Gazing eastwards : of Buddhist monks and revolutionaries in China, 1957. / Romila Thapar.

Prelude to the journey
The journey begins
Moscow
Arrival at last Beijing
On the way to Xi' an
A brief side trip to the Lyuoyang Caves
Onwards to Lanzhou
In the train to Tian Shui, En route to Maijishan
On our way to the North from Tian Shui
Into the north at Jiu Quan
To the high point of the journey at Dunhuang
The start of the return journey via Yumen
Retracing out steps at Zheng Zhou
Retracing our steps at Zheng Zhou
On the train to Nanjing
Arrival in Nanjing
The one and only Shanghai
A weekend break in Hangchow
A summation in Beijing
All good things comes to an end in Canton

In 1957, renowned Indian historian Romila Thapar visited China, where, together with Sri Lankan art historian Anil de Silva, she worked at two cave sites that were the locations of Buddhist monasteries and shrines from the first millennium CE. The first site was the then lesser known Maijishan in north China, and the second was the famous site of Dunhuang on the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China. Now, decades later, she is supplementing the academic work that emerged from that trip with a captivating travelogue: Gazing Eastward takes readers back to midcentury China, through the observations that Thapar made in her diary during her time at the two archaeological sites and her trips there and to other sites. Traveling by train or truck, Thapar met people from throughout the country and all stations in society, from peasants on a cooperative farm to Chairman Mao himself. An enchanting document of a long-lost era, Gazing Eastward is a marvel, a richly observed work of travel writing that brings a time and a place fully to life.