Horse That Leaps Through Clouds

For a wealth of information on the book, the author and the research that went into this book, visit www.horsethatleaps.com.Two epic journeys along the Silk Road, past and present, offer a riveting and cautionary tale about the breathtaking rise of China.On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Czar Nicholas ii to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynastys sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last czarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled almost every facet of Chinas modernization, from education reform and foreign investment to Tibets struggle for independence.On July 6, 2006, writer Eric Enno Tamm boards that same train, intent on following in Mannerheims footsteps. Initially banned from China, Tamm devises a cover and retraces Mannerheims route across the Silk Road, discovering both eerie similarities and seismic differences between the Middle Kingdoms of today and a century ago.Along the way, Tamm offers piercing insights into Chinas past that raise troubling questions about its future. Can the Communist Party truly open China to the outside world yet keep Western ideas such as democracy and freedom at bay, just as Qing officials mistakenly believed? What can reform during the late Qing Dynasty teach us about the spectacular transformation of China today? Study the past if you would divine the future, wrote Confucius. Tamms quest turns out to be a cautionary tale.