Yesterday I hopped on my bike again after a week-and-a-half absence, and rode from my apartment on 151st St. to Battery Park on the Hudson River Greenway (aka west side bike path.) About 22 miles round-trip and twice my usual commute.

What I realized, despite the craziness of the city sometimes, is that the Greenway is pretty much New York at its finest. You can ride from the bottom tip of Manhattan to the upper tip on a scenic route that is almost car-free. It is calm and quiet. You see that fellow New Yorkers do relax, as you swish by all the sunbathers, tennis players, fishermen, moms with strollers, rollerbladers, joggers, and other cyclists. You are right next to the West Side Highway, but the honking gas-spewers are more background noise you can tune out than a potential hazard. The ride restored my faith in the city, two months away from my escape from the madness.

Granted, the Greenway isn't perfect. Rush hour in the summer can bring the onslaught of spandex-clad rich guys on $5000 bikes pretending they're on the Tour de France, swerving between bike commuters and pedestrians. There are sporadic dips into traffic, especially the rather confusing break between 125th and 130th Sts. And Carl Nacht's and Eric Ng's Ghost Bikes serve as sobering reminders of the tragedies that can occur if we don't continue to push for increased safety.

The Sunday Times this week turned its attention to photography. If you missed it in print, the online archives will be around for at least a week sans registration. Two stories focus on photographing Asia, with a huge dose of nostalgia. Matt Gross's story on photographer John McDermott includes some beautiful images of Angkor Watt, before the expected tourist deluge. And photographer and writer Howard French focuses his attention on the lesser known Shanghai:

"Shanghai’s fast-disappearing old quarters drip with charm, but they are also full of problems, from cramped living spaces that have been subdivided over the years to inadequate heating and plumbing. Many who can afford to move into the high-rises sprouting up everywhere are happy to do so. Others wear looks of mourning."

Long live the black & white format.

No, these aren't quite beach reads, but neither are they 500-page tomes by Dickens or Hardy you had to read during your high school summers.

For anyone thinking about visiting or moving to China, it doesn't hurt to read up on the country via literary non-fiction. Some of my reads from the past year:

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler (2001) Peace Corps volunteer Peter Hessler spent two years in Fuling in Sichuan Provice teaching English. His account of his experience is more observant, introspective, and humble than almost anything you're likely to encounter.

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, by Peter Hessler (2006) After teaching in Sichuan, Hessler moves to Beijing and becomes a freelance correspondent for a number of US publications. He interweaves a story of oracle bones excavated in Anyang province with the lives of 2 former students and a Uighur money trader, all migrants who are, in their own way, searching for better lives against China's rapidly changing climate.

The PEN World Voices (NY Festival of International Literature) was in town a few weeks ago. I had decided to buy tickets for a panel discussion called "Voyage and Voyeur: Travel and Travel Writing"; the speakers included Alain de Botton and Ma Jian. Whenever I plan to go hear a writer speak, I like to prepare by reading at least something he/she has written. Thus I bought and started reading Ma Jian's Red Dust.

Mother Jones called it a "Sino-beatnik travelogue" and Time Magazine said it was "the Chinese equivalent of On the Road." As much as I like Kerouac, Red Dust is one of those books that captures the need for escape and the sublime freedom of travel, without the ego of many of the Beat and pseudo-Beat writers. Ma Jian was a Beijing artist who faced political persecution, and decided to escape to China's interior. For three years he walked and hitched through some of China's harshest and most remote regions, including Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. After he escaped to Hong Kong, he wrote a book on the experience, long before he had even heard of a genre called travel writing.