Garry Marchant

Among an abundance of war correspondents, Garry Marchant presents himself as a "peace correspondent". In The peace correspondent. Asian travel stories from a restless writer, published by Hong Kong based Earnshaw Books, travel reports are collected from almost all South-East Asian countries: Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Myanmar, South Korea, Tibet, Macau, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia. The travel stories are collected over a period of twenty years, with the earliest dating back to 1978, and the latest written in 2001. Some countries have been visited multiple times, but with large lapses of time in between. With a total of 40 essays, and an average length of 7 pages, the book mainly offers very superficial impressions of each country. This superficiality is emphasized as the author writes using the "I-am-a camera-style" recording all, mostly fleeting impressions.

As a result, it is hard to gage the value of the collection. Some travel stories seem to have some journalistic value, while other are mainly touristic. There are four essays for China: Canton (1978), Yunnan (1987), Hong Kong to Shanghai (1992), and the Yangtse River (1995). Essays about China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Tibet are grouped separately under headers as if they are separate countries.

Garry Marchant is a Canadian freelance writer who has made contributions to various guidebooks and anthologies, notably Away From Home. Canadian Writers in Exotic Places and Our American Cousins. The United States through Canadian Eyes.… (meer)