Old Silk Road

Colin Thubron is a travel writer I have not read before, although I have heard of very good reviews of his writing.  I have almost finished Shadow of the Silk Road, which  was published last year.  The Silk Road has many routes, and many myths, but he journeys from Xian in central China into Central Asia and out to the Mediterranean through Iran and eventually Syria.  I have an interest in this route from long ago, reinforced by my time in Afghanistan, but the main reason I read this (apart from the 3 for 2 offer!) was his reputation as a writer.  The journey is a little disjointed, and he spends much more time in China than anywhere else, and the leisurely pace of the first half of the journey is slightly lost as he goes on into Central Asia and beyond.  In addition, he had to skip Afghanistan because of the war against the Taliban, so he flew back and did that section later - which must have been very frustrating.

His writing is very fine, elegiac and haunting on occasion, pleasantly down to earth on others.  He takes travelling seriously, learning Mandarin and Russian for different trips (both useful on this one) and this gives him an edge over many others.  He has a powerful historical sensibility, and he tells you much about cultures past and present, rather than filling pages with trivial incidents of the road.  But there is a lot of travelling narrative as well, meetings with locals, imprisonment because he could prove he hadn't been through an area with bird flu, a close run thing with death on the road, and so on.

I found the China section absolutely fascinating.  It's somewhere I haven't visited at all, and its so huge I suspect I would struggle to get under the skin in anything like the way Thubron has.  But he paints a very complex and rather disturbing picture.  On the historical front, it was interesting to hear how little homogeneity there is amongst the Chinese people, how they have often been invaded and absorbed their invaders into their Chinese-ness - but how sometimes, the invaders have powerful identities persisting until now.  There are many minorities in the north who feel other - Uzbeks, for example - and who are impatient with the Chinese myth and the rule of Peking.  A wonderful illustration of this is the Great Wall - it is a long way from the current border in many places.  But he emphasises cross cultural contacts - not just the Marco Polos, but regular trade over centuries, and the exporting - often involuntarily - of the secrets of paper making, silk, and gunpowder.  And there are haunting, exciting tales of Roman soldiers in the north west of China, occasional finds of coins, stories of Chinese mercenaries who spoke unknown tongues but stormed city gates under the famous tortoise of Rome, with its great oblong shields.  And, every now and then, there are men and women who have round eyes, blue eyes, fair hair - something I saw in Afghanistan, where it was attributed to Alexander the Great's troops, or to more modern Russian ones - probably with some truth in both cases.

But there was a sinister, modern theme, too - of headlong development, of mass movement of Chinese into other ethnic areas, of unsympathetic environmental, social and industrial policies.  China is so vast, much must remain, but Thubron's account made me want to leap on a plane and see China before it is concreted over and the cultural variety forcibly discarded. 

A fascinating book - I'd recommend it on China more than on the other areas, but I'd very readily read Thubron again.

Comments

[Equiano]

Wonderful post - makes me want to run out and read him immediately. Thubron is one of those I've always meant to read, and have yet to begin. I love excellent travel writing where, more than just a description of encounters, you also get an approachable great sweep of history. I thought Michael Wood was good at that too with his recent series on THE STORY OF INDIA - he kept explaining what was happening concurrently in other parts of the world (like China), which helps to slot things in place like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

[Peter the flautist]

The cat still lurks in the darkest shadows ... My wife and son went to see the BM exhibition of the terracotta army before Christmas. All pre-booked tickets sold out months ago, but they were releasing about 300 per day if you queued up in the morning before it opened. They got there one hour before opening time and were rewarded with two tickets. They both thought it a fabulous exhibition.

[glo]

You can easily visit a small part of China's heritage without leaving London if you go to the British Museum. They are displaying the famous Chinese terracotta army until April 6th. I guess you know it already. Don't miss to tell us if you go. I saw it a few years ago and I highly recommend it.
I can even give you the link to their website, in typical Dark Puss fashion...
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/all_current_exhibitions/the_first_emperor.aspx

By the by, no news from our 'deer-est' cat lately?