Čínský deník

The China Diary

Lumír Jisl

In late 1957, Czech archaeologist and art historian Lumír Jisl set off for a business trip to Mongolia and China. He was keeping a detailed personal diary throughout his six-month journey where he openly and critically captured the atmosphere of everyday life in China. Above all, he vividly portrayed diverse Buddhist and other temples, rock and cave sacral complexes, and other significant monuments of Chinese history. He supplemented his records with colour and black and white photographs. The manuscript of the diary was preserved along with the negatives in the family archive and could not be published until now.
Apart from the diary itself, the book contains a rich visual accompaniment, several memories of Jisl’s contemporaries, and several specialised religionist and sinologist studies. A detailed index, cartographic attachment, and extensive footnotes are naturally not missing.