Wild Flavour

I’ve just started in on Karl Taro Greenfield’s China Syndrome, an account of the events surrounding the SARS epidemic of 2003. Not only is it a great account of the detective work that identified the causative agent (albeit slightly wonky on a few of the technical details - he doesn’t quite get how electron microscopes work, for instance), but it’s told from the Chinese perspective, and he has an amazing range of contacts. And framing the story is a wonderful perspective on the explosive free-for-all growth of the Pearl River Delta, the first of China’s Special Economic Zones in the Era of Wild Flavour, that’s as crammed with pumped-up weirdness as any science fiction novel.