In honor of the Literary Festival, CW explores Asia's most famous writer haunts.

Somerset Maugham's Singapore

Colonial Idyll
Maugham did his best writing during his trips to the Pacific Islands and the Far East. While staying at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore in 1921, which he claimed stood "for all the fables of the exotic East," Maugham penned The Casuarina Tree, a collection of stories reflecting colonial life in Malaysia and Singapore. Stay: You can't beat the luxurious Somerset Maugham Suite at the Raffles, which boasts memorabilia related to the author. Dress to impress and head to the hotel's famous Long Bar, birthplace of the Singapore Sling and a favorite haunt of Maugham. Then sit quietly in the Raffles' Palm Court and eavesdrop on other guests as Maugham was known to do to get inspiration for his stories. The hotel, opened in 1887 and named for Singapore's founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, was named a national monument in 1987 and subsequently restored to look like it did around the time Maugham was a guest. It also houses a small museum where you can see letters and memorabilia from Maugham and other celebrity guests and get a feel for what expat life was like a century ago.

Lao She's Beijing

Rickshaw Man
Lao She captured the spirit of Old Beijing better than any other author. His most well-known novel, Rickshaw Boy (¬ÊÕ’œÈ◊”), centers on the life of a Beijing rickshaw puller in the 1920's. Other works include The Yellow Storm, about a Beijing family during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and Teahouse, his famous play about teahouse culture in a changing China. Lao She's former courtyard residence (Fengfu Hutong, just off Dengshikou Xi Jie) has been turned into a small museum chronicling his life and work. At Qianmen, stop by the Lao She Teahouse, created in honor of the author and his famous play. The venue gives visitors a feel for what teahouses were like during Lao She's time. In addition to tea tasting and traditional snacks, the Lao She Teahouse also has nightly performances at 7:50 p.m., such as Beijing Opera, crosstalk and kungfu, as well as the occasional performance of Teahouse.

Pearl Buck's Zhenjiang

Missionary Zeal
The daughter of American missionaries, Pearl Buck left the U.S. when she was only 3 months old and moved with her family to Zhenjiang, a small town on the Yangtze River which she would later call her "Chinese homeland." Through her many books, The Good Earth being the most famous, Buck brought the realities of Chinese life to an American public which knew almost nothing of the distant country. Although in China her works were dismissed as bourgeois and outdated for much of the twentieth century, she is now celebrated as one of the few writers, Chinese or foreign, to record traditional rural Chinese life in detail. The house where Buck lived until she was 18 has been renovated into a museum about her life and work. It's open to the public Monday-Friday (6 Dengyuan Lu). Also consider traveling an hour to Nanjing where Buck taught English literature at Nanjing University. The Pearl S. Buck House is located at the campus' North Garden.

Eileen Chang's Shanghai

Decadent Romance
Eileen Chang, the popular author of Lust, Caution, was born in Shanghai in 1920. Although she left to attend university in Hong Kong, she returned home in 1942 because of the war. Living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Chang wrote two collections of short stories: Rumors and Legends. Chang is considered a symbol of old Shanghai, a city she loved for its streets, sounds and smells. Her stories capture the reality of upper middle class life under Japanese occupation. Visit Eddington House on 195 Changde Road, where Chang lived in a sixth floor apartment and wrote some of her best works. The historically-preserved building featured prominently in several of her novels, and bears a small plaque commemorating the author. To learn more about Shanghai during the 1930's and 40's, visit the Shanghai History Museum, located in the basement of the Pearl Tower, which has special exhibits on what life under occupation was like.

Rudyard Kipling's India

Jungle Book
Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling lived in India until the age of 6 when he was sent to England. He called Bombay the "mother of cities to me" and was distressed to leave it, much like the little boy in his story "Ba Ba Black Sheep." Kipling hated life in Europe and returned to the subcontinent at the first opportunity, working in many cities across India and present-day Pakistan. Visit Kipling's birthplace, a bungalow on the campus of the Sir JJ Institute of Applied Art, which is being transformed into a museum of Kipling memorabilia set to open in 2009. North of the school, the bustling Crawford Market bears a frieze above the entrance and an elaborate fountain, both designed by Rudyard's father. A day from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to Jabalpur and then another six hours by bus gets you to the Kanha National Park, an immense nature reserve which inspired Kipling to write The Jungle Book, his most widely-read work.

by Sienna Parulis-Cook