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Manoj Shyamalan would like us to believe. Believe him and follow without questions asked.

If we do have questions, they have to be of the sort that would help further the story. Not, Story the Narf, but Shyamalan’s story.

This movie is very different from his usual. I am glad that he has turned away from his trademark, ‘twist at the end’ variety. He has diligently followed that right from ‘Wide Awake’ upto to the recent ‘The Village’. Shyamalan, once said in an interview that he turned away from ‘Life of Pi’ because of the ending of that story. If you ask me, he should have done much earlier. He should have stopped with Sixth Sense.

‘Lady in the Water’, all you might have heard was Shyalaman’s bedtime story to his children and was developed into a movie. As I said in the beginning, he would like us to believe in him and follow him into the story. The story is this: A Narf comes to earth to help humanbeings. But, gets help from humanbeings residing in an apartment complex to go to it’s world. The humans also protect the Narf from creatures out to get it before the great eagle could sweepdown and get it to it’s world. Let’s not talk about Steven Colbert and his eagle, ok!

Shyamalan has created some interesting characters in this movie. Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep leads the cast. The cross-word puzzle solving father-son duo caught my attention, as did the movie critic. To be frank, i dont know how to take the movie critic character. It could be Shyamalan’s revenge on all the critics who’ve been skewering him ever since Sixth Sense placed him on the promising directors list. That character’s dialogues sure are funny and provoke laughter in theater. Especially the character’s final dialogues. They also seem to poke fun at the horror movie franchises.

I might talk about dialogues, but unlike his earlier films this movie’s dialogues are not noteworthy. They’re quite simple and mundane at times.

Shyamalan has created a stereotypical Korean Mom character, who pops in to reveal bits and pieces from an old Korean bedtime story, which involves a Narf.

After a while, one could get absorbed in to actually Follow Shyalaman around. But the creatures he had created appear and pull us back. Was it planned? Maybe! Because in an era where we could create dinosaurs and what not, so that they could seem more real than the actual humanbeings. Shyalaman could be working on principle here. He might want us to develop our imagination and ‘believe’.

I am being pulled in two directions here. One part of me thinks that the director has created a shoddy plot and have delivered a shoddy film with flashes of brilliance. The other part thinks that maybe Shyamalan could be onto something here. Maybe he would like us to work with him in the movie. He has presented us with something that’s quite different and an actual fable and would like us to believe in it all the while knowing that it is a ‘STORY’. He could be well ahead of his times and could have created a genre. We might have directors creating movies with astonishing plots and would like us to believe them. Only time could tell. [ I dont want to talk about Steven Spielberg’s movies, even though it’s quite tempting. ]

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

STORM SURGE The chief engineer of the Stolt Surf took photographs as the tanker met a rogue wave in 1977. The deck, nearly 75 feet above sea level, was submerged.

The storm was nothing special. Its waves rocked the Norwegian Dawn just enough so that bartenders on the cruise ship turned to the usual palliative — free drinks.

Then, off the coast of Georgia, early on Saturday, April 16, 2005, a giant, seven-story wave appeared out of nowhere. It crashed into the bow, sent deck chairs flying, smashed windows, raced as high as the 10th deck, flooded 62 cabins, injured 4 passengers and sowed widespread fear and panic.

“The ship was like a cork in a bathtub,” recalled Celestine Mcelhatton, a passenger who, along with 2,000 others, eventually made it back to Pier 88 on the Hudson River in Manhattan. Some vowed never to sail again.

Enormous waves that sweep the ocean are traditionally called rogue waves, implying that they have a kind of freakish rarity. Over the decades, skeptical oceanographers have doubted their existence and tended to lump them together with sightings of mermaids and sea monsters.

But scientists are now finding that these giants of the sea are far more common and destructive than once imagined, prompting a rush of new studies and research projects. The goals are to better tally them, understand why they form, explore the possibility of forecasts, and learn how to better protect ships, oil platforms and people.

The stakes are high. In the past two decades, freak waves are suspected of sinking dozens of big ships and taking hundreds of lives. The upshot is that the scientists feel a sense of urgency about the work and growing awe at their subjects.

“I never met, and hope I never will meet, such a monster,” said Wolfgang Rosenthal, a German scientist who helped the European Space Agency pioneer the study of rogue waves by radar satellite. “They are more frequent than we expected.”

Drawing on recent tallies and making tentative extrapolations, Dr. Rosenthal estimated that at any given moment 10 of the giants are churning through the world’s oceans.

In size and reach these waves are quite different from earthquake-induced tsunamis, which form low, almost invisible mounds at sea before gaining height while crashing ashore. Rogue waves seldom, if ever, prowl close to land.

“We know these big waves cannot get into shallow water,” said David W. Wang of the Naval Research Laboratory, the science arm of the Navy and Marine Corps. “That’s a physical limitation.”

By one definition, the titans of the sea rise to heights of at least 25 meters, or 82 feet, about the size of an eight-story building. Scientists have calculated their theoretical maximum at 198 feet — higher than the Statue of Liberty or the Capitol rotunda in Washington. So far, however, they have documented nothing that big. Large rogues seem to average around 100 feet.

Most waves, big and small alike, form when the wind blows across open water. The wind’s force, duration and sweep determine the size of the swells, with big storms building their height. Waves of about 6 feet are common, though ones up to 30 or even 50 feet are considered unexceptional (though terrifying to people in even fairly large boats). As waves gain energy from the wind, they become steeper and the crests can break into whitecaps.

The trough preceding a rogue wave can be quite deep, what nautical lore calls a “hole in the sea.” For anyone on a ship, it is a roller coaster plunge that can be disastrous.

Over the centuries, many accounts have told of monster waves that battered and sank ships. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the Navy oiler Ramapo encountered a huge wave. The crew, calm enough to triangulate from the ship’s superstructure, estimated its height at 112 feet.

In 1966, the Italian cruise ship Michelangelo was steaming toward New York when a giant wave tore a hole in its superstructure, smashed heavy glass 80 feet above the waterline, and killed a crewman and two passengers. In 1978, the München, a German barge carrier, sank in the Atlantic. Surviving bits of twisted wreckage suggested that it surrendered to a wave of great force.

Despite such accounts, many oceanographers were skeptical. The human imagination tended to embellish, they said.

Moreover, bobbing ships were terrible reference points for trying to determine the size of onrushing objects with any kind of accuracy. Their mathematical models predicted that giant waves were statistical improbabilities that should arise once every 10,000 years or so.

That began to change on New Year’s Day in 1995, when a rock-steady oil platform in the North Sea produced what was considered the first hard evidence of a rogue wave. The platform bore a laser designed to measure wave height.

During a furious storm, it registered an 84-foot giant.

Then, in February 2000, a British oceanographic research vessel fighting its way through a gale west of Scotland measured titans of up to 95 feet, “the largest waves ever recorded by scientific instruments,” seven researchers wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Once-skeptical scientists were soon holding conferences to discuss the findings and to design research strategies. A large meeting in Brest, France, in November 2000 attracted researchers from around the world.

It quickly became apparent that the big waves formed with some regularity in regions swept by powerful currents: the Agulhas off South Africa, the Kuroshio off Japan, and the Gulf Stream off the eastern United States, where the Norwegian Dawn got into trouble off Georgia. The Gulf Stream also flows through the Bermuda Triangle, famous for allegedly devouring large numbers of ships.

Dr. Bengt Fornberg, a mathematician at the University of Colorado who studies the giants, said the strong ocean currents appeared to focus waves “like a magnifying glass concentrates sunlight.”

“It’s the same idea,” he said. “There are a few places in the world where there is a regular current, like a steady magnifying glass. In other places, the eddies come and go, and that makes the waves less predictable.”

One way that rogue waves apparently form is when the strong currents meet winds and waves moving in the opposite direction, he said. The currents focus and concentrate sets of waves, shortening the distance between them and sending individual peaks higher. “That,” Dr. Fornberg said in an interview, “makes for hot spots in a fairly predictable area.”

A particularly threatening spot, he said, turned out to be where big oil tankers coming from the Middle East ride the Agulhas current around South Africa. There, the westward-flowing current meets prevailing easterly winds, at times disastrously.

“Three or four tankers a year there get badly damaged,” Dr. Fornberg said. “That’s one of the few places in the world where the phenomena is regular.”

“With a big storm, you get lots of big waves,” he added. “You have regular waves and then one or two giants. Then it’s back to regular again.”

The scientists who met at Brest in 2000, eager to track the phenomenon globally, laid plans to use radar satellites to conduct a census, calling it MaxWave.

They worked with the European Space Agency, which had lofted radar satellites in 1991 and 1995, as well as the German Aerospace Center and several other European research bodies. The radar beams were seen as potentially ideal for measuring the height of individual waves, based on the time it took the beams to bounce from orbit to the sea and back to space.

The MaxWave team, led by Dr. Rosenthal, examined three weeks of radar data and to its amazement discovered 10 giants, each at least 82 feet high. “We were quite successful,” he said.

The team even tracked monster waves in a region of the South Atlantic where two cruise ships, the Bremen and the Caledonian Star, had come under assault.

Further confirmation with a different set of instruments came in September 2004 when Hurricane Ivan swept through the Gulf of Mexico.

It passed directly over six wave-tide gauges that the Naval Research Laboratory had deployed about 50 miles east of the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Wang and his colleagues analyzed the data and found to their surprise waves measuring more than 90 feet from trough to crest.

“We had no idea,” Dr. Wang recalled. “It was the right time and the right place.”

Already, the scientists said, naval architects and shipbuilders are discussing precautions. Some of the easiest are seen as increasing the strength of windows and hatch covers. But even the best physical protections may fail under assault by tons of roiling water, so the best precaution of all will be learning how to avoid the monsters in the first place.

Increasingly, scientists are focusing on better understanding how the big waves form and whether that knowledge can lead to accurate forecasts — a feat that, if achieved, may save hundreds of lives and many billions of dollars in lost commerce.

A suspected culprit, in addition to wind-current interactions, is the amplification that occurs when disparate trains of waves (perhaps emanating from different storms) come together. Such intersections are seen as sometimes canceling out waves, and other times making them higher and steeper.

Another birth ground is seen as choppy seas where several waves moving independently merge by chance. But scientists say a giant of that sort would live for no more than a few seconds or minutes, whereas some are suspected of lasting for hours and traveling long distances.

As for forecasts, oceanographers are focusing on the interplay of exceptionally strong winds and currents, especially in the Agulhas off South Africa.

Dr. Fornberg said that several years ago South African authorities began issuing predictions. “That’s the only place the theory has succeeded,” he said.

Dr. Rosenthal said that in the future the continued proliferation of radar satellites should create an opportunity to better understand not only the habitats of the giants but in theory also individual threats, bringing about a safer relationship between people and the sea.

“There will be warnings, maybe in 10 years,” he said. “It should be possible.”

click to enlarge

Correction: July 14, 2006

A chart in Science Times on Tuesday with an article about giant “rogue waves” misstated the height of the first such wave to be measured and confirmed, at an oil platform in the North Sea in 1995. As the article noted, it was 84 feet, from trough to crest. (Sixty-one feet, the figure in the chart, was its height from sea level.)

My post on C.R.A.Z.Y.

14/07/2006 - 07h51
Cinéma
Les Québécois «fous» de C.R.A.Z.Y.
Michel Therrien
Le Journal de Montréal

À la suite d’une consultation populaire tenue à l’occasion de la dernière fête nationale, les Québécois ont choisi C.R.A.Z.Y. à titre de meilleur film québécois de tous les temps.
C’est par une vaste majorité que les habitants de la Belle Province ont fait de C.R.A.Z.Y. leur film québécois préféré lors d’un référendum populaire tenu dans le cadre d’un concours qui s’est déroulé entre le 13 mai et le 30 juin.

Ainsi, 27,9% des 20 000 répondants qui ont participé à ce sondage ont choisi le populaire film réalisé par Jean-Marc Vallée lorsqu’on leur a posé la question: «Quel est le meilleur film québécois de tous les temps pour vous ?»

La fraîcheur en tête

Les cinéphiles québécois ont ensuite choisi La Grande Séduction et Les Invasions barbares, qui occupent respectivement les deuxième et troisième rangs de ce palmarès, dans lequel se retrouvent les dix films qu’ils considèrent comme les plus populaires et les plus importants.

«Sans enlever quoi que ce soit aux films choisis, on peut comprendre le choix des gens dans le sens où il s’agit d’un phénomène d’instantanéité parce qu’on n’écoute pas des films comme on réécoute des chansons à la radio», explique Martin Roy, responsable de l’organisation de la fête nationale et des communications.

Cela dit, le palmarès fait aussi une place importante aux films québécois qui ont frappé l’imaginaire de notre collectivité comme Cruising Bar (5e), Les Boys (7e), Elvis Gratton (8e) et Aurore (10e). On y remarque même Mon oncle Antoine (9e): le chef-d’oeuvre de Claude Jutra est parvenu à trouver sa place dans ce palmarès quelque 35 ans après sa sortie en salle. «Sans qu’il ne se retrouve dans le top 10, on a été assez surpris de retrouver Deux femmes en or assez haut dans le palmarès. Il s’agit visiblement d’un film qui a frappé l’imaginaire des Québécois.»

Les duos

Par ailleurs, il est intéressant de noter que Le Déclin de l’empire américain (6e) et Les Invasions barbares (3e), le duo de films réalisé par Denys Arcand, se retrouvent tous deux au sein de cette prestigieuse liste et que Michel Côté tient la vedette dans deux films qui s’y trouvent: Cruising Bar et C.R.A.Z.Y.

Fait méconnu, c’est La Guerre des tuques, d’André Melançon, qui occupe le 11e rang.

Rappelons que c’est en faisant connaître leurs préférences sur le site Internet de la fête nationale, en déposant leur vote dans les succursales d’Archambault ou en utilisant les coupons dans Le Journal de Montréal et dans Le Journal de Québec que les cinéphiles ont fait connaître ce résultat.

Les 10 meilleurs films québécois de tous les temps, classés à la suite de la consultation populaire tenue dans le cadre de la fête nationale en 2006:

Les 10 meilleurs films

C.R.A.Z.Y. (27,9 %)
La Grande Séduction (15,5 %)
Les Invasions barbares (8,7 %)
Séraphin : Un homme et son péché (5,2 %)
Cruising bar (4,1 %)
Le Déclin de l’empire américain (3,9 %)
Les Boys (3,7 %)
Elvis Gratton (3 %)
Mon oncle Antoine (2,8 %)
Aurore (2 %)

Lisa-Marie Gervais
Édition du samedi 8 et du dimanche 9 juillet 2006

Depuis les débats houleux sur la question de Kyoto et la hantise de sombrer dans la malbouffe, la marche à pied, pratique première du citadin, serait-elle en train de s’inscrire dans les nouvelles préoccupations urbaines? Profil de ces marcheurs de la ville… beau temps, mauvais temps.

Quatre fois par semaine, dès 5h du matin, Pierre Maisonneuve est sur la route du boulot. Les yeux grands ouverts sur Montréal qui s’éveille doucement, il parcourt à pied les cinq kilomètres qui séparent son domicile de Radio-Canada, tout en écoutant les nouvelles de sa station, branché qu’il est sur son i-river… mais rien que d’une oreille. «C’est pour demeurer alerte et attentif aux bruits de la ville», précise le journaliste, prudent.

Pour ce marcheur invétéré qui a dû subir un triple pontage, mettre un pied devant l’autre pendant près d’une heure matin et soir lui permet avant tout de garder la forme. Mais aussi d’observer le design des corniches, les couleurs des façades. Et surtout cette lueur de l’aube qui enveloppe le parc Lafontaine en hiver et qui lui rappelle chaque fois qu’il n’y a pas deux matins qui se ressemblent. «Comme journaliste, marcher me permet de voir vivre les gens», dit l’animateur de Maisonneuve en direct, qui avoue regretter amèrement ses 25 années passées en banlieue, qui l’ont contraint à vivre l’enfer des ponts.

Marcher en ville plutôt qu’en forêt ? «Pourquoi pas ?», s’est un jour dit Pierre Maisonneuve, qui reconnaît pour l’instant ne pas avoir assez de temps pour s’évader en randonnée à la campagne. «C’est aussi une façon d’intégrer une activité physique dans mon quotidien.»

Marcher devient un moyen de locomotion presque aussi rapide que les transports en commun ou la voiture, trop souvent ralentie par les embouteillages, estime pour sa part Nicolas R. Thibodeau, candidat pour le NPD dans l’arrondissement de Mont-Royal lors des dernières élections fédérales. «Je pars quand je veux, je n’ai pas besoin d’attendre l’autobus. Il n’y a jamais de congestion sur les trottoirs», dit le jeune politicien, qui privilégie la marche dans ses déplacements, été comme hiver.

Selon un sondage mené par Environics dans le cadre d’une étude nationale sur le transport actif, si près de huit Canadiens sur dix optent pour la marche à pied dans leurs loisirs, peu d’entre eux utilisent ce moyen de transport pour aller au travail; 70 % ne le font d’ailleurs jamais. Pourtant, ce constat s’améliore considérablement si l’on ne tient compte que des gens vivant à 30 minutes (2,5 km) ou moins d’une destination donnée.

Pas étonnant puisque la distance est la première cause évoquée pour expliquer le manque d’intérêt des Canadiens pour la marche (49 % des répondants), suivie du manque de temps (19 %) et de la météo (18 %).

«Il y a une certaine barrière psychologique qui fait qu’au-delà de 20 minutes, les gens ne veulent pas marcher pour se rendre à destination», note Anne Juillet, chargée de projet à Voyagez futé Montréal, un centre qui propose à des entreprises des solutions de rechange au transport en voiture, comme les vélos libres ou le covoiturage. Chaque Canadien effectuerait annuellement près de 2000 voyages de moins de trois kilomètres en voiture, selon Vert l’action, qui fait la promotion du transport écologique. Autant de trajets qui pourraient être parcourus à pied ou à vélo, déplore l’organisme sur son site Internet.

Dans la région de Montréal, plus de 10 % des déplacements se font exclusivement à pied ou à vélo, selon les données comptabilisées à l’heure de pointe le matin de l’enquête Origine-Destination 2003. Un pourcentage que Jean-François Pronovost, directeur de Vélo Québec et membre du conseil d’administration de Vert l’action, espère voir augmenter grâce au projet «Mon école à pied, à vélo», qu’il a mis sur pied l’année dernière dans les écoles sur le territoire de l’Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT).

«L’idée c’est de changer les habitudes des enfants, qui sont influencés par leurs parents pressés qui utilisent trop souvent la voiture», explique M. Pronovost.

Pourtant, même en milieu urbain, à l’extérieur comme à l’intérieur, marcher, c’est bien connu, est un exercice aux mille vertus pour la santé. Mais 30 minutes de balade urbaine sont-elles suffisantes pour réduire les risques de maladies coronariennes, le gain de poids et l’hypertension, comme le suggère Santé Canada en recommandant une demi-heure d’activité physique par jour ? «Oui, à la condition de marcher régulièrement, avec une certaine intensité, et de ne pas déjà avoir un entraînement qui fait brûler davantage de calories», indique Chantal Daigle, coordonnatrice de la formation pratique en kinésiologie à l’Université de Montréal. «Une personne habituée à pratiquer une activité physique intense et qui se retrouve à simplement marcher pour se déplacer risque de voir sa condition physique se détériorer, car elle ne stimule plus autant ses systèmes métabolique, musculaire et cardiovasculaire», poursuit-elle.

L’espoir de voir de plus en plus de marcheurs prendre d’assaut les rues de la ville point néanmoins à l’horizon puisque la grande majorité des Canadiens voudraient idéalement marcher (82 %) ou se déplacer à bicyclette (66 %) plus qu’ils ne le font présentement, selon les données d’Environics. Mais de simples voeux pieux ne sauraient suffire. Si, en simple voyageur urbain, on arpente en long et en large Londres, Paris, New York… alors pourquoi pas Montréal ?

«Les Montréalais sous-estiment les distances qu’ils peuvent parcourir parce qu’ils ne l’ont jamais fait. Pourtant, la ville est assez dense et on peut parcourir l’essentiel en 30 minutes de marche», estime Jean-François Pronovost, auteur d’un livre sur cette activité. Avec ses pentes et ses rues quadrillées à intervalle régulier qui permettent de varier l’intensité de l’exercice, Montréal possède un bon potentiel pour l’activité physique, remarque pour sa part Chantal Daigle.

Pour inciter la population à marcher davantage, la clinique de kinésiologie de l’Université de Montréal offre des séances de marche thématiques, dans le but d’intégrer quelques notions d’histoire ou de culture à cette activité banale. Ainsi, l’été dernier, des marcheurs se sont amusés à repérer le nom de personnalités célèbres sur les pierres tombales du cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, dont celle d’Émile Nelligan pour y dire un poème. «On essaie par tous les moyens d’amener les gens à atteindre les objectifs santé qu’ils se sont fixés», explique-t-elle.

Moins pragmatique, l’écrivain et poète André Carpentier préfère plutôt battre la semelle dans le dédale de Montréal par plaisir, errer dans ses ruelles, sentir l’odeur du linge frais sur la corde, toucher les vieilles clôtures en fer ou les tôles des hangars. «Le fait de marcher en ville permet de se réapproprier son lieu, de trouver l’”infamilier” dans le familier et de découvrir des choses qu’on ne voit pas d’habitude, tout simplement parce qu’on ne prend pas la peine de regarder», dit ce directeur d’un collectif d’écrivains déambulateurs et auteur d’un livre sur les ruelles.

Dans une société où les minutes se font rares, flâner devient une façon d’user de son temps pour soi. «Le déambulateur pose son regard attentif mais qui semble désintéressé. En réalité, il emmagasine tout ce qu’il voit. C’est la veille du chasseur dans sa cache, l’éloge de la lenteur», souligne ce professeur d’études littéraires à l’UQAM, qui donne un séminaire sur l’écriture déambulatoire. Cet exercice à la fois actif et contemplatif lui révèle parfois de petits bijoux, comme cette pâtisserie de Parc-Extension à la vitrine garnie de gâteaux et de friandises, située tout juste en dessous… d’un cabinet de dentiste.

Along the silk route from western China to Kazakhstan,Simon Winchester is enraptured by an exquisite stranger with a penchant for 19th century novels

It took years of scheming and planning and dithering and wondering. But just more than a decade ago, China National Railways (an organization so immense some say it has more employees than the population of England) formed an epochal partnership with what was then the Soviet Railway Authority?for the specific purpose of forging a rail link between China and faraway Europe. The two partners jackhammered and pinioned and smelted a 480-kilometer line that ran from an ugly western Chinese city called Ur?mqi to a smaller but equally ugly city called Aktogay in what is today Kazakhstan. It had long been the greatest gap in a 13,000-kilometer potential transcontinental railway?and now, at last, the gap was closed. I was living in Hong Kong and decided to try the journey with an old friend of mine named George, who like me seemed to have much time on his hands. We flew one autumn weekend from Guangzhou to Ur?mqi. Here, for a small sum, we bought ourselves two one-way, first-class sleeping-car tickets, to the Kazakh capital of Almaty.

The train ran only twice a week, the next departure being the following morning at 10. We arrived at 9 (Chinese railway stations being notoriously trying places), and we found the express with unanticipated ease. Unlike all the other trains drawn up in the station, which were painted a drab olive, ours had a dozen carriages adorned with exotic patterns in umber and ocher, and these were hauled by a gray-blue-and-scarlet-trimmed diesel monster. Our compartment was similarly exotic?a souffl? of white lace cushions and small, beaded chandeliers. There was a restaurant car, serving Kazakh curries. Beer was available, and sweet, sparkling Georgian wine.

We left, on schedule, at 10. At first we went slowly, rattling west through the factories and suburbs of Ur?mqi, past a scattering of yurts in the meadows?home to migrant Uighurs who had come to the city to trade. Within the hour, though, we had picked up speed, and soon we were scything noisily through the mountains and across a hundred bridges in that rarely visited range known as the Tian Shan. To our north, limitless and white, were the sands of Junggar; to the south, when the lines of hills parted, we caught glimpses of the immense expanse of dunes of the Taklimakan Desert?the trackless and blinding yellow fastness from which, as the name in translation so starkly warns, “you may go in, but you’ll never make it out.”

After a while the hills flattened, and the train beat steadily and tediously across a wide and sandy plain. A cold and pitiless sun threw such scenery as there was into sharp relief. And then there was really nothing to see?no cities, no nomad camps, no livestock, no people. Just sand, scrub, the occasional outcrop of gray rock?and livid in the distance, the horizon, razor-sharp. An hour or so of this and suddenly, without warning, the brakes caught hold, there was a screeching from beneath the carriages, and the train slid to a stop. I looked outside, to see a tiny, ramshackle station halt?a small platform, a siding, a water tower, an oily road with a single truck, a camel cart with a ragged-looking Bactrian, and a pair of bicycles. The name “Kuytun,” written in Chinese, Uighur and English, was the only indication of any reason for our stop; and my map did indeed show a settlement of that name, though some kilometers north of the path of the railway. There was no other sign of habitation: no house, no tent, no campfire.

George was dozing on his lace cushion. I clambered down from the train, breathing in the cold, still air?just a hint of cooking fire and the unmistakable smell of the camel, which grunted disagreeably in its harness 50 meters away. The guard was the only other person on the platform. The train would stop here for 30 minutes, he said. He didn’t explain why. I mooched over to the engine, and tried to have a conversation with the driver?a friendly enough man, but with a Sichuan accent so thick I could only make out one word in five.

And then, from behind me, so unexpectedly that I jumped, came a woman’s voice. “Excuse me, please,” she said. “Do you by any chance speak English?” I turned around, to see a young Chinese woman of the most astonishing loveliness, smiling at me. She was 30 or so, tall, with a long mane of black hair; she was wearing a brilliant red sweater and a long, tartan skirt. She had a scarf to keep off the cold. She looked radiant, dignified, intelligent. I spluttered something about how yes, why of course, naturally, yes I speak English, and how could I help her? Her smile broadened for a moment?then she stopped to look down at her wristwatch. She frowned a little, then spoke again. “This train stops here for another, let me see?for another 24 minutes. We have little time, so let me ask you this right away: Do you know anything about the writer Anthony Trollope?” This wasn’t happening, I said to myself. It can’t be. I’m deep in China, far from everywhere. I’m at a miserable little halt, on the edge of one of the world’s most notoriously dangerous deserts. And here is a beautiful Chinese woman, asking me in English if I know anything about Trollope. I wanted to dash back to George, so contentedly unhaunted by whatever demon it was that was now assailing me, and I wanted like him to lie back on the lace cushions and snore gently under last week’s copy of the South China Morning Post, and only then be awakened gently from this extraordinarily realistic dream.

But then the woman smiled up at me, and asked once more: “Do you know of him? Please.” And then I realized that this was all too real, and however bizarre it may be, I might as well keep going. So I replied that yes, of course I know, and that he is a writer I read whenever I can, one whose books and stories (I was spluttering now) are part of my own assembly of joy, always there to offer comforting pleasure. Yes indeed, I know of Anthony Trollope. She smiled again, and then put on a more serious face. “Good,” she said, now rather matter-of-fact. “I would like to discuss”?she looked at her wrist again?”the plot of The Eustace Diamonds, and in particular the character of Lady Glencora. Is this fine with you?”

We had by now gone too far for me to challenge or disbelieve. One day yet I might awaken, but for now I might as well go along with whatever this strange phenomenon truly was. And so for the following 24 minutes I spoke as best I could to this vision of loveliness, about Plantagenet Palliser’s wife, and such of this good lady’s views as I could recall, and I spoke about Lizzie Eustace and Lord Fawn and Mr. Emilius and all the other figures in the book, and if I stumbled vainly through a thicket of distant reminiscences, I could surely be forgiven, because all the while I would have had to be wondering if there would soon be a tap on my arm, and the ordeal would come to a sudden and embarrassing end

It was the train guard who eventually brought it to a stop. He strode imperiously out of the station office, blew a shrill blast on his whistle, and began to wave frantically with a green flag. The young woman, smiling broadly, suddenly said, “Quick! Back onto the train. You’re leaving. You have to go!”

There was a roar of diesel machinery, and the locomotive and its gaggle of carriages jerked forward. And I did indeed climb back up into the carriage, if somewhat under protest, and somehow somnambulant, re-embarking as if in a dream?and all the while I found myself saying to this mysterious woman words like yes of course, but who are you, what are you, why are you here, I think I could love you, I don’t want to leave you!

“Don’t be so silly,” she said. “Get into the train. But give me your card if you like. I’ll write.”

I tore into the compartment, woke up George, found a card and hurriedly tossed it out of the window. The train was moving now, and the last vision I had was of the Chinese woman scrambling on her knees in the sand, searching for the tiny, white oblong of board with my name and address?and then the train rounded a bend, and whatever she had been vanished clear away. I gazed back out of the window for the next 10 or 20 minutes, but there was nothing behind me now except sand. Even the oily road had disappeared, and the view on all sides was merely flatness, and the horizon, and nothing more at all.

George was astonished by what he had seen. She was adorable, he kept muttering. Adorable. And when I told him about the conversation, which I could see he didn’t want to believe had taken place, he kept shaking his head. Unbelievable, he would say every few minutes, and gaze out at the darkening sand.

We traveled in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia and Siberia for the next six weeks, and in time contrived almost to forget that strange half-hour at Kuytun station. And then I came back to Hong Kong, and to my little apartment?and there on the doormat, among the bills from China Light & Power and The Sincere Co. and Wing On Ltd., was an envelope with unfamiliar, feminine handwriting and a smudged postmark from a Chinese town. It was from her. And this, in paraphrase, is what she wrote:

“My dear Mr. Winchester,

Please permit me to introduce myself. My name is Xing Yongzhen; I am 34 years old, I was born in Xi’an and went to university there. I have been married for the past nine years to a Mr. Lu, who is a senior cadre in the (Communist) Party. We have a five-year-old son whom we have called Henry, an English name.

We lived in Xi’an until two years ago when my husband was abruptly transferred to Kuytun. They never said why. It was probably a punishment for some error, about which he was never told. He was made in charge of an experimental hydroponics factory. A serious demotion for him, and a bad business for us all. Kuytun is a horrid place. A desert fortress town, that’s all. It is dirty and broken down. It is miles and miles from anywhere. No one interesting lives here. My husband and I do not get on well with each other. We are very miserable. I am, at least.

My only love, for the past 10 years, has been the English language and the literature of the 19th century. I studied it at university, and I fell in love with the works of Anthony Trollope. I have read all his novels, all in English. My favorite is The Way We Live Now. And yes, I love Phineas Finn?the man and the books. But here in Kuytun, no one knows Trollope. It is a joke to imagine that anyone might. No one knows English. I believe I am the only person in the entire town who speaks English. And because of this I have a terrible feeling of sadness?that if I never speak English anymore, if I never talk to anyone about English literature, then I will lose it all one day. I worry about this very much.

And then some months ago the international train service started. When I heard the news I thought to myself: perhaps someone who speaks English will ride on this train. And so I have begun a routine. The new train comes through two times a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The station is about 19 kilometers from where I live. So each Tuesday and Thursday morning I cycle to the station and wait for the train?and (I have no pride!) I tap on the windows asking the people inside if perhaps they speak English. Sometimes there is a foreign worker who speaks a few words. Sometimes there is a Chinese man who knows a little. But usually I have little luck. For all of these past six months I have heard maybe 50 words in total?and I tell you frankly I have been thinking of abandoning this quest.

But then today I cycled down, and saw this tall man speaking to the train driver?and I asked if he spoke English.

And you turned around, and not only did you speak English but you were English, and then I asked about Trollope, and you knew him, and we spoke of him, and it was just unbelievable, just wonderful, just unimaginably wonderful. Today I think has been one of the best days of my life?and all I ask now is that you and I will write each other, and that you can help keep me from losing my grasp of English here, and tell me things about Trollope and other writers whom the two of us enjoy so much.”

I wrote back, of course, and she replied. I sent her some books, and then we kept in touch regularly. A year later I flew to Xi’an, and she came there by train, and I met her and Henry?who speaks English too?and for whom his mother had asked me to bring a book of Kipling’s verses. We wrote each other for several years after that. I gave her an English name, Laura; and as Laura Xing she eventually managed to defend successfully a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Xi’an?not on Trollope as it happens, but on Victorian cookery. So now she is Dr. Xing. Dr. Laura Xing.

And then, in the autumn of 1997, a few months after Hong Kong had reverted to Chinese rule and I was packing up to leave the territory and make a new life in America, she stopped writing. There was neither warning nor explanation. Letters sent to her address were returned without remark. When I telephoned, a recording-in both English and Chinese?said simply and brusquely: “The number you are calling does not exist.”

I have no idea what happened to her. I sometimes wonder if she was officially reprimanded?as a party official’s wife?for her dealings with a foreigner. I wonder, too, whether she and her husband?for whom she had precious few kind words?separated, or remained together. I have no way of knowing now if she stayed in Kuytun, and if she continued to cycle to the railway station twice a week to see if there were any other passengers on the Almaty express who spoke English and who might know a little of 19th century books.

To this day, all that I know for certain came from a single message she left on my answering machine. She was very excited, she said. She had never been abroad before, but now she had permission and a passport, and she was telephoning from the airport in Beijing?on her way to a conference in Paris. The Kuytun Hydroponics Plant made a special kind of tomato sauce, her message said, and she was going to exhibit a sample at an international food fair.

And then my tape ran out. She never called me back. She never called from France, nor were any of my further letters or telephone calls returned. That was three years ago. Whatever happened to Xing Yongzhen, Anthony Trollope’s greatest admirer in the Taklimakan Desert, remains an enduring mystery.