Baumer is an explorer of Central and East Asia, and in this book, he takes us on a sweeping tour of Mount Wutai, the Chinese home of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī and an important pilgrimage site for Central and East Asian Buddhists. The opening chapters contain a whirlwind overview of Chinese religions. For Buddhist history, Baumer mostly draws from the work of Tsukamoto Zenryū and of Kenneth Chen. Specialists in Buddhist studies will find many errors throughout this section, especially when Baumer oversimplifies complex doctrinal issues. (For example, he uses words like “Hīnayāna” and “Lesser Vehicle” throughout the text.) We need not belabor this point; Baumer is an explorer talking to Chinese Buddhists, and he digests and repeats what he finds in introductory textbooks and what his sources on the ground say. Chapters 6 through 13 are the core of the work. Baumer traverses the Wutai Shan region, visiting major and minor temples and cave sites. He describes them all in lively prose, with a journalist's eye for detail. Baumer doesn't hesitate to let you know when you might need to bribe a gatekeeper to gain access to a relatively untouristed temple. Along the way, he interviews monks and nuns, photographs the scene, and calls it how he sees it. Instructors using this book in their courses should emphasize its proper role for students—not as a work of scholarship or an accurate guide to Chinese religious history, but rather as a splendid travelogue, a fascinating journey to the sacred slopes of Wutai Shan.
