TEMPLE OF ZONG? NEVER HEARD OF.

Indochina, 1951. Tonkin and northern Annam have been liberated by the Vietminh. In the south, the French are fighting a vicious battle to keep the corrupt regime in
Saigon in power.

We meet Ruben in Nha Trang, an Annamese port town wher
e he debarked from a French ocean liner in search of a monastery that a script said had to be somewhere in the mountains of Annam.
It was not the only reason for his quest: he had inherited a chest with unusual contents: a small skeleton.
Ac
companying the chest was this manuscript - played into his hands by an old librarian - from a relative who had not survived the war. In it, he mentioned a monastery of the unknown order of Zong. A Chinese word, he would later find out, but the order
seemed to be Japanese....
He engaged a boy in Nha Trang, who would be his guide. Not only that: the boy has a grandmother and a mother. Ruben blends into Annamese life, trekking through forests and mountains with Nguyen and later also with Yen, N
guyen''s mother. They travel by smuggling ships, old junks and rattling coasters from North to South and back again, through a war-torn country.