THE PLOT is so simple that you can let it go. Pankaj Mishra?s A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and its Neighbours begins in China and diffuses to the neighbourhood?Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong. En route, there are pleasant diversions and happy detours by way of sixth-generation filmmakers in China, travels on the tongue in Malaysia and the incredible sweetness of Bali and Yogyakarta, reinvented or not.

Only, these journeys seem fleetingly negotiated and uncomfortably enough on the backs of big cities, bright lights and the who?s who, if you please. In that sense, the promise of deliverance is a tad disappointing, cruising as it does on familiar anchors of this region?literati and glitterati and, for lack of a better word, the occasional politirati.

That would mean up-close with a long line of heavyweights in the region?philosopher Wang Hui and seasoned writers Wang Anyi and Yu Hua in China to writer Bernice Chauly in Malaysia and Goenawan Mohammad in Indonesia. There is ample evidence of political stars?from conversations with a reticent Anwar Ibrahim, who has been in and out of prison on charges of sodomy, most recently been in news following the Malaysian court overturning Ibrahim?s acquittal (too bad, Shah Rukh Khan, a Khan with zilch political aspirations, gets to be Datuk and Ibrahim gets the prison sentence). Then there are legislators Joanna Lei and Lin Cho-shui in Taiwan to a voluble budding politico decoded with the help of a translator in Jakarta. And, of course, to ease such a long journey, the glitterati is at hand to pour out the champagne in Kee Club, Hong Kong.

Malaysians will attest that it?s in Perak and Kedah that one often sees sayang (literally, dear) Malaysia?a kinder genteel face as opposed to the hustle bustle of Kuala Lumpur (KL)?and ditto said about Tokyo, Taipei, et al. Though there are plenty ?celebrity writers and artists? (Mishra?s words) that, one thinks, lend a discerning eye and help sort the wheat from the chaff, the book cannot quite escape their long shadow, both in a good way and bad.

In China, there is Shanghai, Beijing, a railroad trip to Tibet and a Zhejiang (province) village between, not the best of places to China-watch and it shows. ?Ehud Olmert born into a family of Chinese Jews? when he actually meant Jews that came to China? Chinese Jews, of the Ai Tian kind (Ai Tian was the first Chinese Jew who met Jesuit Mateo Ricci, a man who, it is said, sparked scholarship on Chinese Jews) are from Kaifeng, famous for its ?orphan colony? of Jews (Henan province). And just how sycophantic was Liu Shaoqi?the man who died a pitiable death during the Cultural Revolution?

There are long shots?which are understandable given the nimble nuances of such a large geography, the language barrier and interpretation?Mishra?s ?counter-culturalist Walter Spies? and reference to the ?ancient culture of recent origin? in Bali to skyscrapers in Java?well, these are not very simple anyway.

Spies was an ethnographer and musicologist who lived in Bali in the 1930s and, indeed, introduced a different face of Bali away from the beaten-to-death Dutch fancy and fantasy ?island of bare breasts?. Though Spies is infamously known for his weakness for supple young Balinese men, he had a hand in Bali?s reinvention by waxing Bali?s folk tradition?the barong dance-dramas, the kecak monkey dances to scripting the 1930s movie Goona-Goona (Love-Magic), which further conjured love and magic in Bali. As for Bali?s ancient roots that go back to the 14th-century Majapahit kingdom, as much as we would like to find a reflection of the old Hindu culture, there is, in reality, little commonality that we find, say, in the Balinese spirit worship, Nyepi (compulsory day of rest and silence, save for the ambulance) and the fact that Kawi language (old Javanese) is not Sanskrit. And by skyscrapers in Java, he really meant Jakarta?

Mishra is snobbish about the pompous Shanghai bund architecture, but calls Penang?s (Malaysia) ?classier??unfortunately, the same colonial power?Georgetown (Penang) is a Unesco World Heritage site. As for the Chinese prostitutes in KL?s Bukit Bintang, many come from just across the shared border, Thailand (Patani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces of southern Thailand, often in the news for insurgency, were historically part of the Malay Kingdom of Patani).

On a lighter note, any Singaporean (Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965) or Malay, who loves his share of Kampong chicken and Kampong eggs, will tell you that it?s country chicken he is looking for. And nasi lemak is rice in coconut cream, not rice and condiments in coconut cream. Don?t blame Mishra; as a vegetarian, he had to steer clear of the sambal anyway (red chilies and shallots mashed with shrimp paste).

What is fresh and new then, you may ask? Well, Mishra glides smooth as silk (sorry Sing Air), from old classics to new, from a Fortress Besieged (1940s) to a recent Tombstone (though some long detours such as on Ma Jian?s Beijing Coma and Brothers was quite unnecessary) with finesse.

Mishra is not a modern-day Owen Lattimore (the intrepid American adventurer), who travelled the dusty road through Mongolia in the 1920s with leg-runners on the loose and surly caravan merchants so much so that you can smell the dust, see the clear blue skies and hear the argals run. Nor is Mishra a Suketu Mehta, who got so much under the skin of Mumbai that you feel you are in the middle of Vidhu Vinod Chopra?s insanely melodramatic capers.

But reserve your bite for the publisher (the same who withdrew Wendy Doniger?s The Hindus: An Alternative History). Remarkable is the man and his book that can?t be faulted simply because it?s much ahead of its times (and peers) in one special way: the first of the first to get there and lyrically look at India?s large neighbourhood with an acute lightness of being.

Anurag Viswanath

The author is a Singapore-based sinologist and is currently adjunct fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi