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Chiang Yee (1903-1977) http://tinyurl.com/CLP-CYee

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Approaching Differently

From The Silent Traveller in San Francisco, 1964.

Reader: Jessica Teeter

Taking to the open road has long been part of the American dream, and there's no better place to rev engines and egos than in the sprawling state of California.

While driving with friends on his way to San Francisco in 1953, Chiang Yee, a native of central China, gets his first impression of the American highway.

In the open country when the car moved fast I involuntarily felt not only that the other cars on the same highway were much smaller than ours but that even the towns were no more than villages, with inhabitants the size of pygmies. The highway system is one of the greatest achievements of modern America, but I think it has made those who move along it more self-centered and even more self-important than they might otherwise have been. Inside this non-stop speedily moving car I felt the road so endless, the distance between places nil, America itself a vast, unobstructed and featureless land full of parallel lines with big circles and curves at intervals, on which masses of colored beetles ran on in endless chainÖNot a single bird could be seen in flight, for they had become like tiny insects too small to recognize. What has become of man then? I asked myself.

Published in 1964, Chiang Yee's The Silent Traveller in San Francisco was just one volume in a series of travel journals about major cities like New York, London, and Paris.

–Contributed by Anna Baldasty.