India, April 27 -- Dear Reader,

I feel grateful for my travel reading, for stories on politics, history and culture that help me seek truths in the spaces between texts and landscapes. And for all the fiction - family sagas, historical novels and murder mysteries that teach me even deeper truths about a country I visit.

This week I travel from Hong Kong to Mainland China with my husband to attend the Canton Fair. We board the China Ferry in Hong Kong, sailing up the South China Sea into the delta of the Pearl River and further upriver to Canton.

The skies are grey and it's overcast. Two hundred years ago, on this very Pearl River, I picture British ships loaded with opium on their way to Canton (now Guangzhou). Soon after come the Brit...