Diary 
Eliot Weinberger
I had vowed never to go to China until my friend, the exiled poet Bei Dao, was able to travel freely there, but when I received a sudden invitation to the Century City First International Poetry Festival in Chengdu, he urged me on: ‘If you wait for me, you’ll be too old to enjoy it.’
The international dimension of the festival was to be limited to two Americans. Luckily, they asked me to choose my compatriot, and I had no trouble picking Forrest Gander – excellence and congeniality being a rare combination in American letters. Tracking him down in an artists’ retreat somewhere in the Texas desert, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of re-enacting Eric Newby’s famous telegram to his friend in Buenos Aires: ‘ARE YOU AVAILABLE NURISTAN JUNE.’ I had rehearsed the casual tone: ‘Hi Forrest, want to go to Sichuan Province next week?’
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Eliot Weinberger’s recent books include What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles, An Elemental Thing and The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry.
Other articles by this contributor:
What I Heard about Iraq · Eliot Weinberger watches and listens
Next stop, Forbidden City · The Terrible Tale of Gu Cheng
Praise Yah · the Psalms
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