Great Wall of China from space: Kubla Khan

National Geographic Asia, 9/30/20; CC Liu, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Great Wall of China | HD Wallpapers Images and Photos (hdwallpaperim.com)

Secrets of the Great Wall | Ancient China from above | National Geographic

(National Geographic Asia) Sept. 30, 2020: Archeologist Allan Maca leads a team of intrepid experts on an epic adventure to solve mysteries, explore secrets, and reveal amazing wonders of Ancient China like never before.

Stupa burial mounds exist across Central Asia

Guided by images from space [20 to 50 miles above earth], cutting-edge technology on the ground, and the very latest excavations of Chinese archeologists, they will reveal palaces and tombs, incredible megastructures, and even entire long-lost cities. Along the way they will uncover new revelations about the Great Wall of China, explore the myths of Xanadu [made famous by the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," which Wisdom Quarterly's own poet in residence, Dhr. Seven, thinks refers to a Buddhist civilization and a description of a Buddhist stupa, pagoda, and temple complex, which Coleridge read about from the writings of a British Christian missionary and traveler who visited the very place Coleridge is dreaming of and trying to describe in verse], and unearth evidence of ancient civilizations — discovers that are rewriting the history books.

"Kubla Khan"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

     Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Not blocks of ice but durable white stones

But oh that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted Burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Manmade cave, not of ice but stone

     The shadow of the dome of pleasure

     Floated midway on the waves;

     Where was heard the mingled measure

     From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

     A damsel with a dulcimer

     In a vision once I saw:

     It was an Abyssinian maid

     And on her dulcimer she play'd,

     Singing of Mount Abora.

     Could I revive within me

     Her symphony and song,

     To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread:

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drank the milk of Paradise.