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Author speaks about his, monk's journeys
Former UO professor reads from his book about his years following an ancient explorer's voyage
by Sanjay Shenai | Freelance Reporter |
In the Erb Memorial Union on Thursday, author, poet and former Western Washington University professor Gary Geddes delivered a reading from his newly released book "Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things: An Impossible Journey from Kabul to Chiapas" to a crowd of roughly 12 people, in a room filled noticeably short of capacity.
"They stayed away in droves," Geddes said to the laughter of the audience.
Those in attendance speculated that the unusually warm sunshine had drawn away potentially interested students. Geddes, a native of British Columbia, Canada, did not resent the good weather for leaching his potential audience.
"If I lose a few people to the sunlight," he said with a smirk, "I'll live with it."
In his book, Geddes describes several years that he spent recreating the voyages of fifth-century Afghan Buddhist monk and explorer Hui Shen.
According to Geddes, more written evidence of Hui Shen did not survive because of the succession of dynastic rule, which in Chinese history often led to the destruction of historical documents of previous rulers. Geddes said that today, 749 Chinese characters are all that remain as clues to the explorer's journey.
However, these clues spurred modern researchers to dig deeper into the past to discover more about this elusive explorer.
Geddes said this idea of an "Afghan Columbus" intrigued him ever since first reading of it while editing manuscripts for Oxford University Press in 1974.
Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s editions of "The People's Almanac," authors David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace suggested that in 450 A.D. Hui Shen traveled along the Pacific Rim from Afghanistan to China, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Central America, reaching the "New World" more than a thousand years before Christopher Columbus.
They also described controversial evidence, which Geddes cited, of Chinese-style, donut-shaped stone anchors discovered off the Channel Islands in California in the 1970s, and shipbuilding tools that were more than 8,000 years old.
"They stayed away in droves," Geddes said to the laughter of the audience.
Those in attendance speculated that the unusually warm sunshine had drawn away potentially interested students. Geddes, a native of British Columbia, Canada, did not resent the good weather for leaching his potential audience.
"If I lose a few people to the sunlight," he said with a smirk, "I'll live with it."
In his book, Geddes describes several years that he spent recreating the voyages of fifth-century Afghan Buddhist monk and explorer Hui Shen.
According to Geddes, more written evidence of Hui Shen did not survive because of the succession of dynastic rule, which in Chinese history often led to the destruction of historical documents of previous rulers. Geddes said that today, 749 Chinese characters are all that remain as clues to the explorer's journey.
However, these clues spurred modern researchers to dig deeper into the past to discover more about this elusive explorer.
Geddes said this idea of an "Afghan Columbus" intrigued him ever since first reading of it while editing manuscripts for Oxford University Press in 1974.
Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s editions of "The People's Almanac," authors David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace suggested that in 450 A.D. Hui Shen traveled along the Pacific Rim from Afghanistan to China, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Central America, reaching the "New World" more than a thousand years before Christopher Columbus.
They also described controversial evidence, which Geddes cited, of Chinese-style, donut-shaped stone anchors discovered off the Channel Islands in California in the 1970s, and shipbuilding tools that were more than 8,000 years old.
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