Seeking lost libraries along the Silk Road

Abigail Reynolds, artist. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The first leg of her arduous journey was in China－Yinchuan, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region; Xi'an, Shaanxi province; and Dunhuang in Gansu province.

She relied on her motorbike to get around and a 16mm, wind-up Bolex camera to capture her adventures. But finding the libraries was not an easy task.

The oldest lost library on the Silk Road was the Xianyang Palace in Xi'an, which was destroyed around 261 BC. All that remains today is a wasteland and she was advised to visit the Terracotta army settlement near the area instead, but she persisted.

"No one wanted me to go to the Xianyang palace site," she says. "The guides who were there told me it did not exist. I just had to do a lot of arguing. In fact, there is a museum there."

Although the site is decrepit and dusty, Reynolds says there was "something realistic and beautiful about that".

She describes the Mogao caves in Dunhuang as an incredible find. The library there was discovered more than 150 years ago and "there were scrolls that have been collected from all the cultures that fed into the Silk Road".

The language barrier also gave rise to another set of challenges.

"I don't speak any Chinese and I don't recognize the writing or read the body language," Reynolds says.

"When I was in Xi'an, I didn't know the word for rice, which now I know, so I had to draw a bowl of rice and everyone in the restaurant thought this was hilariously funny and they passed around my drawing. But I got the rice."

Reynolds has always been fascinated with libraries, having "lived a life around books as well as visual art".