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: September 23, 2025) We’re viewing the surrounding desert from the summit of Yanguan Pass in Gansu Province. Somewhere beyond the northern horizon was a second outpost, Yumenguan, or Jade Gate Paas, through which some of China’s finest jade traveled from the kingdom of Khotan. The people of Khotan also had an equal passion for fine silk. As the story goes, it took a clever Princess to bring the secret of silk making from China to the rest of the world….
(Airdate: September 16, 2025) We’re at Gansu Province at Yanguan Pass. Until mondern times the Pass marked the westernmost outpost of the Chinese empire. One such attempt to further extend their dominion to the west was the establishment of Loulan, 400 kilometers to the west, in the middle of the forbidding waste of the Lop Desert. Two Buddhist travelers, as well as Marco Polo were successful in crossing this landscape, though all three were convinced the desert was haunted….
(Airdate: September 9. 2025) We’re at Yanguan Pass, 75 kilometers west of Danghuan. For centuries, the Chinese got their finest jade from the kingdom of Khotan, the capital of an oasis state on the southern branch of the Silk Road. The name of the place where the jade arrived became “Jade Gate Pass.”
(Airdate: September 2, 2025) We’re driving west from Dunhuang to the edge of the Chinese empire. We’ve visited the set built by the Japanese to film the movie “Dunhuang.” Fifteen kilometers later, we turned off the highway again and drove another two kilometers across the trackless Gobi to the edge of a rift valley. Steps led down to a series of caves overlooking the Dang River…..
(Airdate: August 26, 2025) In addition to the ancient Buddhist art of the Mogao Caves to the east, Dunhuang has a new attraction 20 kilometers to the west. It’s a model of an ancient Chinese city, built my a Japanese film company for use as a movie set. The Japanese never do anything halfway and they spent the equivalent of over a half million U.S. dollars making sure the set looked the part….
(Airdate: August 19, 2025) The town of Dunhuang was the fourth and westernmost of the major garrisons established along the Gansu Corridor 2100 years ago. In addition to guarding China’s western flank, Dunhuang was strategically located at the junction of the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road. Among the travelers arriving via the northern branch was the Buddhist translator Kumarajiva and his white horse….
(Airdate: 12, 2025) We’re still in Gansu Province and we’re visiting a lake in the Dunes south of Dunhuang. It’s called Crescent Lake, and the magical story behind its name goes like this….
(Airdate: August 5, 2025) We’re in the Oasis of Dunhuang, and we’ve been visiting the Mogao Caves, 25 kilometers to the southeast. The caves are located along a sandstone cliff at the eastern end of the Mingsha Sand Dunes. The dunes themselves are 40 kilometers long and 20 kilometers deep. Mingsha means “singing sand” and there’s a legend behind the name….
(Airdate; July 29, 2025) We’re in Gansu Province at the Mogao Caves, southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a cultural and religious crossroads on the Silk Road….Where, Whoops! The head of this statue is missing, and shouldn’t there be another kneeling statue on the other side of that Buddha? And why is that wall bare? The answer to most or all such questions is Langdon Warner, and Harvard University ’s Fogg Museum.
(Airdate: July 22, 2025) Between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries, Chinese and central-Asian artists covered the walls of the Mogao Caves with thousands off paintings, focusing on a variety of Buddhist subjects, especially the Buddha’s own life, or rather lives. The engine that drives Buddhist doctrine is the law of Karma, the law of cause and effect that extends for as many lifetimes that we live. In addition to the Buddha’s life, another theme that appears in many caves is the Buddhist’s vision of paradise, in particular the western paradise of Amina Buddha….
