Frontiers of Heaven : Journey Beyond the Great Wall
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For the Chinese, the Great Wall defined a psychological frontier. Within it lay the Celestial Kingdom, the compass of all civilization. Beyond lay a barbarian world of chaos and exile. Chinese journeys to the west, along the ancient Silk Road, were passages into the unknown, often into legend. Today the great western province of Xinjiang is still a land of exile, the destination of soldiers, reluctant settlers, political prisoners and disgraced officials. Following in their wake, Stanley Stewart's journey takes him halfway across Asia, from Shanghai to the banks of the Indus. He passes through the heartlands of China, beyond the Great Wall and into the wilds of Tartary. He crosses the Gobi and the Taklamakan deserts to the high passes of the Pamirs and the Karakorams. Along the way, he meets the modern Chinese for whom these regions beyond the Wall still hold the same morbid fascination.
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In the early 1990's, Stewart travels from Shanghai, up the Yangtse, to Xi'an, then along the silk road through to Kashgar, and on into Pakistan. I enjoy his writing style - articulate and well balanced with history, descriptions of places and interactions with people, and in good humour.
“In the southern suburbs of Xi'an stands the Big Goose Pagoda, so named because its namesake in India marked the spot where a dead goose fell out of the sky. This must be a fairly routine event for dead geese, but the monks who witnessed it demise, possibly light headed from chanting, decided the ex-goose was a saint and set about building. It is the kind of episode that can give religion a bad name.” P54
“I arrived in the village just as two sheep were being slaughtered, and I though, as their glazed eyes fixed on mine, how strange it was that their last glimpse of the world should be a foreigner in a brown trilby. Despite this shock, they went quietly.” P195/196
Worth reading for there sorts of paragraphs alone.
