Links roundup

A few recent items of interest:

This New Yorker interview brought my attention to Earnshaw Books, which republishes old books on China, with a specific focus on foreigners’ accounts of their travels through China. I’ll be adding “Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom” to my to-read pile ASAP.
An AP correspondent in China offers this account of being quarantined in Shanghai after a tarmac stop in Cancun. Some of the creepy details come too close to Blindness (Jose Saramago) for comfort. (From James Fallows)
For those trying to avoid crowds, Stan Sesser writes in the Wall Street Journal about three places in Yunnan Province that are up for World Heritage status but haven’t received it (and the ensuing waves of tourists) yet: The Hani (Yuanyang) Rice Terraces, Maotian Mountain National Geopark, and the old town of Dali. But Dali, along with Lijiang, is a fixture on the backpacker circuit, and Sesser finds that it is not quite as crowd-free as the rice terraces and the fossils park.