The Yellow River Odyssey

Porter has many travel in China books, that I have greatly enjoyed, and poetry translations of Stonehouse and Cold Mountain, and translations of sutras. 

Bill Porter's The Yellow River Odyssey, about his trip in 1991, published in 2014, he visits Bodhidharma's cave. You can still go to the cave where he stared at the wall for 9 years. (You could also just meditate, all Buddhas would probably prefer you to trod the path rather than worship other people who trod the path, but faith and veneration of those who came after us is quite important, it does boost the practice to think of all the heroes of Buddhism.) Bodhidharma is credited with bringing Buddhism to China, and a founder of Chan Buddhism. 

There's a cool statue at the top of the mountain of him.

Bodhidharma lived during the 5th and 6th century. I think it's really cool you could know something about someone from that long ago. You can read some of his translated writings.

Then Porter goes to Longmen Caves (Vairocana in the center):

Links:

Been writing about the non-Buddhist culture Porter aspects of his book (One, two, three). This book has more Taoism and Confucianism than his other books, which is not uninteresting to me. I'm fascinated by the interplay between Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism in China.