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August 14, 2004
About the author
A freelance writer and editor with wide interests in politics, the environment, travel and tourism, and the arts, especially opera. Arriving in 2001, Simon was the first member of his family to live in Scotland for four generations. His wife,an orthopaedic surgeon, obtained a doctorate from Edinburgh University. During their time in Scotland they lived in Edinburgh, Callander near Stirling, and Haddington, in East Lothian. They left Scotland in August 2006 to travel to Africa and then France.
Publishing and information technology
Simon has been involved in one or other aspect of publishing all his life. After a technical training in book production and editing in London in his twenties, he later became a writer and photographer, returning to the publisher’s office in the 1990s as the graphics editor for the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, a major project in Tokyo.
A self-taught computer user, he bought his first Mac in London in 1989. In Japan, he started using email in 1993, and the web in 1994. Assigned an office in Beijing’s Forbidden City by the National Museum of Chinese History, he made the first internet connection from the old imperial palace in 1994.
This is his first weblog.
Archaeology
Trained at the Institute of Archaeology (University College London), Simon was the first British field archaeologist to work in China since the 1930s. Seconded to the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing, he took part in an excavation at the Neolithic site of Ban Cun (near the Yellow River in Henan Province) in 1993-4, working with Chinese colleagues on the creation of a site database, the first one done in China. He also worked on a series of salvage excavations for the Tokyo Municipal Government during 1990-1995, and wrote a short ‘Guide to Archaelogy on the Net’ in 1995.
In 1996 he was commissioned to write a heritage protection and tourism development plan for central Vietnam. This overseas development aid project involved a comprehensive archaeological sites and monuments record, including the site of Mi Son Hindu temple complex (now a world heritage site). The plan was adopted by the Vietnamese Government.
Since 1999, he has edited and published Ancient East Asia (formerly the website of the Society for East Asian Archaeology) www.ancienteastasia.org.
Travel and tourism
From 1978 to 1988, Simon worked for the pioneering Swedish-American company Lindlad Travel which was responsible for opening China, Tibet, Vietnam (and Antarctica) to tourism. He travelled extensively in China and other countries in east and southeast Asia, lecturing, writing and taking photographs. He wrote monographs on the ancient Chinese cities of Xi’an and Hangzhou, and edited guidebooks to China and Japan.
He remains fascinated with travel and the wilder places on our planet: Tibet, Chinese central Asia (a series of visits), Burma, Indonesia (trekking through the Lore Lindu rainforest on Sulawesi). He was an enthusiastic hill walker in Japan and now in Scotland, and hopes to climb Kilimanjaro in 2005-6.
Opera
Simon was involved with the tours of the world’s main opera companies to Japan during 1988-2001, first as the organizer of a group of a local group of walk-on actors, then as a writer and critic. He has published Opera japonica www.operajaponica.org the leading international online opera magazine since 2000. He has also appeared (as an actor not a singer!) on stage, notably in the comic role of Ambrogio in the Barber of Seville for the Bologna Opera in 2002.
Politics
Simon has been a pro-European social democrat all his life. He joined the Labour Party in London in the early 1970s. He was a founder member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 and stayed with the party until 1987 when the SDP joined with the Liberals. He did not support the merger and rejoined Labour as an overseas member in 1992, remaining in the party until 1997.
Returning to Britain at the end of 2001, he soon became disenchanted with New Labour, and considered joining the Liberal Democrats. However in the course of the 2003 Scottish Elections, and against the background of the Iraq war, he realized that the party that best represented his politics was the Scottish National Party (SNP). He Joined the SNP in April 2003.
Political Compass Test
Economic left/right = left -5.62
Social libertarian/authoritarian = libertarian -5.74
Nearest political neighbours: Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.
www.politicalcompass.org
Academic Background
Leeds University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Institute of Archaeology (University College London), affiliations with National Museum of Chinese History and Durham University.
Languages
Chinese (Beijing) and Japanese
Memberships
Scottish National Party, Liberty, John Muir Trust, Cockburn Association (Edinburgh), National Secular Society, National Trust for Scotland, Pipe Down
Posted by Simon Holledge at August 14, 2004 08:06 PM