East is east...

Q. ...and west is west

A. And never the twain shall meet. Not strictly true, at least not since the earth ceased to be flat. Go far enough westwards and you'll arrive back at your starting point from an easterly direction. Still, Kipling's words - the quote is from his 'Ballad of East and West' - is a good metaphor to describe irreconcilable differences.

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Q. So, go west

A. To die. To go down with the setting sun. Also the title of a Village People song from 1979 - disinterred by the Pet Shop Boys in 1993 - which just might have suggested that going west, perhaps to San Francisco, could be good thing for a gay man to do.

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Q. The West

A. Western Europe, North America and any developed country which shares the capitalist vision - as long as they're predominantly inhabited by caucasians. So Australia and New Zealand might be considered 'western', being populated in the majority by white people, while that bastion of hyper-capitalism Singapore, the inhabitants of which are principally of Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic origin, is not, even though it's geographically further west - in traditional reckoning - than Australasia.

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Q. And the East

The Far East, although that term is no longer acceptable to many people because of its euro- or Western-centric bias. The concept only works if one assumes that the point from which things are measured is somewhere in Europe. Think about it: Europe is the 'Far East' as far as someone from Laos is concerned. Also refers to the former Soviet bloc.

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For Europeans, the east has always meant mystery, the exotic, the dangerous or the very, very foreign - don't forget that old adage, 'inscrutable Orientals'. Up until the 19th century the East meant the Levant, not any further. That was Asia or the Orient.

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Q. The Levant

A. From the French levant, rising. Where the sun rises. It is a term used to describe the eastern Mediterranean and what is now called the Middle East.

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith