The Silent Traveler in New York by Chiang Yee

Chiang Yee wrote a series of illustrated travel books starting with The Silent Traveler: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland in 1937, and ending with a 1972 book on Japan. This one was first published in 1950.

A VILLAGE in the center of New York City sounds like a joke.

When I heard of it a few days after my arrival, it reminded me of the time when, shortly after my arrival in England some fifteen years ago, I was introduced to a gentleman as ‘the hermit of London. Buddha once remarked: Remember, my sons, there is nothing constant but change,” and I find that this is even true of the meaning of a word which, while keeping its original idea, gains new significance in particular circumstances. Experience has confirmed that a hermit can live in the heart of London and that a village does exist in the metropolis of New York.

Greenwich Village today no longer looks much like a village, but its name is a pleasant reminder of its former appearance. Van Wyck Brooks wrote in The World of Washington Irving:

«Bleecker Street was a blackberry-preserve, and water trom the tea-water pumps was sold at a penny a gallon from door to door.

New Yorkers could remember corn-fields on Nassau Street. In those days, not too remote, fishermen drew their seines on the beach at the foot of Greenwich Street, and a mill at Coenties-slip was turned by a spring, and a line of palisades at Chambers Street cut straight across the island trom river to river Everything northward was still open country, with farms, thickets, swamps and market-gardens and the hamlets of Greenwich, Chelsea, Yorkville and Harlem… here were pretty country roads that wound about the island, through little ricky valleys, groves and copses, and both the river-banks were lined with quiet country-seats, embosomed in gardens, vines and hawthorn hedges.”

That was in the early nineteenth century, in the days of Peter Cooper and Jefferson.

Cheers to reader Patrick C. for recommending. The book is contemplative; from time to time the Silent Traveler is inspired to compose a poem. There are both color and b&w illustrations:

Here’s how Chiang Yee concludes:

There is an old American saying about New York: It is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, because there is that little thing called MONEY.” Nevertheless, I look forward to my next visit when the ‘little thing’ becomes available to me again.

I’ve got ST’s Boston on order.