Chiang Yee, a Chinese born in Jiujiang in 1903, wrote and illustrated a beautiful series of books under the nom de plume "The Silent Traveller". The first of these was "The Silent Traveller in London" (actually, it was preceded by "The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland", but the London book set the benchmark for the series).
Yee's appeal was based on his unusual way of looking at the world. He interpreted the everyday with a 'positive curiosity': he was acutely aware that even the most mundane of activities - from washing clothes to walking dogs - could become a subject of bewildering fascination when observed through the eyes of a stranger.
Apart from London, he wrote books about the Yorkshire Dales, Oxford, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Boston, San Francisco, Japan, and New York.
Des, to illuminate the strangeness of your new surroundings, you want to read this book on www.archive.org (SIGN UP - it's free! - then LOG IN and BORROW)
Chiang Yee died in 1977 and thus left it to me to engage in some quiet observations to illuminate the strangeness of my own new surroundings and write the final book in his series, "The Silent Traveller in Nelligen".
