Within mainland China today the ratio of Westerners to Chinese is probably no greater than it was in Marco Polo’s time seven hundred years ago. Sino-foreign contact is so minimal that it almost meets the old Taoist stay-at-home ideal, “to live hearing the dogs bark in the next village but never go there.” Peking and Washington indeed monitor each other’s barking, but they meet
Even if you're a keen student of military history, you may not have heard of the Royal Air Force Eagle Squadrons. Like a great many unusual stories that always emerge as a result of war, they have largely been lost to time, but in my mind, they are some of the greatest American heroes in history, an