Writing

An archive, not a blog

Essays, field notes, research pieces, conversations and reading lists. Long-form, sourced, and revised when the ground contradicts them.

  • Abbot Wang Yuanlu of Dunhuang, photographed in 1907, the self-appointed guardian of the Mogao grottoes.

    Research · 31 August 2014 · 15 min · EN

    The Lotus in the Sands

    How Buddhism travelled the trade routes into China — and how a Daoist caretaker at Dunhuang found the record of it behind a cracked mural.

    Tarim basin · Kucha · Khotan · Dunhuang · Gandhara