Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌

I've been walking the world now for 4 years, and so to celebrate that milestone, I interview myself, because who knows me better than me?

walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/four-years-o…

I'm running a book group staring in January on "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life" by Jacques Barzun.

Is there a comparable book on Eastern Cultural life from X to the present? If so, what is it?

I've now heard from everyone on here who loves this book -- I'm glad there are other US fans out there.

It can be confusing initially -- with all the characters, names that to my western ear are very similar -- but it provides a wonderfully detailed picture of upper-class (but downward) Chinese daily life circa 1730s. They sure had a lot of servants!

My recent Substack post was about politics & Trump (first time I wrote about that in over five years) and I paywalled it because politics, but I forgot to change the settings for comments, so anyone could comment, and I figured, nobody would possible comment on a piece they couldn't read more than the first three paragraphs of. Lol was I wrong.

I kept ignoring this classic because I figured it was some dreary eastern philosophy thing, but I was so wrong! It's funny, playful, and reminds me of Vanity Fair -- A sprawling rich book that's a joy to read.