When I told my mother about my plan, she exploded. Why was I going alone to those God-forsaken places in search of a man who died more than a thousand years ago? I must be out of my mind. Was I unhappy living in England? What was it for anyway? But she knew she could not stop me. I told her I would not be away for eighteen years. Many of the places Xuanzang visited no longer exist, or at least no one knows where they are; some, like Afghanistan, I could not visit. I would go only to the key places that mattered to him personally, and were important for the history of Buddhism. I would be travelling for no more than a year.
My little nephew Si Cong was also concerned. He had been completely gripped by yet another cartoon series of The Monkey King on television. It looked magnificent with the latest computer graphics and special effects. It was on every day at five o’clock when children came back from school. Would I have someone like the monkey to protect me? he asked me, while his eyes were fixed on the television. I said no. He quickly turned around. ‘What happens if you run into demons? They’re everywhere. Even the monkey can’t always beat them. You’ll be in big trouble.’ I told him the demons would not eat me because my flesh was not as tasty as the monk’s and it would not guarantee their longevity. He seemed relieved and went back to the magical world of The Monkey King.
It set me thinking, watching with him and looking at the steep mountains clad with snow, the deep turbulent rivers, the sandstorms that swept away everything in their path. Soon I would have to encounter them myself, not in fiction but in real life. I would pass through dangerous and strife-torn places; I might be robbed, or put in situations beyond my control. Whatever might happen, I would try to face it. Xuanzang would be my model and my guide.
Three Monks at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda
IN AUGUST 1999 I took a late-afternoon train from Handan, my home town, to Xian, the capital of the early emperors for much of the first millennium. It was where Xuanzang began and ended his travels. I was conscious that I was starting the most important journey of my life. But for the other people in my hard-sleeper compartment, the first order of business was food. As soon as the train started moving, the man opposite me produced a big plastic bag and unwrapped the contents. An amazing banquet slowly appeared: roast chicken, sausages, pot noodles, pickled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and dried melon seeds, apples, pears, bananas and six cans of beer. The Chinese have suffered so much from starvation and famine that eating is rarely far from their minds. Everyone followed suit. Before long, they were sharing food, finding out each other’s names, where they were going, and why.
Privacy is not a concept we understand in China. We have lived far too long on top of each other, as in this six-bunk compartment, off a narrow corridor without doors. Conversation reduces the tension and makes life tolerable, but it is not small talk; more like an interrogation. After ten years in England where you can choose to live and die without knowing your neighbours, I was uncomfortable with the intrusion. I took out a book about Xuanzang and tried to read, but that was no protection. A single woman travelling on her own makes her fellow-passengers curious. Whether for business or pleasure, the Chinese like to do it in groups. Xuanzang tried very hard to find companions, but in vain, owing to the emperor’s prohibition against travelling abroad. I had also asked several monks myself. They were over the moon; pilgrimage to the land of the Buddha was the dream of every Buddhist – they would even gain merit from it should they need it for their rebirth in the Western Paradise. And to follow in the footsteps of Master Xuanzang! He was a model for them. His indomitability was an inspiration for them in their struggle for enlightenment. Many of the sutras they read every day, their spiritual sustenance, were his translations. His selflessness in giving his life to spreading Buddhism, not seeking his own salvation, was the ideal of the Bodhisattva, and of all Chinese monks. And for me, to see their reactions, to hear their thoughts, to ponder their reflections and to ask them questions – I would have learned so much more and understood Xuanzang better. I was not so fortunate, oddly enough for the same reason as Xuanzang: Chinese monks were not allowed to go abroad, unless they were on an official mission.
The men and women in my compartment quickly determined they were all going to Xian for business: the men were in engineering and the women in quality control. Then they turned to quizzing me, firing rapid questions like well-trained detectives. Who are you? Where are you going? Why? I told them I was following Xuanzang. They fell silent for a moment, then erupted into questions.
‘You mean you are really following that monk in The Monkey King, the one who went to India? Are you really going all that way?’
I nodded.
‘Why? Are you a Buddhist?’
I had hardly finished answering him when the man sitting next to me put his hand on my forehead. I stiffened. ‘I want to see if you are running a fever,’ he said. His colleagues laughed and I relaxed.
‘If you really want to travel, why don’t you go to Europe, or America or Australia? I wouldn’t go to India if you paid me! It is so dirty, so poor, worse than China.’
‘If you want to write about Xuanzang, why don’t you talk to some academics in Xian and make it up? Do you really think all the scholars do such hard work? You must be joking.’
They went on for some time, trying to dissuade me. After the lights were switched off the woman above me knocked on the edge of my bunk. ‘You really shouldn’t make this trip,’ she said. ‘It’s too dangerous. Why don’t you join our group and have a good time in Xian?’
We arrived in Xian early next morning, by which point my companions seemed to have become used to the idea that I really was going on my journey. Perhaps they thought I was a bit crazy. The men all helped me with my luggage. I told them I could manage on my own. ‘Save your energy. You have a long way to go. You don’t have the Monkey King to help you. You must take care of yourself,’ they said, smiling and waving from the platform.
Just outside the railway station stands the old city wall. I asked the taxi-driver to take me first alongside the wall to the main North Gate. I sat in the front seat, keen to see everything. The wall is weighty and ancient, towering high above the car, and made me feel that once inside it, I would be safe, but also in a place of mystery, full of the secrets of the past. Most of the wall is seven hundred years old, part of it even older, going back another six hundred years to Xuanzang’s time. No other large Chinese city has anything comparable. Beijing’s, for example, was completely destroyed on Mao’s orders, to make way for a new ring-road.
The North Gate is vast, surmounted by a three-eaved tower. It was dark going through it; because of its dense traffic it took some minutes to emerge into the light, into the modern city. A wide boulevard leads to the Bell Tower at its centre. Every old Chinese city has one, or used to have one. From it the ancient city received its wake-up call at sunrise. It is an imposing sight, over a hundred feet high with its three flying rooftops and an arch at its base. But it was not what Xuanzang would have seen. Then, the imperial city stood within these walls, and extended well to the north, with all the palaces and buildings of government. He would have come here to ask for travel passes for his journey to India, but his monastery was beyond the southern wall, where the rest of the city lay.
Even the commoners’ city was spacious and grand in those days. Wide avenues ran north to south, crossed by boulevards east and west, dividing the capital into geometrical wards, which bore propitious names: Lustrous Virtue, Tranquil Way, Eternal Peace. Xian,