Lost On Planet China: One Man's Attempt To Understand The World's Most Mystifying Nation - Plot & Excerpts
Imagine a world inhabited by Sogdians, Gokturks, Ferghanians, Parthians, Bactrians, Nabataeans, Samanids, and other civilizations now lost to us, a world of traders and conquerors, missionaries and zealots, poets and muses, traversing the vast distances of Eurasia, trading the gold of Rome for the silk of Xi’an. There were hundreds of trails from the Mediterranean to China that would collectively become known as the Silk Road, lonesome paths over treacherous passes and barren deserts upon which civilizations rose and fell. One such path had skirted the vast desolation of the Taklamakan Desert in northern China and made its way to the town of Dunhuang, near the splendid Mogao Caves, where for centuries Buddhist monks had carved and painted scenes of wonder and devotion, a vast tomb of extraordinary artwork that for centuries lay lost and forgotten. Flying in, I could see how this could happen, this losing of one of the great repositories of ancient art. The Mogao Caves lie at the very edge of the Taklamakan Desert, an enormous, expanding emptiness fringed by the soaring Kunlun Mountains.
What do You think about Lost On Planet China: One Man's Attempt To Understand The World's Most Mystifying Nation?
