Typhoon dodging with the Nanjing Martyrs
I knew it was coming. The night before I left Hangzhou I’d dreamt of deluges and floods, of trains being swept off tracks and being hounded by lightning strikes. It was summer, typhoon season, and the Philippine Sea was boiling up splendidly, sending swirling chaos towards China’s east coast just in time to leave me scrabbling to avoid it. Typhoon Vicente had already struck Hong Kong a few weeks earlier, leaving a force 10 storm’s-worth of damage and a massacre of dead umbrellas scattered across the city. Moving north, I thought I’d left all that behind.