I Have Seen the World Begin: Travels through China, Cambodia, and Vietnam

This is much more than a travel book. It's a book that has a deep respect for the "natives" it describes, and I really like that. Like all good books about travel, this book is about Jensen's inner journey as well. This work is sensous and it makes me want to travel. We need travellers instead of frigtened people who stay at home watching tv, disliking foreigners, Muslims, and the "darkness" they perceive is out there.'

"The lone traveller is the most dependent of all, because he has need of everybody and no one has need of him."So notes Carsten Jensen in I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN, his narrative account of his journey of discovery through China, Cambodia and Vietnam during the early 90s.Jensen begins his travelogue in Beijing, but quickly moves on to Shanghai, from which he travels by boat up the Yangtse River, then by rail and bus, into southeastern China near the border of Myanmar (Burma). A constant thread is the state of the country and its inhabitants, individually and collectively, post-Tiananmen Square. Then it's on to Cambodia, a country yet to recover from the cruel self-immolation imposed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge minions. As Jensen writes about this "biblical Judgement Day":"... when the gates of Paradise were opened, it was only to reveal yet another graveyard. ... It was the humbled, the abased and the desperate who were raised on high, not to put an end to despair, but to extend it to everyone."And lastly, Vietnam, with which the author is obviously entranced, and the reader with him. Much of Carsten's enthrallment is with the country's women - Tam, Kim and Scent of Spring in particular. It's with the first that he has a physical relationship. And it's Tam who states in the most eloquent manner I've ever encountered the worst thing about not being able to conceive a child:"You can't pass on the eyes of the one you love to posterity. Like the stars they will be put out, instead of living on in a new face."Whether Jensen is describing China's Tiger Leap Gorge, Shanghai's New Year fireworks celebration, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh's horrific Security Prison 21, Vietnam's Hanoi ("like a wood with streets"), the royal tombs at Hue, or Dien Bien Phu, the graveyard of French colonialism in Southeast Asia, his magnificent prose transports you there.I was tempted to award I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD BEGIN five stars, but am prevented from doing so by what I consider to be a significant omission. There's no photo section. What were the publisher and the author thinking? Having finished the book, I now want to visit Vietnam, a country I really had no desire to visit before. If a travel essay can accomplish this for any destination, it's very good indeed.

The title of this book, I Have Seen the World Begin, got my curiosity. The Danish journalist Carsten Jensen travelled from Russia south in Asia, through China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong, and memories from these travels are collected in this huge book. And there are not only memories. Jensen has an open eye and tries to explain what he sees, and make it part of a bigger context, our world.Jensen travels alone, but he meets local people on his way. And he is not afraid of making contact. Many of these people are there for us to meet through the book. I Have Seen the World Begin is not a romantic story. Here we meet all the dirt of poverty, all the dust of the landscape, all the evilness in people, though we also meet the beauty of the women in Vietnam, the charm of a poor guide in a small village in China, the greatness of a landscape. Travelling might be boring and depressing, or it might give new dimensions to your life. Jensen has experienced both.And where does the world begin according to Carsten Jensen? It began for him in the birth of his child. The world is alive, the world is a place which will go on living inspite all oddsBritt Arnhild Lindland