiting and dynamic part of the world at the moment.

Of course, in my lifetime, once easy to visit places of gone off limits (or at least not advised) for most travellers.  Other once difficult places for travel have come on limits.  South Africa is a case in point given the sanctions that were once in place.  Horizons tend to shift rather than shrink.  Yet the pandemic, BREXIT, the rise of the so called strongmen and the current overall geopolitical situation (and perhaps a little mild depression) combine to give me the sense my own horizons are shrinking rather than merely shifting. 
Cape Town! ©2011 Jason Hindle

© 2020 Jason Hindle

The photos? The Hong Kong Photos were taken with a Sony A7 mk II and 28mm f2 lens.  The Shanghai photos were taken with an Olympus OMD E-M1 mk II.  The solitary Cape Town photo was taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and its 14-42 kit lens.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Software Test Automation in Uncertain Times

(A dystopian sense of humour required) I hear the science supports this.  Then I hear the science supports that.  I hear these things day after day and, eventually, I conclude the science supports whatever the government wants the science to support.  The truth is therefore whatever you are being told, or is written on the side of a bus, or a promise made but now denied and erased.  It all has a dystopian hallmark as government clumsily attempts to modify and direct unruly human behaviour, on a grand scale, in this direction or that.   The above was a working bit of script, by the way.  Names have been changed to obscure customers and obfuscate certain semantics and product.  The whole thing builds on a (by now) three year project to upskill and have something a moving skillset compared to the something of a static skillet that had carried me for the better part of twenty years. Gluing (excuse the pun) Gherkin, to meagre Java and Selenium skills, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Post Lockdown Pub Crawl?

(What will the really small places do?) The pictured bar is called the Temple of Convenience, usually shortened to The Temple.  It is an old public toilet converted into a drinking establishment and is absolutely tiny inside.  Unless the owners are allowed to serve drinks in the space outside, I'm not sure how it can open on July 4th.  In fact, I'm not certain how any pub or restaurant that isn't large or has an outside space (or both) can operate profitably, or how they will operate.  If I sit facing a friend or colleague, will there be one of those ubiquitous perspex screens between us?  Or will the great British boozer be laid out like a classroom?  Speaking of perspex, hindsight is giggling manically and screaming "Why didn't you invest in perspex?" at me.  I hate hindsight.  It claims wisdom but is not wise.  I much prefer foresight. While I'm keen to meet friends and colleagues for the first time in months, I'm in no rush to do this ind...
Post a Comment
Read more