Travel Journals by Hilary Hopkins

April 25 - May 25 2005 / China: The New, The Old

The Yangtze, Beijing, Xian--and the Far, Far West
Part 3 - Going West: Xian, Lanzhou, Xining

Part 3 - Going West: Xian, Lanzhou, Xining

So we flew to Xian, had lunch in the airport (seems the airport lunch places are pretty good) and on the drive into town, stopped to see an exhibit at the partially excavated tomb of a Han emperor, an incredible extravagance of miniature figures--soldiers, horses, dancers, acrobats, all with miniature weapons and accoutrements of all kinds.  The tiniest pots, bridles, pigs, goats, sheep, dogs.   The tomb itself has not been excavated.  The labor, knowledge, technology and money to carry on these enormous archeology projects is immense.  The commitment is there, but perhaps they aren't ready to do it yet.

Then on into the hotel, a Hyatt of course.

The group seems okay, nobody really awful, though one that's pretty slow on the uptake, and all good liberals, smart, interested.  The lecturer is totally professorial, a bit too much so for my taste--I'm really sorry we didn't get to go with the original guy, who in the end was denied a visa.  He seemed more what I would like.  But this one is good too.

Then we have a tour manager, a national guide (that I think of as our minder) and a local guide. 
After being on our own in Beijing it is a bit of a shock.


Today we went out in the countryside to see the Great Army of Terra Cotta Warriors, the burial place of the first Emperor of China, after an hour’s lecture about it all from our professor.

I'm not sure how to describe this place.  In 1974 some farmers were digging a well.  They brought a head to the surface.  They had the sense to report this to some authorities, and the digging began.  If they had dug that well about five feet to one side, this astonishing place would never have been found.  Lying there under the surface for two thousand years. 

There they all stand, several thousand men, frozen in an instant, their varied faces staring into the future, where we return their steady gaze, and take their picture.  There are their good horses, strong and stalwart, nostrils flaring, ears pricked. 

I guess I don't want to say any more about them.  They seem to reach across time.  The First Emperor, I think a tortured and frantic soul, might rest peacefully if he could see the millions that come to his resting place now, and how people all over the entire world, all under heaven, know about him and his faithful army.

Hello!  hello!  Can you hear me??  I see you from way up here, way ahead of you, or way past you, Hello!  Can you hear me?   I can't quite hear you--but I can almost hear you.  Shhh....if I listen somewhere on this trip, maybe we can hear each other.

His tomb may never be excavated.  Perhaps it never should be.

And then a museum, a good one I think but I am too tired to appreciate it much, except for the tiny animals, a pair of miniature gold dragons, a hedgehog, a dog lying curled with nose to tail, a man on horseback with a dog perched alertly behind him, elegant gold things, elegant pottery things.

In the evening the whole crew went out to have a "dumpling banquet" at a local restaurant.   The food was pretty good--I am not displeased with the food here but I certainly yearn for my home food, as always.  We had a good time--the group is pretty congenial and there are no really obnoxious people thank goodness. 

After dinner some of us elected to walk home with Bob the leader.  We first had to cross two horrible roads of high traffic, which here is a matter of grave concern.  We were successful at that, having picked up a few more westerners to make our group as large as possible and the crossing perhaps less dangerous. 

We threaded our way through a cluster of beggars--something I did not see in Beijing, where I assume they have been kept from the downtown tourist and government areas-then we went through one of the gates to the massive wall that is still left, from Ming days, that surrounded the old city and is till here in the new.  At the base of the gate we paused to watch a musical enactment of the days of the First Emperor.  It was a lovely scene, there in the warm evening air, people sitting on plastic chairs, some standing at the back, out in the night.  Then we went up stairs to the top of the wall, and walked along it a long way, overlooking the city.

The top of the wall is nearly dark, lit only by some red lanterns on one side.  A fine place for lovers but I did not see any.  There are a few shops up there.  It was a fine sight, seeing the warm faint light of the shops, their goods within barely visible, and out in front, a few tables of things.  Some were the kinds of things we saw at the Forbidden City, and at one of the parks, in Beijing, where you can dress up in imperial clothing, sit on a throne, and have your picture taken.  When the Chinese do this, they look like emperors.  It's wonderful.

And home to our excellent beds.



This morning we drove two hours out of town, across wonderful prosperous looking fields of winter wheat, interspersed with small villages where the farmers now live (and work the fields, all owned by the government, but leased to the farmers).  We went to visit the finds at the tomb at Famen Si, an incredible cache of astonishingly rich goods deposited by the emperor under a pagoda in honor of a true bodily relic of the Buddha.  The things were uncovered by a series of natural and cultural flukes, ad there they are, gorgeous things of gold, silver, porcelain and glass.  They are presented on backgrounds of orange and yellow, the Buddhist colors.  Bob told us that when the reliquaries were opened, in the 1980's, a Buddhist priest was invited to perform a ceremony. 

Covering the bases, I'd call it.  Just in case....  It would be serious bad karma to do otherwise. 

Yes, a pragmatic people.

Then we came back into town and visited the Great Mosque, the largest in China and quite active.   It's surrounded by a Muslim neighborhood, many women wearing white head scarves, and men with white skull caps.  The streets are narrow and people press upon us from both sides, as we leave the Mosque, trying to sell us things.  On your way in they don’t bother you, but as soon as you leave, it’s POUNCE!
I buy a small brass dragon, my China animal that will join the rest at home.  We buy some postcards, and venture into a convenience store to buy a new package of cookies. 

I could spend a week in here.  I am shy at taking pictures of people, but I have a few.  Everything is completely exotic to us!  Having been the subject of pictures and videos in Beijing, and not liking it much, I feel even more shy of taking pictures.  They can't possibly know just how exotic they are to us.  We can recognize the nature of what they are all doing, but the content of it is unknown.  People do exactly the same things every single place in the world, they just do them differently.   Trying to find out the differences and understanding where they come from, that's the great thing.

Still, I don't believe I ever had as great a sense of people who were a different species from me, or a different--DIFFERENT somehow, as I did in 1985 that magical time in Kiev, in front of the church.  Those people, that time, did not really even see me.

Religion may be the opiate of the people, but like other places we have seen in Asia, it is deeply pervasive even if people do not realize it or are not observant.

On the bus, our local guide told us the story of how when she was ten years old, and it was Cultural Revolution time, her mother was taken away and her father was taken away, and she and her brother lived with their grandmother, and how they didn't have enough to eat, but she studied hard, and the other kids shunned her and rejected her because of her parents.  She cried as she told us how she drew and sent a picture to her mother of the two of them, with a heart, and how when Mother was finally returned to her, she told how the picture had helped to support her through her suffering.

In every detail this story is like several others I have read.  Now she is doing well, has an eighteen year old daughter, and of course I am sure has told this story to her, but surely the daughter cannot comprehend it. 

Bob told us the Chinese have a special word that means chaos, disorder, high activity, and that they love that state of affairs.  It certainly looks that way on the street.  And yet they gather in groups to do tai chi, each individual totally alone, yet part of a group. 

The contradictions here are powerful indeed.  What is the real China?  The group acting as a powerful unity, minding what they are told, bringing to bear the enormous force of 1.3 billion?  Or the silent individual, dong tai chi alone, or creating delicate and meditative works of art?


Last evening I stayed at home while John went out to dinner with everybody.  Now and then I need these quiet times.  I washed my hair, wrote in here, wrote some postcards, and packed up.  When he came home I was tucked up in the luxurious bed, clean and content.

This morning we went to see the Great White Goose pagoda, dating from the eighth century or is it the ninth, in any case a very, very long time ago.  Entering the gardens the quiet folds around one, the birds are there (and seemingly nowhere else), and I can breathe.  I am missing the natural things on this trip, and find myself staring deeply into plants artfully placed around the hotel lobby.

Monks come here from all over east and southeast Asia.  We climbed the pagoda with three young monks in red and cerise robes.  They are wearing sneakers under their robes, and laugh with each other as they climb the seven stories with us.  Later I see them observant at an altar.   Here and there older monks walk about the grounds.  There are altars in other buildings, and there is a place for incense.  I linger in these places.  It's like a Catholic church, to me, dark, mysterious, the scent of incense, the images, the altar with its mysterious power and focus.  I am shy to buy and light a package of incense, but I send my thoughts to the Good anyway.

A bumpy plane ride then, here to Langzhou, and a wonderful hour's ride amid the dry mountains, to the hotel.

They haven't left one single inch of the country alone.  Even here, on these sere hills, every single one is terraced to the top, and small trees have been planted.  Here and there at the bottom of the hills, a small green plot or a little strip village.  But nothing is left to be.

John observed, a while back, that it seems anything in nature is valued either solely for its philosophical or symbolic aspect, or for purely esthetic reasons.  Nothing is left untouched, untrammeled.  Everything is controlled.

I am getting to need some wild place!


An early morning walk today, and out on the street are kids walking to school, giggling at they looked at us, but it's not a very friendly place.

In the museum here (another museum again, but they are of course a focus of much that we are supposed to be learning about on this trip)--pots and bronzes and images of one sort or another.  This one was a tiny one, a city museum, they have provincial and regional ones too.  Our city guide is a strange man, Mr. You, who made references to the Cultural Revolution--hard times he said, or words to that effect.  His English was tortured, and he seemed a tortured person also.  Bob our lecturer, who is vastly knowledgeable and gives us lengthy classroom-style lectures, somewhat overshadowed Mr. You’s efforts.  As he spoke his minimal English, he grimaced and spoke with such effort.  I felt for him; he wanted so much to do a good job but Bob became impatient with him, and although he was courteous about it, he swept all before him.

After lunch--another one of these enormous lazy susan lunches, with dish after dish after dish, we were taken by Mr. You to a strange kind of market, set up in a former Buddhist temple, and eventually Bob helped us to understand that in the old days, temples were places of exchange of goods and ideas, too, so it was okay.  We walked around,  I took more pictures, pictures of people playing cards and eating and selling, of a dog sleeping in front of a piece of art--just all these wonderful images to make.  I want to take many more, but I am shy and don't want the embarrassment of encounter.  Too bad.

We talk to Mr. You, who desperately wants to come to America to work in an archeology museum.  But he will never manage it.  His hopelessness pains me still.

Mr. You took us to a bookstore, too, where I bought two tiny children's books, just to take home and show a colleague at work. 

Then it was a train trip, three hours, up to seven thousand feet to Xining.  The countryside went by.  First a long way out into the suburbs, but they have no suburbs the way we do, I mean no one here, but no one, lives in a tree-lined neighborhood with individual houses--and their idea is that the suburbs have the factories, because the pollution just blows away...

At length we came into a mountainous region; the mountains look like California or Turkey or Utah or some such.   EVERY SINGLE MOUNTAIN WAS TERRACED, AND TINY SAPLINGS PLANTED ON THESE TERRACES.   MILLIONS of trees, each mountain a monoculture, and no respect given to the natural ecosystem.  Many of these saplings appeared to be dead.  The sides of the mountains have caves dug in them, in which the people lived in the past and still do.

When we arrived at Xining, we found that our guide is funny, smart, alert, and everyone feels better after the pain of Mr. You.

And our hotel, a brilliant array of primary colors, religious paintings, two beds on platforms side by side, it’s Tibetan-style, as they call it, but it’s more than that, it IS Tibetan.

I just can’t tell about this.   The radiant glow of color! 

I don't sleep well in our rainbow of a room, it is too exciting, and I have an altitude headache, since we are at seven thousand feet.  The night is dark and there are stars and a small moon.  The monks are chanting in the great lamasery across the way, and there are clashes of cymbals that sound like dogs barking to me, to keep the monks from falling asleep.  I slept a bit but awoke at midnight and they are still at it, and my head hurts and I do not sleep after that, and the monks continue all night long,  I alert in my beautiful bed, and the cold air running across my face.  



In the morning J and I go out with Bob at 6:30 to walk the streets of this tiny place.  I make, or take, many images.

The torment of places of which I can never be a part.

Layer upon layer in the lamasery, of objects of worship, rituals, young monks in red and saffron robes, brass yak butter bowls for candles,  a thousand images of the founding monk, prayer flags, beggars, flowers, silk hangings, ferocious monsters, serene Buddhas, --

Prayer wheels, and people spinning them.

Young monks fooling around with each other, chanting, learning their chants, the elder monk scolding them. 

Although I am attracted to all of it, it is only for its mystery, and I am in search of mystery.    But I really can never enter this strange world.  

Lost, lost in this strange world.  So many things that divide us from each other. 

Later in the day we are taken to an enormous mosque, where we are allowed to watch the men at prayer.  We stand in the hot sun and watch as the rows of men, their shoes neatly placed behind them, kneel on their bright prayer rugs.  The voice of the leader comes over the loudspeaker, and they all move in unison.  Mostly, however, there is silence.  I like the silence.  There has not been a lot of silence on this trip, and I am missing it.  Last night in the cold air at seven thousand feet, all I could hear, faintly, was the clamor of cymbals.  And this morning, the rooster.

After the worship is over, Bob, gravely courteous as always, approaches a man who it turns out is the person designated to receive visitors.  He is intelligent and intense, and although Bob translates for him, I see his intelligence for myself.  He teaches us the five tenets of Islam, and we gather quite a crowd of worshippers who press close around us and attend carefully to his words, as if they had never heard them.  I take many pictures.

Then another museum, to fill the time, and I am ready to stop.  I try to pay attention to the things in the museums, but I am not much for museums.

I wish I were able to write even competently about this trip.  But for once, the written word is a complete waste.  The pictures are another story.  Perhaps I will do better with them...

Now it’s back on the train to Lanzhou.

Mr. You, greeted us when we arrived--it was wonderful to see a familiar and smiling face!   And he is such a sympathetic character.  He brought us to our hotel, and finally about midnight we tucked in.



This morning we had a long bus ride into the mountains.  The mountains are dry, with low grayish green growth, here and there a few goats or sheep, sometimes with a lone tender, sometimes not.  A few low settlements, not even villages, along the roadside and sometimes high up on the sides of the mountains. The road is a modern divided highway, but the bus still honks every time it is overtaking a three-wheeled cart or other truckish thing.   At least they have not terraced and planted this part, so you can see what it really looks like.

Then a motorboat ride for an hour across a large reservoir.    Chinese seating means there is no room for the legs, but we all manage.  The group is really quite cheery, only one person tends to complain and she usually draws rolling of the eyes and snickers rather than bringing down the whole group.

We've come to see a remarkable array of so-called cave chapels, carved into the rock walls.   There are small grottoes open at one side, and on the walls are painted holy scenes, sometimes with carved statues in them.  There is also a majestic Buddha, about eighty feet high, carved straight into the side of the mountain.  At his feet and even in his great lap are offerings of scarves, and others are tied to nearby trees.

These are all amazing--dating from the fifth century.

And in many cases showing the influence of Indian and Persian cultures, which is after all what we have come to see along the Silk Road, how not only material goods but also culture and ideas and concepts of appropriateness traveled.

But that's not my favorite part of this visit.  I get to see a gorgeous bird, and I think his mate!!   At last some animals.  He has an orange breast, a black head and bib, two white stripes on his head, and I think a grayish back.  His mate is more yellow.   He has a long tail. And he picks around on the ground, or flies up to a wire.  Also, in the water are huge congregations of black tadpoles, thousands of them.  Then there are some mountain goats.  And on the way back, on one of the kind of sand bars, I saw a large black yak, among the goats.  Also there are mules, which are an appealing animal anywhere.

There were trees and rocks, and some wild flowers, and I got to be among all of this.  At one point, early on as we were walking toward the cave-chapels, and I was lagging behind, I finally had to speak rather sharply to the effect that this is my trip, and I am perfectly competent to catch up with you.  I had had enough of being lectured at instead of being given a chance simply to look in silence.

In fact, there was a certain amount of overkill today, in the lecture department.  Also, I do not wish to be quizzed as if I were in a classroom.  I would like to be given information, and have my questions answered, but I prefer not to be quizzed.

The long rides back to the hotel, and we are given the evening and all of tomorrow off.  I am glad, for I have about reached my limit.

John and I have spent a lot of time talking about what we are seeing, about China, trying to understand what is going on here, and what it means.

In that sense it is very thought-provoking.   And my pictures tell a lot, and I really love my pictures.  But it is deeply frustrating not to be able somehow to write about any of it very competently.

Late this afternoon we get on an overnight train, to reach Dun Huang, where some of the greatest discoveries in Chinese archeology have been made.  We will see hundreds more cave-chapels.  I just hope Bob does not feel obligated to explain every detail of every one.  I am going to have to do more to get away on my own.