Chang’an – After a sixteen year journey into the heart of India to study Buddhism, Xuan Zang has finally returned to China. Just yesterday, he was greeted with an imperial audience and met with Emperor Tiazong himself. He has brought with him a total of 657 manuscripts.
Confused by the misinformation and missing pieces in Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, Zang decided to travel to India to study more effectively. Unfortunately for him, Tiazong denied his trip to India. That didn’t stop him though. Zang snuck out of Chang’an, traveling at first by night to avoid being captured. After staying with the Turfan King for about a month, he avoided having to live there for the rest of his life by way of a hunger strike, he set out again on his journey to India, no longer in hiding, but as an accredited pilgrim.
When Zang finally arrived in India, he spent most of his time at the Nalanda monastery and became a disciple of Silabhadra, the abbot of Nalanda. There he collected a vast collection of Buddhist texts and artifacts, studying Buddhism in great detail.
Emperor Tiazong heard of Zang’s travels and at first was outraged that he had gone against his will, but the then he heard of his accomplishments in India, and decided to greet the Buddhist himself when he arrived back in China. After meeting with Zang yesterday, the Emperor has been so impressed by the texts and relics that he has collected that he will allow him to devote the rest of his life to translating the many manuscripts. He has also decided to grant Zang a large salary for life, along with over 20 translators to help him with his work.
This is an excellent hard news article! Your intro paragraph is especially good.
ReplyDeleteYou do need to work on the final paragraph because you forget that he has just returned yesterday and you seem to fast-forward in his life ("he allowed him to devote the rest of his life to translating the many manuscripts. He was granted a large salary for life, along with over 20 translators to help him with his facts.") You simply need to adjust the verb tense to fix this problem.
There are a couple of typos, but otherwise this is well-written and informative.