Library

The New York Times best book of the year, Retracing the Road of Xuanzang, from China to India, an American journalist records a thousand-year journey through Central Asia. In 629 AD, Xuanzang's journey across icebergs and scorching deserts along the world's most important trade, conquest, and ideological route for thousands of years was an "ultimate journey" in search of the true meaning of Buddhism. More than 1,300 years later, the American sinologist Richard Bernstein did everything possible to follow Xuanzang's footsteps westward. Starting from Xi'an, it passes through the Silk Road oasis, climbs steep mountain passes, passes through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, arrives in India, and then turns back to China. Xuanzang's journey to the west was to solve the fundamental doubts of "hesitating while holding the scroll and holding the sutra"; Bernstein also tried to solve his own confusion, his Jewish identity, the crisis of middle age, the loneliness in silence... Dialogue with Xuanzang and history, he re-recognized and discovered himself.

The main issue discussed in this book is the policy choices of the United States in the face of the complex current situation in China after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945. The author believes that no matter what policy the United States adopted at that time, it was impossible to fundamentally change the direction of history. It is not the US policy that determines China's future outcome, but its own power in China. The United States, which has huge but not unlimited power, has never exercised decisive control over China.