Xinjiang - The Silk Road: Islam's Overland Route to China - Hardcover

Yung, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195841212 ISBN 13: 9780195841213

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

Synopsis

In this superb photographic study, film-maker Peter Yung presents a breath-taking view of one of the most exotic areas of China: Xinjiang province, the westernmost region of the country. It was here, over 2,000 years ago, that the Silk Road first linked China to the outside world. Once the main thoroughfare for the exchange of goods, culture and art between China, the Middle East and Europe, it was also along this route that the great religions of Buddhism and later Islam were to enter China. Even today, Xinjiang is still a stronghold of Islam.
Yung has had the rare opportunity to travel extensively throughout Xinjiang and to penetrate some of its remotest landscape, dominated by vast expanses of desert and spectacular mountain ranges, but also the colorful lifestyles of its minorities' population. The province is home to over ten different tribes, as well as Han Chinese, and in a brief but fascinating text, he describes the rich history and customs of the Uygur people and the nomadic Kazak and Tajik.

About this title

About the Author

About the author:
Peter Yung Wai-chuen, is a Hong Kong-based photographer and film-maker. He has directed both documentary and feature films and also held several exhibitions of his photographs.

Reviews

As a filmmaker, Yung penetrated the "multi-national, multi-religious and multi-lingual" Xinjiang province in western China and traveled the region's Silk Road, the ancient conduit for goods, art and religion between China, the Middle East and Europe. The awesome natural scenery of deserts and mountain ranges is captured in native myths as well as in Yung's color photographs, and readers can view the Heavenly Lake where the Fairy Queen of the West is said to have washed her feet. Xinjiang is a Moslem stronghold, and the work features a number of mosques, decorated with engraved pillars, geometric carvings and blue, gold and green ceramic-tiled mosaics. Unfortunately, the volume is poorly organized, and the color pictures are lumped together rather than adjacent to corresponding narrative. Readers will espy the diversity and charm of China's minority tribes (e.g., the nomadic Kazaks, or Cossaks, and Tajiks) but ultimately will confuse their colorful customs, dress and architecture.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From ancient times the Xinjiang province in Western China has served as a conduit for cultural exchange between Central Asia and the West. Filmmaker Yung has photographed this area extensively for 10 years. He captures a huge land of southern desert and frigid north mountains, of warm, friendly people, in photographs of such clarity and depth you could almost step into them. Colorful pictures of daily lifemen getting haircuts, children in street performancevie with breath-catching views of rugged mountains. There is text enough to give the uninitiated a frame on which to hang these stunning images. For photography collections and, even more, China collections. Johanna Ezell, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Mont Alto
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195841212
• ISBN 13: 9780195841213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160