HLS Grad Wanders the Great Wall of China
I saw this article in the Boston Globe yesterday and got a kick out of it. I thought you might find it interesting. Here’s a passage from the article:
The American, 41, is an unlikely, almost accidental scholar of one of China’s most beloved landmarks, a Harvard Law School graduate who left his job as a consultant and lived off savings to pursue his grand obsession thousands of miles from his Massachusetts roots. Someday soon, he hopes to publish a book on all he has learned.
Without academic affiliation or funding, Spindler has spent 14 years traveling across China and to Japan to review arcane centuries-old texts for firsthand accounts and details. And he has spent more than 830 days clambering over the wall’s far-flung ramparts around Beijing, enough to wear through several pairs of hiking boots.
Daniel Cole
December 8, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
I remember reading an article about this chap in The New Yorker, and although I couldn’t find it archived on the internet, I did find the full version of the LA Times article (which the Boston Globe cut). I’m not sure whether the following will appear as a link or as regular text, but you could access the story by pasting this into your URL line: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-greatwall28-2008nov28,0,583200,full.story.
There are some interesting anecdotes here that didn’t make it into the Boston Globe version. I especially liked this section:
“Over the years, Spindler spent time nearly every day in Chinese-language Internet chat rooms, trading minutiae with both serious and amateur wall enthusiasts — never letting on that he was an American.
“That’s where he met Hong Feng, a Peking University policeman and fellow wall researcher. Spindler used a Chinese nickname online and Hong assumed he was a local student.
“‘He was always persistent and well trained,’ Hong recalls. ‘He always asked for evidence for everything.’
“Last year, Spindler decided to reveal himself. He called Hong and arranged a dinner. The policeman recalls seeing Spindler for the first time, amazed at his height and nationality.
“His first words: ‘I didn’t think you were a foreigner.’
“Spindler offered him a gift only a fellow Great Wall wanderer could appreciate: a pair of elbow-long elk-skin gloves.
“‘I understood immediately what his gift meant,’ Hong says. ‘For Great Wall climbers like us, it gets really cold in winter. I immediately sensed the warmth from him. I admire him.’”