About the TalkDuring the talk, Ms Saran will introduce the experiences mentioned in her travel book-cum-memoir, Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang. The book was shortlisted for Indias 2006 Hutch-Crossword Award for Literary Non-Fiction, and long listed for Germanys 2006 Lettres Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. To research the book, Saran spent a year tracing the footsteps of Xuanzang, a 7th Century Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled along the Silk Road from China to India, passing through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ms Saran will talk about her journey in Central Asia, drawing comparisons between her research on the Silk Road in the 7th century compared to her observations in the 21st century.Co-organized by the HKUST Center for Education Innovation, the HKUST Center for the Arts, and the HKUST Library, this event is one of the "Silk Road" Talks of the HKUST Arts Festival 2018.The talk is open to the public. Limited seat, please sign up at http://library.ust.hk/ce. 
Remarks: HKUST students may attain 1.5-hour attendance in the "Activities" module in Wellness & Personal Enrichment of the HLTH1010 Course.
 About the SpeakerFollowing an undergraduate degree in Chinese Studies from Wellesley College (USA), Mishi Saran worked in Hong Kong as a news reporter and as a freelance writer. Her articles have appeared in a variety of international publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books and Quartz, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, the South China Morning Post and the Asian Wall Street Journal. Her short stories have won awards and been broadcast on the BBC. 
 

About the SpeakerFrom 1989 to 2014, Ms. Bonino worked in the Italian Department of China Radio International, hosting a program which received the prestigious China News Award in 2012. She is currently teaching Broadcasting at the Institute of Science of Communications at Wenzhou Business College, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. Gabriella Bonino is also a published author. In 2010, she published a bilingual (Italian/Chinese) collection of her programs, “La Cina ai miei occhi” (China in My Eyes), known in Chinese as 當代女馬可‧波羅的中國日誌(The China diary of a contemporary Marco Polo); five years later, in her native Italy, she published "Alla scoperta della Via della Seta: dalle carovane all’alta velocità" (Discovering the Silk Road: From Caravans to High Speed Trains).About the TalkCo-organized by the HKUST Center for Education Innovation, the HKUST Center for the Arts, the HKUST Library, and the Italian Cultural Institute, this event is one of the "Silk Road" Talks of the HKUST Arts Festival 2018.This talk is open to the public. For general enquiries, please contact (852) 2358-8049 / artsctr@ust.hk.