Get I Sailed With Chinese Pirates Curated By Aleko E. Lilius Issued As Version

in China gilt die Piratendevise: Plentee money makee heart light

Der amerikanischfinnischrussische Journalist Aleko E, Lilius versuchte sich in den spätener Jahren an einem Abenteuer, das seinesgleichen sucht: Er wollte mit kantonesischen Piraten, die als die schlimmste Mörderbande der Welt galt, eine Reise tun und dies für Zeitungen mit Berichten und Fotografien dokumentieren.
Obwohl seine umfangreichen Sprachkenntnisse leider ausgerechnet das Kantonesische nicht umfassten, schaffte er es tatsächlich, sich mit einigen recht zwielichtigen Gestalten mehr oder weniger anzufreunden und schildert im vorliegenden Buch seine Erlebnisse auf chinesischen Dschunken, geheimen Piratendörfern und den Lasterhöllen von Macao und Hongkong.


Seine spannende Erzählung ist natürlich stark gefärbt durch den Zeitgeist, Die Chinesen, die immer heruntergekommen sind, im Dreck leben, letztlich meist hinterlistig und auf den eigenen Vorteil aus, machen dem eigentlich überlegenen Weißen das Leben schwer.
Der "clash of cultures" ist aber gewiss nicht so extrem wie bei anderen Werken dieser Zeit, da Lilius sich in großem Umfang anpasst.
Auch war das Leben der Menschen in dieser vielleicht größten Umbruchsphase der chinesischen Geschichte vielleicht wirklich stellenweise so, wie Lilius es berichtet.
Die Anführer der Piraten, wie Lai Choi San, Wong Kiu oder Wong To Ping werden als geheimnisvolle, grausame und sehr machtbewusste Persönlichkeiten gezeigt, die ihren Führungsstil auf grundsätzlichem Misstrauen und Brutalität aufbauen, und denen Menschenleben nicht viel bedeuten.


Die OUPAusgabe besticht durch sehr gute Reproduktion der vielen SchwarzweißFotografien, die die Piraten des südchinesischen Meers aus erster Hand zeigen.
Die Papierqualität ist leider unterdurchschnittlich und das säurehaltige Papier vergilbt schnell, Ansonsten ist der

großzügige Weißraum leider ungünstig zum Seitenrand hin verteilt,

Ein spannendes und durchweg unterhaltsames Überbleibsel aus einer Zeit, in der es noch Abenteuer gab, und in der Journalisten Kopf und Kragen für eine gute Story riskierten.
Disappointing. My dad found an original copy of this for me when I was living in Hong Kong and sent it over, but aside from the novelty of reading a nearlyyearold work filled with photos of old southern China and the pirates who sailed in it, I'm afraid I need to report that the actual book isn't very good.
Frankly, it comes across like The Misadventures of a White Man in Asia, circa, and while Aleko Lilius has to be commended for his willingness to nosedive into bizarre situations all for the sake of finding cool things to write about, he also comes across as kind of a dick.
For instance, he loses his temper at one point because he's a European and the local Chinese are "disrespecting him," and while this kind of racism is par the course for an older book, he also obtains a mistress who he weirdly refers to as a "little girl" only to shoo her off to Macau, and has a servant named Weng who dies for him that he nevertheless calls "just a Coolie.
"

What's more, despite this I Sailed with Chinese Pirates's sensational title, Lilius really only sails with Chinese pirates for a few pages in the beginning.
Those sections, where he describes the female pirate Lai Choi San as something of a Chinese Robin Hood figure, are the most intriguing, along with a chapter where he willingly goes to a Chinese prison just for the heck of it.
The rest of the book is mostly him bumbling about Hong Kong and Macau, trying to talk to random people to get hints of where pirates might be located.
It's all a very surface level examination of piracy during this era, with the writer stringing together three or four ballsy escapades with lots of text that might've struck the fancy of an American and European magazine reading audience in, but comes across as dull and dated today, especially to anyone familiar with China.


Also, it's possible that Lilius a convicted fraudster might've made half of this stuff up, though one wonders if he couldn't have made it all a little more entertaining if that was the case.
I have gotten the Hungarian version of this book entitled as "Kalózvilág a kínai vizeken" for free in Szentendre where I have been able to choose a free book with my loved one in a caffeeshop.
The book of mine is really an antiquity and originally printed,

The contents are interesting and thrilling, Very good real experience that feels through the pages, Maybe not the biggest artistic impact in the writing style, but has a really interesting content! In the lates, gangs of ruthless and heavily armed pirates plagued the Pearl River delta in China, controlling fishing fleets, terrorizing villages, and hijacking steamer ships.
Commissioned to investigate this practice, the intrepid American journalist Aleko Lilius was able to record
firsthand the final days of traditional piracy.
This book, a riproaring tale of adventure on the high seas, is the result of his heady and perilous undertaking,
The experiences recounted here include a journey on the assault ship of the notorious queen of the Macau pirates, assignations in the murky opium dens of Macau and Canton, incarceration in a Hong Kong Prison, and abduction by the pirates themselvesduring which time Lilius witnesses extortion and
even murder before making his dramatic bid for freedom.

Rooted in the bygone era of hardnosed adventuring, I Sailed with Chinese Pirates is a gripping yarn, as riveting and hardtoputdown as the most sensational fiction.
A real life adventure of a time not so long ago, Informative and fun! Lilius comes across as a bit of an opportunist prick, He gets his Cantonese translator killed, while describing him as "only a coolie, " Despite his impressive facility with European languages, he never even attempts to learn any Chinese but pidgin, and describes the speech of locals as "jabbering.
" The only positive point is that he captures for print a shadow world that otherwise would have remained purely oral, but I'm not convinced that his relatively meager findings were worth the lives he cost, which was more than just that of his translator.
Definitely pulp fiction, but it's an entertaining read Aleko Axel August Eugen Lilius,Aprilin Saint Petersburg, RussiaJunein Helsinki, Finland was an explorer, free lance writer and photographer, variously described as an “English journalist,” “Russian Finnish,” “an English writer of Finnish origins,” “a United States citizen of Finnish origin,” a “Swedish journalist and adventurer,” and an “intrepid American journalist.
” He was also a convicted fraudster, .