Today, the 23-hectare excavated site is likely a mere fraction of the original campus, but ambling through its multitude of monasteries and temples evokes a feeling of what it must have been like to learn at this fabled place.
Suffice it to say, the three months after graduating from Los Gatos Union High School, I found myself playing Hermia in Max Reinhardt's fabled Hollywood Bowl production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Playing as Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King, you wield the jin gu bang (a fabled staff weighing eight tonnes) and face down Erlang, a three-eyed warrior-god.