City scope: the China story

An increasing number of Indian writers seem to be in the grip of a "China craze", fascinated by the country and its metamorphosis from dynasty-ruled kingdom to global powerhouse.

Mishi Saran, the Indian-born author who spent the first 10 years of her life in New Delhi before moving abroad, is a case in point.

Her first book, Chasing The Monk's Shadow (2005), charts the epic journey of seventh-century Chinese monk Xuanzang from China to India via central Asia. To research her subject, she spent a year retracing the monk's footsteps along the Silk Road.

Almost 10 years on, Saran's fascination with China remains undiminished, as proves her latest essay, "A House for Mr Tata, An Old Shanghai Tale", published this year in the anthology Travelling In, Travelling Out - A Book of Unexpected Journeys.

It's the story of how a distant cousin of the founder of the Tata empire (a multinational conglom-erate that started out as a trading operation in Mumbai in the 1860s) made it big in Shanghai in the 20th century and built Avan Villa, which stood in the Chinese city until a decade ago, at one point serving as an antique shop.

The writer began studying Putonghua in 1988. "At that time," she says, "all the cool kids were studying Japanese and China was nowhere on the map.

"But my interest in China stemmed from the language. It was the beauty and strangeness of the Chinese characters, how different they were to any language I had come across."