The Silk Road: Taking the Bus to Pakistan

by Bill Porter

Overview

To travel upon the Silk Road is to travel through history. Millennia older than California's Camino Real, and perhaps even a few years senior to the roads of the Roman Empire, the Silk Road is a network of routes stretching from delta towns of China all the way to the Mediterranean Sea - a cultural highway considered to be essential to the development of some of the world's oldest civilizations. It was upon this road that that Chinese silk traveled and was exchanged for incense, precious stones, and gold from India, the Middle East and as far the Mediterranean, contributing to the great tradition of commercial and idea exchange along the way.

In the fall of 1992, celebrated translator, writer, and scholar Bill Porter left his home in Hong Kong and decided to travel from China to Pakistan by way of this famous and often treacherous Silk Road. Equipped with a plastic bottle of whiskey, needle-nose pliers, and the companionship of an old friend, Porter embarks upon the journey on the anniversary of Hong Kong's liberation from the Japanese after World War II and concludes in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, at the end of the monsoon season. Weaving witty travel anecdotes with the history and fantastical mythology of China and the surrounding regions, Porter exposes a world of card-sharks, unheard-of ethnic minorities, terracotta soldiers, nuclear experiments in the desert, emperors falling in love with bathing maidens, monks with miracle tongues, and a giant Buddha relaxing to music played by an invisible band.

The Silk Road is the second of a three-book memoir series about Porter's travels in and around China to be published by Counterpoint. With an eye for cultural idiosyncrasies and a vast knowledge of history, Porter continues to make with his mark as an expert and travel writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619027107
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,105,974
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Bill Porter (aka "Red Pine") is widely recognized as one of the world's preeminent translators of Chinese poetry and religious texts; he assumes the pen name "Red Pine" for his translations.

Writing as Red Pine, he was the first translator to ever translate the entirety of Han-shan's oeurve into English, published as The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. Red Pine was also the first to translate into English the entirely of The Poems of the Masters. He has also translated several of the major Buddhist sutras, including the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Platform Sutra.

Table of Contents

Map 3

1 Starting Out 5

2 Sian 11

3 Leaving Town 17

4 Tienshui 33

5 Lanchou 40

6 Wuwei 47

7 The Corridor 54

8 Onward 63

9 Tunhuang 74

10 Hami 92

11 Turfan 103

12 Urumchi 125

13 Yining 143

14 Bayanbulak 153

15 Kucha 166

16 AKSU 179

17 Kashgar 188

18 The Road to Tashkorgan 202

19 The Khunjerab Pass 214

20 Shangri-la 230

21 Gilgit 238

22 Islamabad 246

Lexicon 263

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2018 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation

From the Publisher

2015-11-18
In this latest installment in his decadeslong journey through China, Porter (South of the Clouds, 2015, etc.) wanders westward into the mountains, never quite courting danger, never quite avoiding it. How does one pack for a trip along what the Chinese traditionally called the Road to the West and Westerners the Silk Road? First, get a rucksack, not a pack with a rigid frame. Then put some whiskey in a flask and put the flask in the rucksack. "Once I had the pack and the whiskey out of the way," Porter, aka Red Pine, amiably writes, "the rest was easy: a couple changes of clothes, silk longjohns, a cashmere vest, a lightweight jacket, a wool hat and gloves." An extra stomach lining and a big shovel might have come in handy, as we learn, following Porter's travels from Xi'an into the desert and high country. Fortunately for Porter, though beset by some appallingly bad food, a goodly number of con artists, and a brush with death along a cliffside highway in the Karakoram, he had his wits with him, as well as a firm command of history and literature. Occasionally, his approach to all that learning is a little scattershot: the great Turkic conqueror Tamerlane turns up here and there (e.g., "if Tamerlane hadn't died, it's quite possible there would be more mosques today in China than temples") but sometimes as an afterthought and sometimes repetitively. Still, a little absentmindedness is fine, especially in so unflappable a travel guide. Porter is at his best when interpreting history, a touch less so when updating Michelin ("In addition to coffee and omelettes, John offered other Western favorites, like fried potatoes") along the way from the Yellow River to the Pakistani frontier. Fans of Owen Lattimore, The Road to Oxiana, Aurel Stein, and other like-minded ventures and adventurers will find Porter's latest a pleasure and an inspiration.

Kirkus Reviews