22 reviewed Chengli and the Silk Road caravan by Hildi Kang
Review of 'Chengli and the Silk Road caravan' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Today there is a large ethnic Korean population in Kazakhstan and neighboring countries, the grandchildren of Koreans who once lived in the eastern portions of the USSR and who survived the brutal deportation inflicted on them by the NKVD on the orders of the madman Stalin. Today, Koryo-saram are said to be well-integrated with modern Kazakh society, members having reached high public and corporate offices.
The writer is a scholar of Korean studies, surely aware of this story despite its superficial improbability, has made a story that seeks to illustrate the day-by-day concrete reality of these tendrils of intertwinedness that are woven into societies of all ages. This tale imagines a caravan trek from Chang'an to Kashgar and using modern names, invoking the magnificent caves at Dunhuang, the wastes of the Taklamakan and Gobi, the legendary oasis kingdoms of Hami, Turpan, and Kucha, was a worthy complement to other perhaps …
Today there is a large ethnic Korean population in Kazakhstan and neighboring countries, the grandchildren of Koreans who once lived in the eastern portions of the USSR and who survived the brutal deportation inflicted on them by the NKVD on the orders of the madman Stalin. Today, Koryo-saram are said to be well-integrated with modern Kazakh society, members having reached high public and corporate offices.
The writer is a scholar of Korean studies, surely aware of this story despite its superficial improbability, has made a story that seeks to illustrate the day-by-day concrete reality of these tendrils of intertwinedness that are woven into societies of all ages. This tale imagines a caravan trek from Chang'an to Kashgar and using modern names, invoking the magnificent caves at Dunhuang, the wastes of the Taklamakan and Gobi, the legendary oasis kingdoms of Hami, Turpan, and Kucha, was a worthy complement to other perhaps more serious works I've read. Names like Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, & al. the Turks and Mongols, the Chinese and Persians, Bactria and Sogdiana, desert, mountain, and forest. The more academic work on these topics, written by people seeking to further a career impressing each other by using their knowledge to invent clever theories about the distant past, often lack the smells, the sameness, the ugly and sometimes warm humanity of reality that this story lives in.
A great project after reading this would be to make a cartographic representation of this journey using tools like D3.js or Google Earth.