Chapter VI Summary

Chapter Six continues as the author Sebald leaves the town of Southwold, where he crosses the river Blythe and travels through Walberswick to Dunwich, a coastal walk that takes him out onto the dunes and heaths that surround the empty shoreline of that area.

Crossing the small bridge over the Blythe the author discovers a tiny serviceable carriage, painted over but still carrying with it the discernible crest of the Imperial Court of China. Local legend has it that it was once one of the trains that the Royal Emperor and Dowager Empress of China themselves used, and somehow has ended up as a tiny local line commuter here in east Anglia.

This discovery leads the author to think about Empires, and the Chinese Empire in particular. He thinks about his own investigations about the fall of China, shortly after the...