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 24, 2024) The Bingling Caves are filled with some of the finest Buddhist sculptures in China, dating back to as much as sixteen hundred years ago. Like the caves of Maijishan outside Tianshii, they’re spread across a cliff face—only this particular cliff face is in a gorge, two hundred meters from the Yellow River….
(Airdate: September 17, 2024) We’re in Gansu Province and we’re visiting the Bingling Caves, 70 kilometers southwest of Lanzhou. After a two hour bus ride to the Liujiaxia Dam and Hydroelectric Station, we still had another three hour boat ride to the end of the Liujiaxia reservoir, filled by the Yellow River….
(Airdate: September 10, 2024) Lanzhou is the only city in China where foreigners are required to purchase travel insurance before they’re allowed to board a bus leaving town, but it’s a hassle running around trying to find the office that issues the necessary certificate…
(Airdate: September 3, 2024) We’re in Gsnsu province and we’ve just arrived in the provincial capital of Lanzhou. Lanzhou hugs both banks of the Yellow River for more than 20 kilometers, and after Xi’an it’s the second largest city on the Silk Road—a position of which it’s immensely proud. The week we arrived, the city was preparing for it’s first Silk Road Festival.…
(Airdate: August 28, 2024) Tianshui is truly a strange town! We’re waiting for the early morning express, and there isn’t a noodle stand in site, but several old ladies have set up basins on the station steps, and they’re waiting for us with towels and thermoses full of hot water. Well, the express heading west finally arrived and rescued us from the
enigma of Tianshui. Or perhaps “rescued” isn’t the right word….(August 20, 2024) We’ve been visiting the sites around the town of Tianshui, including the Buddhist Caves of Maijishan and the tomb of the Han Dynasty general Li Guong. Before we continue our journey on the train heading west, we should note that Tianshui has one more site that most visitors overlook….
(Airdate: August 13, 2024) We’re in Gansu Province in the town of Tianshui and we’re staying in a hotel about 20 kilometers west of town. The reason we’re staying here is that they have hot water, and our room looks out on Wenshan Hill and the grave of Li Guang one of the men responsible for bringing the Silk Road under Chinese control….
(Airdate: August 6, 2024) We’ve been visiting one of China’s greatest repositories of Buddhist art, on a mountain called Maijishan. We returned to Tianshii, too late to find a room in town. But it was just as well, none of the hotels in town had hot water anyway, and we wanted a bath….
(Airdate: July 30, 2024) We’re at the Buddhist caves of Maijishan, or “Wheatstack Mountain.” It’s not really a mountain. It’s a big monolith of red rock sticking out sticking out of the hills of the Qinling Mountains. But the calves are real, all 194 of them….
(Airdate: July 23, 2024 ) We’re in Gansu Province, about 60 kilometers southesst of Tianshui, and our minivan has dropped us off at the foot a peculiar looking mountain. It’s sheer on three sides, and from one angle, it looks like a stack of wheat….
