In the 21st-century, travel is about people
"If 19th-century travel writing was principally about place -- about filling in the blanks of the map and describing remote places that few had seen -- the best 21st-century travel writing is almost always about people: exploring the extraordinary diversity that still exists in the world beneath the veneer of globalization."
--William Dalrymple, from the introduction to The Best Travel Writing 2010
2011-03-28 20:28
The quotation's view is good. The geomorphological map has been almost filled while the humanistic one has not. People in a place often do not understand a lot about the culture of those in another place. Before I came to the United States, I did not know the Spanish-style food (to distinguish it from Spanish food). Before I stepped into the mountain tribe in Taiwan, I did not know the plants in their life. The good travel writing depicts the people or their life, and the readers can open their eyes when reading it.