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Book Review
He engages strangers along the way in conversation; fortunately, he speaks Mandarin and Russian, though there are many dialects even he does not know. Just looking at the maps that he includes is fascinating. The reader can follow along from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor to the Greek city of Antioch (now in Turkey.) He says that "Why?" is seldom asked in China. People are curious about his journey, but few ask. He tells us, "You go to touch on human identities, to people an empty map. You have a notion that this is the world's heart." He does to learn, and to tell us about it. Xian was once the greatest city in the world, he says, seeing the zenith and decline of the Tang dynasty. It tolerated the religions of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Manicheism, Taoism, and Confucianism, but by the tenth century it lay in ruins. "Silk Road" is a nineteenth century term, but silk was cultivated millenniums ago. When trade began along the road, silk did not go alone. Those going west also carried iron and bronze, lacquer work and ceramics, bring back artifacts in glass, gold, and silver, spices, fabrics, even fruits and flowers. Thubron traveled by train, local bus, donkey cart, and camel. He carried a light rucksack. He realized when he reached Antioch that his clothes were shabby and torn. He had fit well into the places he had traveled. His hotels were usually less than perfect. In some instances, he had been to places before and met old friends. He found China greatly changed, but still was questioned by plain clothes police. Not allowed into Tibet, he skirts the Gobi Desert on the way to Khotan. His journey is interrupted because of the SARS epidemic, and he is not always allowed to stay in a town or to travel as he had planned. All along the way, he describes the changing landscape in vivid terms that almost make the unwary reader want to go, too. Kyrgyzstan was closed to him at first, but as the epidemic receded, he hired a Land Rover to take him north through the mountains to Samarkand. He was able finally to go into Afghanistan, not a safe place, and then to Iran and Syria. He covered seven thousand miles in eight months. In addition to the scenery and the people, he relates historic facts and legends. He appends a Timeline of Events from 4000 B.C. to 2003 in China, Central Asia, Iran, and the West at the end of the book, which is very helpful. Amazingly, he was able to trace the many roads that make up the "Silk Road," writing an absorbing and complex story about the journey and the lands that he traveled through.
The Shadow of the Silk Road is available at the Mary Willis Library.
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