Review of The Heretic Peacekeeper by Jeremy Bai

Wang Fan, a peacekeeper in the Third Earth, wants to protect the people from crooks. The worst crooks, he believes, are evil cultivators. Protecting the public becomes rather difficult when-

Hold on, this book has not even been published yet. How come you’ve read it?

I have an advanced readers’ copy. (UPDATE: the book has been published).

So you’re going to do that song and dance about how you got a free copy in exchange for an honest review?

No.

Huh?

It’s not true. I did not get a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

You got a free copy in exchange for a dishonest review?

No, I did not get a copy in exchange for a review at all. I am under no obligation to review this book.

What Does Being Jewish Have to do with Liking Wuxia/Xuanhuan/etc.?

Ten years ago, if you had asked, “Will you still be into wuxia ten years from now?” I would have blanked at trying to imagine anything about myself ten years in the future said “probably not.”

Nowadays my taste for wuxia has expanded into a taste for xuanhuan and other Chinese-themed fantasy (personally I don’t consider wuxia to be ‘fantasy’, but it’s a trivial hairsplitting of genre definitions, I will not argue with people who say that wuxia is a subset of ‘fantasy’). I don’t spend nearly as much time reading traditional wuxia as I did, say, eight years ago. Yet it’s still clear that, even today, I am much more excited about reading/watching wuxia/xuanhuan/etc. than European-inspired fantasy.

Why?

I don’t think there is One True Answer… but a partial answer is ‘I’m Jewish’. Or more precisely, ‘my specific experience of being Jewish, which is not necessarily the experience of other Jews.’

My Uncle Almost Died

On February 10, my paternal uncle called my mother. I didn’t hear the conversation, but I imagine it went something like this:

UNCLE: Is my brother there?
MOTHER: No, but he’ll be home soon, you can call back.
UNCLE: Actually, I can’t because I’m going to have surgery.
MOTHER: ???
UNCLE: I have a dissection.
MOTHER: What’s that?
UNCLE: Tell my brother what’s happening. [hands phone to hospital worker]
MOTHER: What is happening?
HOSPITAL WORKER: Ma’am, he just entered the operating room.
MOTHER: Who are you?

The hospital worker told my mother the name of the hospital and the surgeon who was about to operate on my uncle and explained how to get updates on my uncle’s condition.

My uncle had an aortic dissection. I had never heard of ‘aortic dissections’ before Wednesday. My understanding (courtesy of Mayo Clinic) is this: an aortic dissection is when the inner lining of the aorta (the largest artery connected to the heart) tears. Once the inner lining is torn, it’s usually a matter of hours or days until the aorta itself breaks open, hemorrhaging lots of blood and causing the circulatory system to fail. It’s almost always fatal. The only way to stop this is to surgically repair the aorta before it breaks.

People Do Give Up on Travel… Or Do They?

I read the article “Why Tourism Should Die—and Why It Won’t: ’Sustainable’ travel is an oxymoron” shortly after it was originally published on January 24, 2020. At the time, I considered writing a response; I’m glad I didn’t, because anything I would have written at the end of January 2020 would have become out of date fast.

Looking at the article again, I don’t understand some points. The article’s principal argument seems to be tourism is bad because it encourages frivolous flights which wastefully increase CO2 emissions. I’ve expressed thoughts on this before. It’s curious that the essayist criticizes the cruise ships for dumping sewage rather than air pollution (according to the link, 50,000 Europeans die premature deaths per year because cruise ships burn dirty fuel) or that they emit more carbon dioxide per passenger mile than commercial passenger airplanes. It’s especially weird to criticize airplanes for emitting carbon and NOT criticize cruise ships for emitting even more carbon.

I also don’t understand how short-distance tourism (say, visiting a place fifty miles away from one’s home) is so terrible for the environment. Yes, it has a higher environmental impact than just staying at home, but it’s a vastly lower impact than traveling two thousand miles.

Now, in the pandemic, we can ask: did tourism die? Technically, no. But tourism received a mortal wound.