Jesus Sutras Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity

The Lost Monastery Dust rose in clouds around us as our minibus sped along the country roads of central China in the summer of 1998. Through the windows we could see rural life flashing past: horse-drawn carts, old men on bicycles, young girls walking arm in arm. Earlier that morning we had left far behind us the modern city of Xian, which stands on the site of the greatest of ancient Chinese cities, Chang-an. Some twenty-five miles to the southeast, the great eternal army of the first Emperor of China, Shih Huang Ti, was disinterred. Thousands of slightly larger than life-size terra-cotta warriors and wooden horses there guard the tomb of the Qin Dynasty founder. Enormous tombs surround Xian, however, so even as we traveled the road southwest we passed signs of the ancient city's former glory: temples, gateways, city walls, and huge mounds that cover many acres dedicated to long-gone emperors. Within an hour we were deep in the countryside. We rumbled our way over a long bridge spanning one of the mighty rivers that flows down from the mountains south of Xian. In the riverbed, truckers loaded boulders flushed down by the winter storms. Now, in the heat of summer, the river flowed shallowly through the ravine carved by its full force over millennia. On we went through small towns whose main roads doubled as a marketplace and displayed all the confusion and variety of contemporary China, from Mao jackets to fake Gucci bags. Decrepit buses belching fumes roared straight at us in the continual game of chicken that constitutes driving in China, passing at the last possible moment with but a hairbreadth to spare. Smog made it difficult to see beyond the small towns and villages through which we sped. The haze of heat and pollution from countless fires and the fumes of trucks and buses create a dense miasma that blankets the countryside up to thirty miles away from Xian. Tall trees planted along the roadside further block the traveler's view. Thus it was that the Qingling Mountains and the Pass to the West, the traditional route out of China to the mysterious West, came on us suddenly. The towering walls of the mountains, rising like some vast curtain sealing us from the rest of the world, appeared and disappeared, only to appear again through the dust, smog, and clouds. As we drew nearer, the mountains solidified into a range that rose dramatically from the flat plains. It was now clear why the Pass to the West was so fabled and important. Without it, the mountains would have been impenetrable. Had you asked my friends, as we headed out of Xian toward the Pass to the West, how they thought the day would progress, you would have had an almost unanimous response: it was mad but fun, so they had come along for the ride. We were a motley group: Zhao Xiao Min, head of my group's China office, a historian and classical Chinese scholar; Tjalling Halbertsma, a Dutch anthropologist who works with me in China and Mongolia; Jay Ramsay, poet and thinker with whom I have worked on translations of ancient Chinese books such as the I Ching and Taoist classics; Val de Monceau, a feng shui specialist; and Jane Routh, photographer. We were in China primarily to help preserve the sacred mountains of China. My research for the Jesus Sutras, however, had convinced me that it was just possible that in a mountain range (not one of the sacred mountains!) south of Xian, near the Pass to the West, the remains of a once major Christian monastery might have survived fourteen hundred years of wars, uprisings, dynasties, empires, and earthquakes. The particular bit of research that had led me to this remote area was an old book on the early Church in China, published in English in 1937 by a Japanese professor, Saeki. In it, Saeki reproduced a small, mysterious map he had somehow acquired. The map marked the site of a pagoda, or tower, identified as the Da Qin monastery, all that remaPalmer, Martin is the author of 'Jesus Sutras Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity', published 0013 under ISBN 9780345434241 and ISBN 0345434242.