Noam Backner

A traveling seminar between text and place in the making of Mahayana Buddhism.

Our last spring tour between Beijing and Dunhuang ran through some of the most thrilling landmarks of early Buddhist history in west China, on its path to change the fate of east Asia as a whole.

In spring 2025 we crossed the Gansu corridor from Lanzhou to Dunhuang, reading the route through Buddhist caves, imperial frontier works, desert water systems and everyday kitchens.

Bingling Temple on the Yellow River, ruined watchtowers, the painted caves of Dunhuang and hand-pulled noodles revealed one corridor carrying sacred art, state logistics and food culture together.

In 2025 we traced Yunnan's old tea roads through leaf, kettle and market: compressed Pu'er, local infusions, rice-noodle kitchens and the trading towns that connected southwest China to Tibet and Southeast Asia.

The journey treated tea not as a souvenir but as an agricultural product, a form of labour and a record of exchange carried by horses, porters and merchants.

In summer 2022 we followed the Pamir Highway through Gorno-Badakhshan and the Wakhan valley: mountain villages, irrigated orchards and highland meadows beneath some of the highest ranges in Asia.

Fortresses, communal and sacred music, shared meals and conversations about local culinary, healing and religious traditions opened the Pamir as a lived crossroads rather than a remote backdrop.