Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

Shuyun was born to zealous communist parents in the 1960s; but a great influence in her childhood was a beloved maternal grandmother who lived with them and who was a devout, though illiterate, Buddhist. During the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), the Red Guards staged bonfires of books, and the grandmother rescued from the pile a book of comic strips for her granddaughter. It depicted the legend of the Monkey King who protected an early 7th century Chinese Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, on an arduous 18 year journey from China to India and back, to bring back to China 657 Buddhist sutras from India. Shuyun loved the tale. She learnt that the Monkey King was legend, but that the journey of Xuanzang had really happened. The Cultural Revolution ended; Mao died; the open practice of Buddhism was grudgingly permitted again. Shuyun was able to go to Beijing University in 1982, and then, in 1986, to Oxford. She married an Englishman and made her home in England; she became a documentary film maker with the BBC; but the story of Xuanzang never ceased to haunt her. Ever since she had lost her teenage faith in Communism, she had felt that `something was missing'. In 1999 she decided to travel in the monk's footsteps, though she would take one year instead of eighteen; and this book is built around an account of that pilgrimage. The immense roundabout route, starting in Xian in Northern China, was through Xinjiang (Sinkiang), along part of the Silk Road, through the blistering Gobi Desert, and eventually enters India through the North-West frontier. Xuangzang faced the danger of avalanches as he crossed the passes in the frozen Heavenly Mountains into what is now Kyrgyzstan but was then ruled by the Great Khan of the Western Turks. From there he had travelled on through what is today Uzbekistan and then Afghanistan; but Shuyun was refused an Uzbek visa and could not travel through Afghanistan anyway. In Xuangzang's time Afghanistan had been a devoutly Buddhist area, but it was now run by the Taliban who would, within a year or two, destroy the great Buddhas of Bamiyan and every other Buddhist image in the country. So Shuyun flew direct to Peshawar, just inside Pakistan, to rejoin Xuangzang's route. And from there she at last entered India. From now on we get rather more about the history of Buddhism than we have had so far, though in a rather unsystematic and unchronological way, dictated by the order in which Shuyun visits Buddhist landmarks. For example, her first major halt in India was Nalanda, the great Buddhist centre where Yogakara Buddhism was founded some seven centuries after the Buddha's death. Her next visit, to near-by Bodh Gaya, takes us back to the Buddha's own life-time: it was there where the Buddha had found enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. Xuanzang spent five years in Nalanda, mastering Sanskrit and translating sutras into Chinese, steeping himself in the doctrines of the different Buddhist schools before embrac

These days, it's only too common for us to read books about Chinese who had a hard time living under Mao's reign in China. After a while, everything became a cliche and it became all too difficult to have empathy for them somewhat. This book was a bit like that but it didn't delve in that for too long. Rather, it touched upon the Monkey King story, a fable that Chinese had been brought up with including myself. What I didn't know then was it's actually based upon a true event, the monk himself, XuanZhang. The rest of the fable was naturally dramatised to captivate people's interest and to transport listener's from turbulence and chaos of the time. It's not a mean feat for a monk to defy the Chinese Empire and to head to India to get himself more immersed in Buddhism and to bring sutras and other relevant items back to somehow "enlighten" his people. The journey itself took 18 years and nobody could brag to accumulate so much mileage in that period of time and to actually translate so many sutras into Chinese. XuanZhang would have inducted himself into the World Records of Fame. In that aspect, this book became a "Lonely Planet" book of his time as XuanZhang jotted down of his minute observations of the places that he had been. It then also became an adventure book describing how he overcame avalanche, appeasing robbers, survived in the desert for 4 days without water. Mark Burnett of "Apprentice" fame would have made a reality TV show based on him!!! Then, there's a bit of anthropology going on as the writer tackled to dissect what made XuanZhang the person that he was. Last but not least, the writer also endeavoured to become Jonathan Spence as she discussed about the Chinese Empire, and political mood of the time. There was also mentioning of grave diggers as well, and many of them happened to be Westerners who "ransacked" the historical places rather than getting the pieces from proper channels. Anyway, it's quite ironic to note that some German archealogists commented that they did China a favour by bringing them to German museum for perservation only to have them annihilated into pieces when the Allies bombed Germany during World War 2. Once we engaged into this book, we would find the present time is strikingly similar to the past. Life and death is truly a hair brush away. In all these aspects, this book is really Jack of trade, master of none. Whilst there's no denying that this book tackles a rather difficult topic, I sincerely think that the author should keep her chin high for having the courage to carrying such a complicated task with such aplomb. A rather refreshing book to read and good for self-knowledge. Commendable reading.