The silent traveller in New York
(Book)

Includes Chinese poems by the author with English translations.

Title also in Chinese; title and author's name in Chinese on cover.

The Silent Traveller Returns! Distinguished author, artist, calligrapher, and poet Chiang Yee wrote and illustrated a dozen "Silent Traveller" books, from 1937-1972. The first to focus on an American city was The Silent Traveller in New York, originally published in 1950. The book captures Mr. Chiang's charming and insightful observations on the life and scenery of New York, from Times Square to Chinatown, from Harlem to Greenwich Village, from the Bronx Zoo to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Mr. Chiang also travels up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie and visits towns in New York's Westchester and Dutchess counties. Illustrated with 17 color and 120 black-and-white illustrations by Mr. Chaing, the words and pictures reveal New York through Chinese eyes, at once familiar, yet unfamiliar, but always strangely beautiful. --Publisher description.

Chiang Yee, (1903-1977) was born in Jiujiang, China in 1903. He was trained as a chemist in Nanking and served as governor of four districts under the Chinese Nationalist regime. Mr. Chiang discovered that painting, rather than politics and chemistry, was his true interest. So, in 1933 he left China for England and began writing and illustrating books on Chinese painting, calligraphy, poetry, and family life. Mr. Chiang absorbed and analyzed his new surroundings, and during a holiday in England's lake district he wrote and illustrated The Silent Traveller, the first of his dozen Silent Traveller books. Mr. Chiang lived in England until 1955, when he moved to the United States. For two decades he was a lecturer and an Emeritus Professor of Chinese at Columbia University and also an Emerson Fellow of Poetry at Harvard University. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1966. Chiang Yee died in China in 1977 and is buried on the slopes of Lu-Shan above his hometown.--Publisher description.