LI Han, Zhejiang TV he original thoughts of this documentary were kindled by my early experience T of studying abroad several years ago. When in London, every time other drivers cut in front of us, one of my friends, an old British actress would say 野the country is less civilized and generous than a hundred years ago冶. If the waiter failed to help her put on clothes when she finished dinner, she would complain that 野Englishmen are less gentle than before冶. That old lady whose mind still lingers on the old, majestic, gentle empire, aroused my cu- riosity to know how people in this city think about their history. Later, I invited her to be my interviewee in the London Episode. One day, when I prepared leaving for Paris, a French profes- sortoldmethatPariswasnolonger Hemingway爷s Paris.He said, 野your eyeswould see more than this book, and after roaming in this city, you would distinguish your Paris from Hemingway爷s Paris冶. In Paris Episode, he also became one of my interviewees. And Hong Kong, whose golden times has shaped a generation爷s imagination of modern cities. I made some Hong Kong friends in school, and I didn爷t realize how precious the space was in Hong Kong until I came to visit them. It is quite common that sisters and brothers squeeze in a small house. The family usually goes to tea restaurant for a larger and more leisure environment. Then I understood, behind the fairy there are untold sorrows, and later I explored to 野remove the 冶 in the Hong Kong Episode. London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Prague... That 野Grand Tour冶 on European continent has silently shaped me before I had a preset impression of this world. I cherish those memories, pondering what elements of these cities had such an influence on me. In 2013, when I was given a chance by Zhejiang Satellite TV to launch a read- ing program, I boldly conceived of a first-person tour documentary about not only reading books, but about reading cities. Later, it came out as , encom passing all the books I read, the cities I went and the people I met. This documen tary, as concerned to me, is a 野Grand Tour冶 of visual art. LI Han holds a MFA degree from Peking University and a MA degree from University of London, Goldsmiths. She is an award-winning television hostess, news anchor, and producer from Zhejiang TV with a comprehensive background in TV production. The shows she hosted include . 窑184窑 Five years later, the inspiration has turned into sixteen episodes. The first season of contains eight cities including London ( ), Paris ( ), Berlin ( ), Beijing ( ), Shanghai ( ), Hangzhou, Hong Kong ( ), and Taipei ( ). With literature as the thread, cities as the main body, the spirit of a city is hereby unfolded from the perspective of books. The eight cities are mostly global metropolises where I lived, worked, or impressed with precious memories. For this reason, the first season is tinted with distinct per- sonal style. The second season echoes with 野Belt and Road Initiative冶. Led by literary masters like Kafka, Calvino and Pamuk, we traveled along the Silk Road in eight cities: Rome ( ), Istanbul ( ), Prague ( ), St. Petersburg ( ), Urumqi ( ), Yinchuan ( ), Fuzhou ( ) and Xi爷an ( ) to explore the spirit and culture of cities from folks爷 lives. The Silk Road connects eight ancient cities and makes dialogues between them. One may feel interested when first hearing the concept of 野A Book A City冶, but once thinking deeper, he will no doubt discover the difficulty to achieve it. Cities are profound and comprehensive while books open up another fantastic world, how can a film combine them? Literature provides us an approach to discover the personality of a city. Pamuk, Kafka, Brodsky, Jia Pingwa, Zhang Xianliang噎 We admire the literary excellency of these masters, but here we adopt their perspective or dimension, which deter- mines the time and space of our observation. For example, the Old City Square where Kafka lived in Prague in the 1990s, Bosporus Strait where Pamuk could see Istanbul in the 1970s, the Yinchuan Farm where Zhang Xianliang worked in the 1960s as an exiled intellectual. Once founded on this base, we have access to un- derstand the modern life of this city. The perspective we adopted remains the same with the writer, to observe the era and the land, and to think about it. Besides, we also adopt the theory of urban research to balance sentiments of literature and the ration of theory, in case that the tone of the film falls into shallow- ness as an ordinary travel note. During the several years of filming, we also found that some recurring themes in urban studies can arouse our deeper theoretical think- ing, such as the nostalgia of the old colonists (the old dream of London爷s empire), the decolonization and identity war of the colonial cities (Taipei), the intergenerational 窑185窑 conflicts in immigrant cities (Hong Kong residents爷 concept of home and country), the intellectual liberation and cultural prosperity brought by war (Paris), self-destruc- tion and self-reconstruction of modern cities (spatial reconstruction in Berlin), spa- tial politics and social stratification (Upper Corner and Lower Corner in Shanghai), old city renovation and sustainable community (Hutong in Beijing). Each issue is faced by cities all over the world, and many scholars strives to find a solution. Lim- ited to the genre and length of our film, we only scratch the surface of these issues without deep discussion, but we still impart solemnity to this essay-like travel note. We considered several factors when choosing books. The first one is the theme. We have novels, like ; essays, like ; and poetry like . A novel tends to depict characters爷 destiny in length, while an essay ex- presses emotions directly on the city, yet in a scattered and unclear logic. The second is whether the writer is native or not. In the first season, we intend- edly chose several works written by foreigners on this city. For example, American writer Hemingway爷s on Paris, British writer Christopher Isher- wood爷s , American Writer Michael Myre爷s . The foreign perspective, provided with innate curiosity, adopts the tech- nique of defamiliarization and therefore smashes audience爷s stereotype of the city. These books are full of tensions due to the writer爷s conflict between two world out- looks. Conversely, we choose native writers in the episodes of Prague, Istanbul, Xi爷 an, Hong Kong, Tai Pei, Shanghai and London. They know the city perfectly well so they can provide a more minute and panoramic description. Kafka, Pamuk, Jia Pingwa, Jin Yucheng are all representative figures of local culture, and their charac- ters are created with a local temperament and of great meanings for us to discover the city culture. But the shortage of choosing a native writer might be his immense knowledge and presenting city culture so minutely. Another choice is immigrant writers, who are local but foreign, like Shen Wei in Urumqi and Zhang Xianliang in Yinchuan. Both cities are immigrant cities and both writers deal with themes of immigration, so they are the proper choice to in- teprete the city spirits. During our filming we discovered that all good writers adopt perspectives that 窑186窑 are both local and foreign. It is relatively more important that a book must have a conversation with the city, leading us to explore the soul of the city. According to Professor Li Yang at Chinese Literature Department of Peking University, 野gener- ally we see landmarks, skyscrapers or historical relics in urban documentaries, but what comprises a city are also emotions like desire, fear, trauma, nostalgia, memory and sentimentality, though invisible to our eyes. Literature is a crucial path on which we can reach the real city. We explore the city by empathizing these emo- tions in literature. Different from the traditional combination of a city, a book and the writer, we didn爷t focus on introducing the life experience of the writer or the content of the book. Instead, we attempt to reveal the theme and perspective of the work, and based on this, interview different characters to re-examine the city we want to pre- sent. We focus more on the dialogue between the past and today than simple intro- duction and visit of the writer. Take as an example. In London, there is a Sherlock Holmes exploration tour that takes you to visit the buildings where Sherlock Holmes has been. It is very easy for us to make this episode a tour around Holmes爷 London. But our ambitions are more than that. We use this book to explore a larger theme. What qualities of Holmes do people miss about? What legacies did the Londoners of the Empire era leave today for London? Therefore, we use Sherlock Holmes爷 pipe, hat, cane, and cape to represent four dimensions of a Londoner爷s tempera- ment; putting them together makes an image of a metropolitan hero that is embed- ded in the hearts of British people. For example, the pipe represents the elegant and intelligent British detectives. This is the uniqueness of British detectives, just like the American detective爷s denim and riding boots. The hat represents the British gentleman爷s elegance and sense of stage. Life is unbearable, but a hat is the of British pride and dignity. The cane represents the elegance of Holmes, as well as all the assistants he can rely on, the landlady, the coachman and the tramps. These informants are scattered in every corner of the city, connecting the great detectives to the mundane world. The last example is the violin, which represents the elegance and art of detectives. In London, even a detective who tackles with filthy affairs must be elegant in appearance.