This is Chris Bricker, and I’m thrilled to introduce you to Bill Porter – or Red Pine – one of the world’s finest translators of Chinese Poetry and religious texts. For those of you who already know him, and those of you who will get to know him, he prefers to just being your neighbor Bill Porter. Each week, Bill will bring you a series of enticing installments that we’re calling A Journey Along the Silk Road. So sit back and enjoy the journey, every Tuesday at approximately 5:20 and Friday at approximately 12:15. And lose yourself in the mystery of the Silk Road!
(Airdate: November 26, 2024) We’re in Gansu Province, and we’ve just arrived in the town of Wuwei.
(Airdate: November 19, 2024) It was a pleasant enough six-hour ride through rolling red mountains and brown valleys.
(Airdate: November 12, 2024) Wuwei looks like a Silk Road City—flat and dusty. But unlike most other Silk Road cities, Wuwei is Chinese, and has the typical military layout of a garrison town. In fact, it was the first of four major military garrisons established in the Gansu Corridor during the Han Dynasty. We dropped our gear at a seedy hotel and rented bicycles.
(Airdate: November 5, 2024) After a trip to the Tibetan center of Labrang, we’re back in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province. Lanzhou has never been renowned for its beauty, and it’s sliding fast toward the ugly end of the scale. Still, there are a few places worth visiting while we await the next bus out of town—Five Spring Mountain Park, and across the Yellow River, the White Pagoda, both full of history and legend.
(Airdate: October 28, 2024) We’re in Gansu Province at the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Labrang, a seven hour bus ride south the Linxia. Most of the people who visit Labrang are Tibetan pilgrims, but Chinese and an occasional Western tourist or two also make the trek.
(Airdate: October 22, 2024) We’re in Gansu Province at the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Labrang, a seven hour bus ride south the Linxia. Most of the people who visit Labrang are Tibetan pilgrims, but Chinese and an occasional Western tourist or two also make the trek.
(Airdate: October 15, 2024) We’re traveling south of Lanzhou and Linxia, and after a long, long bus ride we’ve finally arrived at Xiahe and to our destination, the Tibetan Buddhist complex of Labrang, one of the most important training centers outside Tibet.
(Airdate: October 15, 2024) Linxia is the area where much of the painted pottery in the Gansu Provincial Museum was unearthed. Until about a thousand years ago, Linxia, and not Lanzhou, was the major focus of Silk Road trade in this part of China….
(Airdate: October 8, 2024) In addition to the great repository of Buddhist art in the Bingling Caves on the reservoir’s west shore, we’re also visiting the living repository of Islamic culture in the town of Linxia on the east shore. Among the Muslim groups that have called the Linxia area their home, one group in particular has a story that’s especially enlightening….
(Airdate: October 1, 2024) We’ve discovered that at the mouth of the gorge that leads to the Bingling Caves, there was once a stone bridge that led across the Yellow River to the town of Linxia, 20 kilometers to the east. The Linxia area is known as one of the oldest known settlements in China. Just outside of Linxia, archeologists have discovered a 5000 year old village….
