Chapter 8 Zou Songhua@Lonely Planet: Ghost Horse Cosplay

When I was in college, I often traveled to mainland China.The travel guides back then were very similar to official brochures. The content was flat and stable like a press release. The text was not friendly and impersonal. The introduction of the attractions would not tell you how to avoid the charging trap. old shop.So no matter where you go, instead of relying on these so-called travel guides (I doubt that they are actually specially provided by Xinhua News Agency, which is now the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government), it is better to listen to the oral information of experienced travelers.Later someone told me that if I want to go to mainland China, I should watch Lonely Planet.My first reaction was "You're crazy", to rely on an English book written by a foreigner in the land of the Chinese?With doubts, I flipped through it, only to find that it was "expected".You must know that there were foreign exchange certificates in mainland China at that time, and it was not cost-effective to exchange renminbi in official banks (one hundred Hong Kong dollars was only worth 60 or 70 yuan).What a Lonely Planet!It actually taught tourists that "after leaving the train station, there is a fruit shop that is also a foreign exchange two hundred meters to the left, which is very trustworthy."Since then, I have known what is called a guide written by travelers for travelers, and Lonely Planet is just one of them, and it is the world's most famous free travel blind male bamboo.I am both admired and curious about their authors. I really don't know who they are who know so many ways.Sometimes even the land bugs can't figure out things, they can also tell them one by one like a few treasures.After more than ten years, unexpectedly, I finally received an author's business card with the "Lonely Planet" logo printed on it from a person. The person in front of me is a woman much younger than me, a woman from Hong Kong, her name is Zou Songhua.

Zou Songhua (Zou/Liang Wendao (Liang) Liang: Tell us first, how did you become the author of Lonely Planet? Zou: I used Lonely Planet when I was in college, and being their author was purely by chance.After I quit my job that year, I wanted to travel to Azerbaijan, but there are not many tourist information in this country, so I can only ask people on the Internet.The person who answered my question used to help write for "Asia Over Land: Lonely Planet, so I told him it's okay to try. Not long after, an editor of Lonely Planet contacted me. It turned out that they were recruiting people who lived in Hong Kong and could speak Cantonese. He asked me to hand in some templates first, so I wrote two travel notes in English to her, which passed the first level. Then I will write a place according to their style within three weeks, and I will Writing about Wanchai, this is the second level. The third level is to make a map, point out the attractions in Wanchai I mentioned on the map, and draw all the basic necessities of life for tourists on a map. They have a five-member committee, The odd number is for the convenience of voting. They read your manuscript first, then have your map reviewed by a mapmaker, and finally give you a comment, like an exam. Later they emailed me to congratulate me, saying that my writing is vivid, although the style is not the same as that of Lonely Planet There are a few discrepancies, but these technical problems are easy to solve, so I became their author. However, being an author does not necessarily have a job in real time, because their guide has to wait for the schedule to be updated, and the popular places are updated every two years. Like Pakistan, it takes five years to update. I was lucky, and it was my turn to update the Hong Kong version in two months. But since I am a newcomer, I only write excursions, including Macau, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The Hong Kong part is composed of a senior Deep writers write.

Liang: It seems that you really need to have some skills. What was your previous work experience?Must be very helpful, right? Zou: I originally studied law at the University of Hong Kong, but I knew that I didn't like this profession when I was in the second year, so I didn't take the lawyer's license after graduation.After graduating in 2000, I went to Greenpeace to work as a project officer. At that time, I found it very interesting to deal with toxic substances, Dongjiang water and ocean dumping. I went to places that ordinary people could not and would not go to.Some are so dirty that ordinary tourists will not go, such as some rivers in the Netherlands, Dongjiang in Guangdong, bays where waste is dumped in Thailand and Turkey; some are beautiful but far away, such as Halong Glacier in Qinghai, which is the source of the Yellow River. Not necessarily to get.At first I had a travel mentality.Less than a week after work, I had to go to Dongjiang Tangxia, the dirtiest place in Guangdong. Later, I went to the headquarters in the Netherlands for a business trip, and the weather was very cold.I have calculated that I will not be in Hong Kong for at least half a year within a year.This is a point-to-point trip. After returning from a two-week business trip, I have to go to the next station. It is physically exhausting, and what I see is all eye-catching things.After working for Greenpeace for two years, I decided to take a trip and take a break. This time, I changed the trip of points into a trip of lines, and experienced that the earth is round.I first stayed in Canada for three months and worked with former Greenpeace employees on forest protection activities. Later, when the weather got cold, I went to Central America, then flew to Europe, and came back along the Silk Road. The trip lasted 13 months. .After I came back, I worked for Amnesty International, and I also wrote a travelogue of my experience on the Silk Road and published it in Taiwan.During that thirteen-month trip, I also returned to the Netherlands.I didn't have time to appreciate the Netherlands before, and I didn't see the Van Gogh Museum. Instead, I often saw incinerators and sewage treatment plants.I like to be a tourist sometimes, there is nothing wrong with it, I go to such a famous museum in Amsterdam anyway.I really liked going to Holland that time again. She is a beautiful and suitable place to live, except that the weather is too cold.

Liang: Let’s talk about your current job. You are in charge of writing about Macau. What do you have to do? Zou: I was still working full-time at Amnesty International, and I could only work on weekends. Later, I simply took a week off and stayed in Macau for 10 days to complete my work.I spent a total of three weeks collecting information and three weeks writing.But the biggest problem in Macau is that the changes are too fast. After submitting the manuscript in June, I have to check with the editor in October. Unexpectedly, many new hotels such as the Venetian will open in August, so I have to update the data again. The expenses that Lonely Planet gives us, including manuscript fees and travel expenses, are all in one lump sum, and you can manage them.It is impossible for us to try every restaurant. Some senior authors suggest that when you go to an expensive restaurant, you can only call the starters and write about their taste and atmosphere.When I wrote about restaurants in Macau, the menus had to be in Chinese, English, and Portuguese for easy comparison by tourists, but I couldn’t remember the Portuguese language, so I had to steal the menu.When you find a new bar, if you haven't written about it in the previous edition and haven't heard the comments from others, you have to go in and have a drink. Lonely Planet stipulates that authors cannot receive sponsorship, and try not to reveal their identity.I remember that there is a chapter in the author's manual that teaches you how to investigate high-end hotels. You can pretend to be a street visitor or a tour guide, pretending to look at the guest rooms and hotel facilities, and only reveal your identity if it really doesn't work.Every author has his own strengths and weaknesses. For example, I don't like night pods. It was very hard when I wrote about the nightlife in the Macau guide, and I forced myself to go to disco at two or three o'clock at night.I only need to bring some friends with me, so that besides myself, I can also observe through other people who have such preferences and habits. Fortunately, this group of friends took me to visit the nightlife places in Macau.A travel guide becomes boring if it is too objective. Lonely Planet requires us to write objectively and with individuality. For example, when I wrote about Macao’s Handover Gift Memorial, I described it as kitschy. The gifts are not beautiful or detailed, and only people in the mainland are interested. These are all facts, but you have to use frivolity. written intonation.So I said that if you want to see these handicrafts, it is better to go to Lisboa to see Ho Hongshen's private collection.The last line of defense in writing is editors, especially the Egyptian Guide, which involved sensitive parts of politics and religion, and was defamed as a result.So we have to write the author's note after the manuscript is finished, explaining where the author may step on the border. For example, I mentioned that the corruption problem in Macau is very serious, and the case of Ou Wenlong is "the most notorious (notorious) case", in order to protect everyone Once he is acquitted in the end, we will be miserable, so this part is up to the editor to measure.

Liang: Hey, high-end restaurants only eat appetizers, no wonder I always feel that your introductions to high-spending occasions cannot be trusted.In fact, Lonely Planet is not exclusive anymore. There are many similar competitors in the market. What do you think is its biggest feature? Zou: I often tell people that Lonely Planet is for the poor and backpackers.They are more relaxed and do not require a specific theme. Lonely Planet has a pioneering spirit. The premise is that you can't have a fixed view on anything, so it won't hinder your perspective on things, and you will have a better understanding of the local area.Moreover, Lonely Planet pays more attention to the humanistic color. For example, when I wrote about Macau, I wrote about the pictures on the wall of the Ruins of St. Paul’s for a long time, which made people understand why the St. Paul’s made Macau have an important position in the history of missionary work in the Far East.Other travel guides do not need these data, they only need to know the attraction of Ruins of St. Paul's, its year of completion, etc.Another example is the Hong Kong Guide, we wrote that Lee Tung Street and Bailey Street are traditional and ancient markets, and we also mentioned that these markets are dangerous and will be demolished at any time. Adding this sentence makes the feeling completely different.When I wrote the Macau guidebook, I also honestly said that Macau is now developed so that the sea is not filled like a sea, the lake is not filled like a lake, and the Songshan Lighthouse is blocked by the People’s Liberation Army Building in front.This destruction is too much, and these facts must be written.

Liang: Everyone seems to have the impression that Lonely Planet is a guide with its own values. It not only teaches people how to play there, but also pays attention to moral issues. Zou: Yes.Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, called for an international boycott of Burma, or even a trip to her home country, lest the money fall into the hands of the junta and fuel the dictatorship.So do we publish a Myanmar travel guide?In the end, we were the only ones who went to Myanmar to investigate and found that most of the local people were unwilling to cut off ties with foreign countries and wanted to contact the outside world.So in the end we still felt the need to publish a guide.It just spent a lot of space teaching everyone how to avoid spending money into the pockets of the military government wisely.

We also rarely introduce chain hotels. The purpose is to contribute tourism income to the local community, so we introduce more residential buildings.Every time you go on a business trip, you will donate money to do research on carbon dioxide and other exhaust emissions according to the number of flight miles we report.There is also a "Lonely Planet Fund", which donates money to grassroots groups related to tourism. Lonely Planet stated clearly that tourism must be responsible travel, not destructive, which is very particular about the sensitivity of tourists.I've seen a quiet town that became crowded after a guidebook introduction; you liked a restaurant and everyone flocked to it, and then it turned sour, I sometimes wonder if this kind of travel is worth it appreciate.I met a very "positive" bar in Macau, only local Macanese patronize, but the owner told me that he didn't want the bar to appear in any travel guide, I respect his decision, but the editor feels that this is always a At the end of this travel guide, I can only generally say that it is near Jinghu Hospital, but I will not mention the names of the streets and bars. In fact, this will also bring tourists the fun of searching and discovering. When Lonely Planet was founded, it never occurred to tourists that it was a Bible. The role of the guide is to point you in a direction, and then you decide how to go instead of leading you by the nose.Now that Lonely Planet is too popular, it turned into another DIY tour group.When I went from Iran to Pakistan, I met a group of travelers who opposed the use of Lonely Planet. The Lonely Planet in their hands was to avoid the places we introduced.This phenomenon is also a topic that is often discussed within the publishing house, but no conclusion has been reached so far.In any case, all of this is not yet common in the Chinese-speaking world.Hong Kong's travel guides only talk about a single value, and most of them are food and play guides.Reading the Pearl River Delta guidebook published in Hong Kong, you will always only know where the shopping is best in Shenzhen and where the bones are the most authentic, but you don’t know that there are many old Hakka villages in Shenzhen, as well as Dapengsuo City and Nantou Ancient City; Zhuhai’s guidebook is just amazing. I remember Yuanming New Garden and soaking in hot springs. No one knew that there was Tang Shaoyi's former residence in Zhuhai.Hong Kong's travel guides lack humanism, unlike Lonely Planet, which has developed into a social enterprise.

Liang: Besides, what is the difference between Lonely Planet and Hong Kong local travel guides? Zou: When I write about Macau, sometimes I have to read the guides of my colleagues for reference. I find that they will not teach you how to take a bus, nor will they give you a road map. They only say how much it costs to take a taxi from here to there.Of course, publishers must also cater to the tastes of readers.Hong Kong people lack a sense of security, and feel uneasy in places they haven’t been to, so they have to look at real objects and photos, so the travel guides published in Hong Kong have many pictures, which makes the guide aggravated and inconvenient to carry. Generally, travel guides published in English are not printed like this Multiple pictures.I found that the quality of travel guidebooks published in the Mainland, such as the "Zhi Xing Shu" series, is even better than those in Hong Kong.

Liang: Do you know some of the other authors?Who are they? Zou: There are about 300 active authors. Some are full-time lawyers and some sell vacuum cleaners. They use annual leave to write guides, and some are part-time freelance writers like me.Everyone has different backgrounds, but everyone agrees with the philosophy of Lonely Planet.We have two online newsgroups, one is official, with arbitrators to prevent people from making too offensive criticism of each other's statements; the other is like a writers union, without any Lonely Planet staff, we often discuss how to increase the author Contribution fees, and how to improve the quality of the guide, everyone's messages have almost filled my mailbox.

Liang: Finally, I am curious about your identity and language. You are obviously Chinese, but you have to imagine the needs and vision of foreign tourists, and you have to write in English.Would you deliberately speak English in mainland China and Macau?Only in this way can we tell readers where English is not available. Zou: The author of the previous edition of the Macau Guide was a foreigner who lived in Hong Kong for a long time. This time, the publisher asked me to write from an insider's perspective.At first I thought that the difference would not be too big, but I detailed a few temples that are rare in the whole country and may be unique to Macau, including Nezha Temple and Nvhuo Temple. They are all very important gods in Chinese mythology, editor I think this is some very insider content.Another example is that the previous version mistranslated the English name of Kanggong Temple into Guandi Temple based on the data of the Macau Tourism Bureau. If you don’t understand Chinese, you really can’t understand it. I also corrected it.Of course, looking at Hong Kong from the perspective of a foreigner is a bit different. When discussing with ghost friends who have lived in Hong Kong for a long time, what things in Hong Kong must be mentioned.For example, a foreign friend told me that he felt that Shenzhen is very safe, which is different from the feeling of ordinary Chinese people. This is probably the difference between the inside and outside. Generally, thieves would not dare to attack foreigners.I will also incorporate these comments into the book.Sometimes I pretend to be Zhu Shengmei, who only understands English, so that I can see things that I don't usually know, and I can see how quickly everyone's face changes.Once I went to a restaurant on the top floor of a certain hotel in Zhuhai. I first asked the manager in English, and he politely let me in to take pictures.Afterwards, I needed to go back and add some data. This time, I communicated in Chinese, and he drove me away immediately.I think some people still have a foreign mentality, or they may be afraid of speaking English. After all, it is the easiest to say yes, and it would be annoying to say no.Next I will write the Guangdong and Xinjiang parts of the China Guide. Lonely Planet generally requires the author to have been to that place before he will be allowed to write a local guide.I stayed in Turkey for two months and learned a little Turkish, which is still common in Xinjiang. This kind of communication should be very helpful for me to understand Xinjiang. I hope that by then I can understand another face of Xinjiang that Han people cannot see.