other by sea, known as the maritime silk road. idea to build roads, railways, ports, and create a financial is structure and free trade zones all along these routes. there is also a key parallel project, the china pakistan economic corridor. you can see the port, water, right over here. it is not onlyjust direct maritime routes into africa and the middle east but it also potentially gives china control over some 40% of the world's energy supplies. now, a big part of it is also creating faster more direct routes between china and europe. and building a free trade zones and commercial infrastructure along the way, like in khorgos, along the border with kazakhstan. and, lastly, here in south—east asia, china is funding a railway and port project in malaysia, dams in myanmar, and a high—speed bullet train in indonesia, singapore, and thailand. so, let's get to it. the two big questions really are, is it going to take off? and is china's big plan really as in official and benign as its supporters like to say it is? well, we've got a gr

thinking about one of my experiences, which had to do with going to a series of caves tochina along the silk road the very far west. earlyin those caves, very in 1981 before there was any tourist trade there. it was a very privileged moment i was having. as someone took us through the caves with a flashlight, many of covered forhich are those of you that don't know, with these exquisite beautiful and thef buddhists stories of buddha. they are elaborately painted and will present. what struck me was walking into one of these, where the whole cave was covered with black ash. written byk ash was a russian soldier who had fled there during the revolution, basically the equivalent of "kilroy was here." for whatever geography i had learned in the world, all of a sudden my understanding of the relationship between the soviet union and china was forever changed. i completely understood something i had never understood before. those caves were the ticket for me. richard: esq -- let me ask you, when you came out, did you talk to someone about this, write about this? how did you fix the memory of that event