Moscow: Malyavin V. V. & Co., 2012, 382 p. I threw away my compass, trampled my watch in the dust, and went out to dance In the fog over the Yangtze... BG, 2003 "The description of the manners and customs of foreign nations must, for the most part, be attributed to those matters which delight the mind in a pleasant and innocent way, and are of no small use to the people. We have a lot of indisputable evidence about this in the form of books about the travels of skilled people. And countries unknown in the old days were so often visited by curious Europeans and described in detail that we are as familiar with them as with our own homeland... " Georg Johann Unfsrzagt, 1725 "The embassy of Their Imperial Majesty the Great Russia to the Chinese Emperor, which was sent in 1719 from St. Petersburg to the Chinese capital and patronal city of Peking" The publication of another book by V. V. Malyavin is an event that is usually expected, even quite ordinary for his long-time fans. However, its appearance was a special, extraordinary event for Russian Oriental studies, the reading public, and for the author's own work. After all, perhaps for the first time in several decades, the pages of V. V. Malyavin's book do not feature great historical figures (Confucius, Chuang Tzu), not the wisdom of Chinese antiquity, and not the space of the entire Chinese civilization, but the Author himself, who opens his soul to us with captivating confidence, while measuring it with the difficult to see, vague and mysterious "the soul of Asia". The book "Flowers in the Fog: Looking at Asia", published in 2012 with a circulation of 1000 copies, is not so much travel notes of a professional Orientalist, but essays on the life and culture of the peoples of Asia, written on the basis of impressions from the author's numerous trips to the countries of East Asia. The content of the book consists of three sections devoted to mainland China, the "Tibet Ocean", as well as" islands in the ocean " (Jap ... Читать далее