| "For me, Khotan, a city along the sourthern rim of the great Takla Makan
desert was the Platonic ideal of remoteness. 'This is a place where you
can experience all of the gratification and dislocation of a life spent
avoiding attachment.' But Khotan was a major historic crossroads, the
place where Buddhism first came to China; the place where the closely
guarded secret of the manufacture of silk was smuggled to the West; the
place where Hsuan Tsang spent several months waiting for permission from
the Chinese emperor to return home after his seventeen years away. The
great British archeologist Aurel Stein excavated several sites near Khotan,
including an ancient Buddhist stupa called Rawak (meaning 'pavilion' in
the Uigur language) that Hsuan Tsang probably visited. We took a hike in
the desert to visit it ourselves, and found it an imposing ruin surrounded
by desolation." |
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