Bruce Hume’s blog on Chinese writing notes a new book in China that sounds interesting. He is giving out English synopsis if you email him.

Zhang Cheng-Zhi (张承志), the white-hot Red Guard who mastered Mongolian and Japanese — and then converted to Islam — has just launched En las Ruinas de la Flor: Viajes por Al-Andalus (鲜花的废墟). His new Chinese-language travelogue takes us throughout Moorish Spain, Portugal and Morocco in search of the spirit of Islam in its golden age (8th-15th centuries).