“Shadows of the Silk Road” Review by LeeAnn Sharpe

“Shadows of the Silk Road” by Colin Thubron, 2007 HarperCollins Publishers
Review by LeeAnn Sharpe
“Shadow of the Silk Road” records 68-year-old Englishman Colin Thubron's journey along the greatest land route on earth, The Silk Road. In his 9th travel book Colin takes us along, without a camera, only his elegant prose to describe the land and people. From the heart of China, Xian, into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron travels for some seven thousand miles in eight months along routes he had been before many years ago.
“Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel,” reads the dust jacket. The contrast of then (his previous experiences) and now, examination of the ancient and current conditions, provide a glimpse of how history has treated this most ancient of lands and people.
Without a camera, Thubron must paint a picture for us to see what he sees and that is the beauty of his prose. You can see, hear, smell and taste all he experiences in explicit detail. And you hear the voices in his head as he senses danger and fear in this insanely dangerous part of the world. Language is seldom a barrier as his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him is intriguing. Speaking Mandarin, Russian or the mélange of the many tongues along the way, he always finds a translator and or driver willing to take the time with him to explore.
We learn through his discussions with the common people there has been good and bad in the changes they have seen. China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution, has cities with all of the trappings of Paris or Rome and other towns untouched by the modern world. It has people making it rich and others in extreme poverty. Religion all but extinguished in the past is resurging in unusual ways. It’s a society without a conscious as we know it in the west. All of the stereotypes of China are just that and totally out of step with the reality of China today. The internet has opened the world to China. A generation ready to abandon their own world for what they view as a better world are quick to jump aboard the consumer train. Change in China is at an extremely fast pace with markets opened to her commodities worldwide.
The former Soviet held countries are faced with false nationalisms and an identity crisis on so many fronts. Ethnically Chinese intermixed with races of multiple invasions though the centuries from Alexander’s armies to Tamerlane and Genghis Kahn. Since the Soviet withdraw, factories have closed and workers are unemployed. On some level people felt better off under Soviet occupation. They have found the cost of freedom leaves them hungry.
True boundaries are not political borders, but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. “It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment,” reads the book jacket. So true, as the people of this ancient world survive upheaval after upheaval and still manage to get up each morning and go about their lives. Few places are untouched by the prejudice of where their people came from, their religion, or their class.
“Shadow of the Silk Road “encounters Islamic countries in many forms. Some are seemingly hard line totally devout in public, yet speaking another line in private. The young are playing a waiting game until the old mullahs die off and they can effect real change. The extremists we hear about are a small minority in most Islamic countries. The majority of their “faithful” go through the motions, and follow the traditions not even knowing the words they pray.
The only shortcoming of Thubron’s book is the fate of women and children. They are absent for most part as is the case in most of the Islamic world. A strange man would not have access to women. We briefly encounter a few women of great strength and courage. But most are elusive.
Still this story was intriguing and insightful about a part of the world most of us will never experience. And as Thubron often found, is quickly fading, being erased by war, development, weather and time. It made me think how sad the world will be when we lose the uniqueness of all of the wonderful cultures of the past all being homonogized into a dull sameness. At least we will always have stories like these to remind us of the rich culture that once was the “Shadow of the Silk Road”.
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