Victor Porto

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[Victor Porto @eaiportoh]

― Dói né?
― O que?
― Saber que Jesus morreu na cruz por nós, e tem pessoas que não valorizam esse ato de amor.

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[Sinical @Sinical_C]

Many people assume Xinjiang is synonymous with Islam. But standing at the edge of the desert in Hotan, gazing at ruins half-swallowed by sand, what came to my mind was the Buddha.

Hotan — known in antiquity as Khotan — hugs the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, perched along the southern branch of the Silk Road. According to historical records, it is also the earliest region in Xinjiang where Buddhism took root.

Around the 1st century BCE, Buddhism traveled eastward from Kashmir and first arrived in Khotan. Over the centuries that followed, Khotan, Kucha (present-day Kuqa), and Gaochang (present-day Turpan) grew into the three great centers of Buddhist civilization in the ancient Western Regions — and from these three nodes, the faith radiated outward across the entire region.

Buddhism reached its zenith here in the 5th century CE. Historical records describe a landscape where "a stupa stood before every household." The renowned monk Xuanzang, the historical prototype of Tang Sanzang in Journey to the West, passed through this Buddhist kingdom during his pilgrimage to India.

By the early 11th century, Khotan was conquered by the Kara-Khanid Khanate, marking the collapse of the Buddhist civilization that flourished for more than a thousand years.

Today I visited the Rawak Temple Ruins. What stands above ground are the remaining foundations of a stupa complex. A staff member told me that beneath the surrounding sand lie many broken Buddha statues—their heads were taken by outsiders.

The British Aurel Stein visited Rawak on two separate expeditions, in 1901 and again in 1906. He described the stupa as "by far the most imposing structure" he had seen in the Khotan region. The large clay Buddha figures were too heavy to transport whole, so he cut off the finest heads and carried those away, leaving the headless bodies to the desert.

Modern Hotan is a city quietly holding its ground — planting trees against the encroaching dunes, sustaining an oasis on the margins of one of the world's harshest deserts.

The Buddhist civilization that once flourished here is gone. But it was real — in the stupas, the statues, the manuscripts, the footsteps of Xuanzang. It shaped this land for a thousand years before it disappeared into the sand. That, too, is part of Xinjiang's story.