Sun Shuyun – författare

Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud is a beautifully written account of Sun Shuyun’s journey to retrace the steps of one of the most popular figures in Chinese history – the monk Xuanzang, who travelled to India searching for true Buddhism.Xuanzang should be known as one of the world's great heroes. His travels across Asia to bring true Buddhism back to China are legendary, and his own book provides a unique record of the history and culture of his time. Yet he is unknown to most of us and even to most Chinese, whose knowledge of Buddhist history has been eradicated by decades of Communist rule.Sun Shuyun was determined to follow in his footsteps, to discover more about Xuanzang and restore his fame. She decided to retrace his journey from China to India and back, an adventure that in the 8th century took Xuanzang eighteen years and led him across 118 kingdoms, an adventure that opened up the east and west of Asia to each other – and to us.A man of great faith and determination, Xuanzang won the hearts of kings and robbers with his teaching, his charm and his indomitable will. Against all odds he persuaded the Confucian emperors to allow Buddhism to flourish in China.At the heart of the book lies Sun Shuyun's own personal journey towards understanding the Buddhist faith of her grandmother, recognising the passionate idealism of the communist beliefs of her own family and discovering her own ideological and personal path through life.

Every nation has its founding myth, and for modern China it is the Long March.In 1934, the fledgling Communist Party and its 200,000 strong armies were forced out of their bases by Chiang Kaishek and his National troops.Walking more than 10,000 miles over mountains, grassland and swamps, they suffered appalling casualties and ended up in the remote barren North. Just one-fifth survived; they went on to launch the new China in the heat of revolution. A legend was born. Justified by a remarkable feat, the Long March was also a triumph of propaganda, for Mao and for the revolution.Seventy years later Sun Shuyun set out to retrace the Marchers’ steps. The rugged landscape has changed little. Her greatest difficult was in wrestling with the scenes lodged in her mind since childhood, part of the upbringing of every Chinese. On each stage of her journey, she found hidden stories: the ruthless purges, the terrible toll of hunger and disease, the fate of women on the March, the huge number of desertions, the futile deaths.The real story of the March, the most vivid pictures, come from the veterans whom Sun Shuyun has found. She follows their trail through all those harsh miles, discovers their faith and disillusion, their pain and their hopes, and also recounts how many suffered even after the March’s end in 1936.‘The Long March’ was an epic journey of endurance, even more severe than history books say, and courage against impossible odds. It is a brave, exciting and tragic story. Sun Shuyun tells it for the first time, as it really happened.

‘A Year in Tibet’ follows the author as she lives for eighteen months in a remote village in Tibet.Sun Shuyun, a Chinese writer and historian, takes the reader to a tiny and isolated village in Tibet, known for its anti-Chinese stance. She and a team who were half Chinese and half Tibetan, lived and worked there for eighteen months, filming and recording daily life. ‘A Year in Tibet’ is an insight into the relationship between the Chinese and Tibetans, the history behind it, and the way the two interact in the 21st century. Written with Sun Shuyun’s characteristic insight into relationships, this is social and political history with an emphasis on humanity.