Electric outlets in China

There are several transliteration systems in use when transcribing Chinese into English and other western languages. The two most common are Pinyin and Wade-Giles. Although Pinyin is the preferred transcription language today, many older references used Wade-Giles. To help you with the various Chinese terms and names (for example: Ch'in in Wade-Giles is Qin in Pinyin), here is a Pinyin-WG conversion table.

Our Overall Guidebook:
Bonavia, Judy. The Silk Road: From Xi'an to Kashgar. 8th Edition. Hong Kong: Odyssey Books, 2007.

Best Background Reading:
Boulnois, Luce. Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants on the Silk Road. Translated by Helen Loveday. Odyssey Books, 2004.

Bulliet, Richard. The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, Mass, 1975.

Cameron, Nigel. Barbarians and Mandarins: Thirteen Centuries of Western Travellers in China. NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.

DeSilva, Anil. The Art of Chinese Landscape Painting in the Caves of Tun-Huang. NY: Crown, 1964.

Dillon, Michael. Xinjiang: China's Muslim Far Northwest. Durham East-Asia Series. NY: Routledge Curzon, 2003.

Dromp, Michael R. Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History. Leiden: Brill, 2005.

Fleming, Peter. News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir. London: Jonathan Cape, 1936.

Fleming, Peter. Travels in Tartary. London: Jonathan Cape, 1934.

Gernet, Jacques. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries. Columbia: University Press, 1995. (Expecially recommended for its Dunhuang document translations)

Ghose, Rajeshwari. In the Footsteps of Buddha: An Iconic Journey from india to China. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Hedin, Sven Anders. The Silk Road. Translation of: Sidenvagen. London: Routledge, 1938.

Hopkirk, Peter. Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.

Kessler, Adam T. Empires Beyond the Great Wall: The Heritage of Genghis Khan. Los Angeles, Cal.: Natural History Museum of Los AAngeles County, 1993. (Especially Chapter 4 on the Liao, 5 on the Tanguts and 6 on the Mongols)

Kuzmina, E. E. The Prehistory of the Silk Road. Edited by Victor H. Mair. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Lattimorre, Owen. High Tartary. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1930.

Le Coq, Albert von. Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan. (Trans. Barwell, Anna). Translation of Auf Hellas spuren in Ostturkistan. London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1928.

Macartney, Catherine, Lady. An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan. Originally published in London (Ernest Benn, 1931). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Mackerras, Colin. The Uighur Empire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. (Also see below, Sinor, Denis, Editor)

Man, John. The Great Wall. Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press, 2008. (Easy-to-read modern travelogue)

Rice, Tamara Talbot. Ancient Arts of Central Asia. New York: Praeger, 1965.

Schafer, Edward H. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics. California: U. of Caliornia Press, 1985. For that matter, anything written by Edward Schafer.

Sinor, Denis, Ed. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Especially Chapter 12 on the Uighurs written by Colin Mackerras.

So, Jenny F. and Emma C. Bunker. Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1995. (Excellent introduction to China's northern neighbors and their art; an exhibition catalogue)

Stein, Aurel. Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan. 2 volumes. reprint Delhi: Print House, 1998. (Reprint of the original from Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907)

Stein, Aurel. Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal Narrative of Explorations in Central Asia and Western Most China. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1912 but numerous inexpensive reprints.

Thubron, Colin. Shadow of the Silk Road. London: Chatto & Windus, 2006.

Tucker, Jonathan. The Silk Road: Art and History. Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2003.

Waldron, Arthur. The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Whitfield, Roderick; Whitfield, Susan; Agnew, Neville. Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and history on the Silk Road. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2001.

Whitfield, Roderick and Farrer, Anne. Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route. London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1990.

Whitfield, Susan. Life along the Silk Road. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1999.

Wood, Frances. The Silk Road: Two Thousand years in the heart of Asia. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2003.

Wood, Frances. The Silk Road. London: Folio Society, 2002.

Whitfield, Susan & Sims-Williams, Ursula, ed. The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War & Faith. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2004.

Wriggins, Sally Hovey. Xuanzang: A Buddhist pilgrim on the Silk Road. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. [alternatively her work: The Silk Road journey with Xuanzang, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2004]

For a more in-depth look at some special topics:

Cockburn, A.; Cockburn, E. Reyman, T. Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Prerss, 1998.

DeWeese, Devin. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition. Pennsylvania: University Park, 1994

Mallory, J. P.; Mair, Victor H. The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mysteries of the earliest peoples of the West. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Waley-Cohen, Joanna. Exile in Mid-Qing China: Banishment to Xinjiang 1758-1820. Yale University Press, 1991.

Wang, Eugene Y. Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China. University of Washington Press, 2007. [A wall-by-wall guide to some of the most important Dunhuang caves, correlating the fresco murals with the text of the Lotus Sutra.]

An excellent source of scholarly articles on Asia, history, art, archaeology and related topics can be found at the Singapore National Library digital library. Go to www.nlb.gov.sg. In the left-hand column choose "National Library". On that new page, click on the E-RESOURCES menu item. Then under "Login" click on "Register" and follow the instructions. Access is open and free to all residents of Singapore. Once you have a username and password, go back to the E-RESOURCES page and under "Login" click on "Login". Log in to bring up a menu "By A-Z" and select the letter "J". Find JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive and click in. Just click "ignore" or "cancel" on any "certificate warnings" that may appear, then fill in your key search words to "search the collections". User tip: When you find an article you want to read, select "Download pdf" to save it on your hard drive to read (and re-read) at your leisure. This is one of the finest resources you'll ever need, and it's free courtesy of Singapore's National Library. Thank you NLB!

An excellent overview of the current historical/cultural tourism sites and challenges of Xinjiang

The ultimate Silk Road site: International Dunhuang Project

And another excellent Silk Road site, the Digital Silk Road Site, full of excerpts from rare books, excellent texts, historic photographs and maps, Stein's placename database, a database of Buddhist cave temples in China +++

http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/

Overview of the history of the Uighurs during the T'ang Dynasty by Colin Mackerras, a leading authority on the Uighurs and Steppe peoples

An excellent article by our very own Tansen Sen on the three best-known Chinese Pilgrims: Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing

An illustrated article on the appearance of the sun and wind gods in the caves of Kizil

http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/silkroad.htm

http://www.thebritishmuseum.net/thesilkroad/

You Tube: Marco Polo in Xinjiang

Everything you need to know about Parthia

An excellent article on the Sun and Wind Gods as seen in the Kizil Caves

The Silk Road: An e-history

The School of Russian and Asian Studies' site on Central Asia

The Mongols and the Silk Road

Sogdians in China and another article on Sogdian burial practices

Everything you need to know about Bactrian (two-hump) camels