Shadow of the Silk Road is a phenomenal book. The author, British travel writer Colin Thubron, traveled from Xian, an ancient capital of China, to Antioch in Turkey along the silk road, blending broad historical knowledge with acute observations of contemporary life.Thubron speaks Mandarin and Russian, and was able therefore to speak directly with many of the people on his journey, at least until he arrived in Afghanistan. A theme throughout the book is the mix of peoples, with tribes and nations spanning the current political borders. Most of western China has been populated by Tibetans, Uighars, and other central Asian people for a very long time, and is only now being colonized by Chinese. The Chinese are hated by the native people because of the vast migrations that are underway. Native cultures are being subsumed by a Chinese industrial juggernaut. Old towns are being covered over by concrete and by soulless industrialization.The silk road was never a single road, but a kind of nervous system with two heads: one in China, one on the Mediterranean. It has existed in some form for nearly 3000 years. Silk began to appear in the Mediterranean by at least 500 B.C.E., having been cultivated in China since 2000 B.C.E. And Greek and Roman images began appearing in China by about 300 B.C.E. No one person actually traveled the length of the silk road - in Thubron's words, no Chinese traders appeared on the Palatine to surprise native Romans. Instead, goods were transported by different traders via intermediaries along the route, enriching those intermediary cities in central Asia and Persia.Today, as ever, the route is dangerous and often isolated. Thubron traveled by train, bus, truck, private car, on foot, horseback, camelback, and only once by plane, across the northern section of Afghanistan, where no driver would go, with or without him. He was quarantined for a time because of the SARS virus, and had a few close calls when crossing borders.By the end of his long journey he was clearly ready to be done. He rushes through the last part of the trip, in southern Turkey, almost as an afterthought. After the long stretches of genuinely wild and dangerous travel, he seems not to have been aware of just how interesting a trip through Turkey would be for most of us.This book gave me a much clearer view of the geography and people of Asia than I had before. I would never want to retrace Thubron's journey, so reading about it is as close as I will get to experiencing central Asia and the silk road.
A stylistically murky journal of a frustrated search for old buildings.I read travel literature to learn about the ways of life of people I'm not likely to visit myself. Thubron has little interest in living people and no interest in stable cultures; his interest is in the silk-robed elites of the past and their monumental architecture.Those who like the misogynist Paul Theroux will probably like Thubron, although Thubron's style is more idiosyncratic and obscure. Unlike his "loved friend" Freya Stark, he apparently feels that you should never say something clearly when you can say it tentatively, obliquely or ambiguously. You can seldom tell what he's seeing because he writes in fear of passive description. Engaged in a cliche-ridden, melodramatic, metaphorical animation of landscape, he relentlessly abuses verbs and turns nouns into nonexistent verbs and adjectives: "new-fallen snow came lapping against the road…the villages, still bathed in apple orchards, the rounded minarets of Iran had sharpened to Ottoman daggers…we twisted southwest into the gorges…the limestone cliffs came crashing down a thousand feet to the river, while the road writhed around them, and the froth of sepia water rushed south…police and military barriers thickened…they peppered him with questions…mountains parted intermittently…the road became a pot-holed track" - and this in only two short paragraphs. Among his favorites are the anachronistic "petering out," the effete "louring," and the old journalistic cliche, "burgeoning." You keep hoping he'll finally arrive in a town, because his landscape descriptions can make you nauseous.Still, as with Theroux, you've got to admire his courage and fortitude, venturing on a miserable and dangerous solo journey in his late 60s. But instead of seeking out and living with self-sufficient country people like Stark did in her travels, Thubron stays mostly alone in towns, in inns and hotels, only venturing off the highway in search of a ruin, and his focus on the highway ensures that nearly all the people he encounters will be hustlers and the displaced, disenfranchised, and alienated.
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I do not read a lot of travel narratives, but now and then I select one because each page I open while thumbing through (or previewing on Amazon) holds something interesting and makes me want to keep on reading. This book passed my small test, and I was not disappointed.Many others have praised Thubron's way with words. I would join them but for a small caveat: sometimes he overdoes it. Sometimes the poetry overexerts itself and threatens to smother the prose. But not too often!This was a long journey -- more than 5,000 miles overland, alone, and with little reliable transportation. Thubron was aided by his fluency in both Mandarin and Russian. He introduces us to several unique people along the way, and I'd say those are some of the most enjoyable parts of his story -- but I also enjoyed very much his skillful weaving of historic background alongside his bumping on buses, his climbing up cliff faces to gain access to ancient caves, his attempts to sleep in inhospitable rooms.Thubron reveals to us some aspects of Chinese hegemony that are rarely uncovered in Western media. Of particular interest to me were his experiences among the Uighurs, a traditionally Muslim ethic group whose lands lie on vast oil reserves within China's borders. I was also fascinated by his days spent in Iran and Afghanistan, where he shows a few slices of daily life wholly apart from war and military maneuvers.There's not much of a personal nature in this account -- I knew little more about Thubron when I finished than when I had started. This didn't bother me while I was reading, and I would guess it was Thubron's intention to assert himself as little as possible. Instead he lets the rugged scenery, the history, and the residents of these unfamiliar lands speak mostly for themselves.I also recommend this beautifully illustrated and very readable history: The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia.
—Mindy McAdams
Thubron captures a panoply of voices from along the silk road, reflecting all the ethnicities that have intermixed through the last 3,000 years as traders and conquerors moved back and forth. He is an amazingly brave man to have moved through the deserts and battlegrounds of the Uigars, Iraquis and Iranians with nothing but a rucksack, some maps and whatever drivers and translators he could pick up along the way. But this made him approachable, and he had Russian and at least rudimentary other languages that helped bridge the way to sharing meals and stories with the people he met.At times the effort to capture the emptiness of the land was a little too traditional British poetic travel-talk, but mostly the writing is good. I think the best parts are the simple transcriptions of monologues by the indivdiuals he meets who are trying to survive the politics of the countries he passes through. Many are faithful Muslims who believe in the official version of the West that they are given. Others are restless for political change or relief from ethnic persecution.This is also an interesting book to read in counterpoint to Robert Byron’sjourney through some of the same area in the 1930s: The Road to Oxiana. Like Byron he organizes much of his journey so as to see architectural monuments in various states of ruin or veneration, but Byron did not mingle on such an individual level with everyday people, as I recall.
—Caroline
Pentru pasionaţii de istorie, geografie, călătorii, antropologie, istoria culturii şi a mentalităţilor sau istoria religiilor, Redescoperind Drumul Mătăsii. Din China şi munţii Asiei Centrale în Iran şi Turcia de Colin Thubron oferă o lectură densă, plină de cunoştinţe inedite din toate aceste domenii. Cartea se încadrează într-un gen literar pe cale de dispariţie sau care nici măcar nu a existat vreodată ca o categorie de sine stătătoare: o carte de călătorii care este şi ficţiune, poezie în acelaşi timp. Colin Thubron reuşeşte să fie obiectiv şi subiectiv deopotrivă: păstrează echidistanţa observatorului fără a sacrifica descrierile poetice, micile episoade de ficţiune pură, dialogurile sensibile sau grave, umorul fin.de la sursă: Colin Thubron – Redescoperind Drumul Mătăsii – SemneBune http://semnebune.ro/2014/colin-thubro...
—Semnebune
