Blind Panic Summary and Analysis

Water spiraling down drains and telephone dials working backwards in New Zealand are disorienting, but China, where both operate as one assumes they should, is said to be utterly baffling, so Adams flies there uncomfortably. Carwardine asks why he buys so much duty-free aftershave. He has no answer. They go to China to see 200 reincarnations of a drowned princess, the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji. People along the 200-km. stretch of the noisy filthy river centered at Tongling in Anhui Province are trying to save the endangered animals. They first spend a few days acclimatizing in Beijing. Carwardine assumes they will not be able to meet with Prof. Zhou, the baiji expert in Nanjing, but keeps trying. As they visit the Great Wall, Adams recalls visiting the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto, Japan, and being assured that while it...