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 4 - The Silk Road to the Far West: Uighur Region

Part 4 - The Silk Road to the Far West: Uighur Region

The train was wonderful.  Our snug sleeping cabin was all white, including a nice eyelet lace cover for the back of the bed/couch.   The window was large and clean, and everything worked.   Even the toilet and washroom at the end of the car was not too noxious.  I was prepared for much worse.

We all had a fine time.  Ray the tour manager had bought wine and little snacks, and the whole crowd gathered in the corridor outside our compartments and drank and ate and joked and talked.  Dinner in the dining car was a new experience for some of our people, imagine that!  Of course, it was the usual stuff--platters of odd things some but not all of which was edible. 

Outside we saw the jagged snowy mountains as a backdrop to the brown, sere hills and dried valley watercourses: the Silk Road.  Low small settlements were nearly invisible as of course they are made of bricks of the same soil upon which they nestle.  Herds of sheep graze by the side of the train tracks and rock away as we pass.  In front or in back of some of the little huts--for huts they seem to me--are a donkey or two, standing patiently.  Now and then a person on a motorbike or bicycle.  People stand to watch the train pass by, as we do all over the world, attune to its possibilities.

J and I watch a long time after dinner, with the lights out, seeking out the smallest indication of life here, what it may be, what it means.

I do not sleep well; the bed is very hard and the train stops often and many trains pass it in the night, and there are sudden violent jerks as we change speeds, since our train is very long.

This train and the road that is nearby go along the easiest path, along this Gansu corridor, toward the west.  It's where they went centuries ago, millennia even, with their camel caravanseries loaded with goods.  Carrying their cultures with them, to trade for other things of other cultures.  And really, we are doing the same thing.  Showing ourselves, our ways, and seeing theirs.



This morning we arrived early and had a long and difficult bus ride to Dun Huang, seeing remains of the Han Great Wall at our “separation” stop.  I feel the voices of the wall, but three are tamarisk bushes here, and it is, amazingly, raining, where we stop to pee, so I use my energy to smell the wet tamarisk instead of thinking of the soldiers lonely at their garrisons along the wall.

There is much discussion and to-ing and fro-ing about our afternoon's activities, since the remarkable rain is pouring down and the Caves at Mogao are closed in the rain.  The rain is so intense that I find it a little scary; along the road we saw one awful accident, and there are no street drains in town, for this is a wildly unusual occurrence.

But finally the rain subsides enough so that we drive out to the caves, through the Gobi Desert, this is, with virtually nothing growing in it (but I can't get close enough to know for sure, and besides much will surely sprout after this rain?).

The "caves", nearly five hundred of them, date from the 4th to the llth centuries, and are a World Heritage Site.

The first we are taken to is the most awesome: we pass into a dark room at the base of the cliff, and there rising in the dim light above us is a giant Buddha.  I am so moved that I namaste him, in a gesture of respect, and put some money into the offering box in front of him.

For even though these are now in the realm of art history for westerners, for the devout, or even those just covering their bases, they are objects of veneration or even worship, and in each chapel we enter, there is an offering box in front of the Buddha. 

Bob has finally taught us well, even me (and he has paid me special attention because I am interested and ask good questions and want to learn).  So as we visit one chapel after another, I understand better what I am seeing, and so appreciate and like it better.   We see amazing images, nearly as bright as the day they were painted.  The walls scintillate with lively images.  The more you look the more you see.  Stories are told and taught, so the faithful will learn, understand, and believe. 

But nothing moves me as much as the great Buddha, looking out into our time. 

And I back at him, in his mystery.

Tomorrow is Buddha's birthday, and we are to return to look at more chapels, but there will be pilgrims there.   I guess in our own way we are pilgrims too, right?



Today we return to the cave-chapels, this time not in the rain, though it is still cloudy.  The rumor is that Henry Kissinger, of all unappealing persons, is not only staying at our hotel, but also visiting the caves today, and we do see a sort of modern caravan of fancy-looking cars leaving the hotel, but no sightings of Henry the K.

At the caves, there are many more people than yesterday, large family groups mostly.  We have an attractive woman as site guide; she is wearing the latest in pointy-toe, spike heeled shoes, of a fine turquoise color, but she manages quite well, and we trot about with her as she unlocks cave after cave. 

Inside each, Bob’s too-loud voice booms out the tellings of what's in there, and we see wonderful tiny vignettes of ancient scenes--plowing, acrobats, hunting, and all sorts of fine things, as well as stories from the life of the Buddha.  By now, having been told the basic narrative several times, I can pick out some of these.  I am still a bit hazy on some of the large figures, but I get the general idea. 

I am terribly embarrassed when in one cave, filled with visitors other than our group, Bob is so loud in his narrative that others shush him.  Really, he is quite insensitive and rude.

In one cave we see graffiti in cyrillic, left over from some fleeing White Russians who took refuge in there, a long time ago.  We also see the blank spaces on the walls and on the central platforms where old-time explorer/archeologists ripped stuff off, literally as well as figuratively.   Some of it is in our very own Fogg Museum at Harvard, where now I will go and complain.

Because it is Buddha's birthday, the local tv news people are here, filming pilgrims at the great Buddha that so moved me yesterday, and burning huge quantities of incense just outside the entrance to the chapels.  By the time we leave, hundreds of people are gathered in groups, eating lunch.  One man has a large bowl and a huge hank of noodles, about three inches wide and indefinitely long.  Again, I try to take pictures but am too shy just to stick my camera in their faces.  Their wonderful, wonderful faces.

Then in the afternoon we are taken to a place of camel-riding by our solemn CITS guide Peter, he whose English is virtually unintelligible.  It turns out this place is a sort of nature reserve, and there is an earnest sign at the start that says it was made by the hand of God, and here are the rules for taking care of it.  There are many Chinese here, having a good time, climbing up the huge dunes in long lines, or riding the decrepit camels, or zooming motorbikes on the sand, or taking the funny trams along the dunes.

I go off by myself as best I can though surrounded by hundreds of noisy laughing people.  I take pictures of two kinds of flowers, a legume of some kind, and a saxifrage.   Also I find I think two kinds of beetles, with their long legs to keep off the hot sand, and best of all, a marvelously-camouflaged lizard, about five or six inches long, who lets me get right on top of him to take his picture.  I climb up a low dune, and then down again, and feel happy.

Bob upset me no end at dinner by giving us all a quiz, a real ten-question quiz, the prize to be the honor of staying in the two-room suite in the next hotel.   I was made to feel quite stupid and I really hated it, and was quite angry at him.    Turns out I didn't do too badly, but I was feeling pretty angry about it.  What a jerk. 

We are on the overnight train again, this time sharing with another couple, so it is not as nice, but at least the bed is not rock-hard, so my hips are spared.  I sleep quite well all night, as we speed across the black Gobi Desert.  I think of those merchants passing here, worried about the heat, the lack of water, the bandits, the health of their camels and the keeping qualities of their goods.

Dun Huang was the most desperate of all the places we have seen so far.  The heavy and strange rain turned some of the sidewalks into sinkholes, and the alleyways into mud pits.  We saw people living in  dreadful houses, falling down around them.  The roads are lined with cotton fields, but the cotton is tiny, and the labor huge.  In the corridor of our train, we had to move aisle to let a man carrying a huge sack of cotton pass by.  Where was he taking it?


We have arrived in Turpan, in what’s called the Uighur (WEE-gur) Autonomous Region, of which our national guide Parida is a citizen, so she is coming home.  I like her very much and am impressed with a number of things about her—her English language skills, her sense of humor, her knowledge, and her apparent forthrightness.

This is a city of grapes, and there are grape arbors right outside our room.  Our room has a high ceiling, and together with the blue sky outside, and the green plants, makes me feel comfortable. 

This morning after sleeping, we went to a fine mosque, very elegant, of brick, with many clean and simple lines, and fine pictures to be made.  This afternoon there will be a walking excursion to an ancient and abandoned city, and I will see what I can feel.

Seen along the streets in Turpan:
--A row of baskets of different subtly colored raisins in reds, blacks, greens

--outside of town, a red oil derrick

--kids in their school uniforms of pale blue and white, with sailor collars

--a man squatting in front of a small fire—cooking?—by a store front

--we take a little stroll outside after supper, and in the lessening heat they come by with a big truck, spraying cooling, dust-settling water on either side of the street

--we walk several abreast, large, noisy, very very American

--A woman in her long dress and head scarf sweeping the dust in front of her home in the morning

--four men sit on low red plastic stools playing cards, slapping the cards down with gusto

--grape arbors everywhere, and along dirt alleys behind gates, the places where people live

--we went in a group to the night market, where they were cooking meats over open fires, smoke billowing; a naked sheep’s head stared sightlessly at us

--the neat courtyards of yellowish, tannish reddish brick houses, each flat roof covered with thick piles of drying grain, and often there’s a bedstead on top; sometimes the bedsteads are in the courtyard in front of the house

--donkey-drawn carts, the donkeys managing to look spritely with their pointy ears and dainty hooves, even though they surely have a dreadful life

--a guy on a barely functioning, wheezing, belching, fuming small tractor on the street, yelling into  his cell phone

--a red velvet upholstered chair out front of a house, in the dust, a guy asleep in it

--all is very neat, tidy, much more so than the similar houses and courtyards in Dun Huang
--in the early morning, four people carry a large square cloth out of the house—to air it?

--the grape-drying, raisin-making structures, of brick, several stories, with a lattice of brick on the top story

--many rows of poplars, and we learn that when you build a house, you are to plant a mulberry tree in front of it, so many of those, too

--the ubiquitous blue trucks, some with four wheels, some with three

--wonderful birds in the mornings—several kinds of cuckoos, a thrush of some kind, doves, could that possibly be a nightingale???

--I ask Parida whether there is a special flag for the Uighur Autonomous Region.  She laughs bitterly, and says, yes, red with a yellow sun and five stars —the Chinese flag. 

--she tells us how her parents gave her the choice of attending the Uighur-speaking high school or the one which instructed in Mandarin Chinese; she choose the Uighur school and was sorry for it, as then she had to perfect her Mandarin Chinese in order to get a job.  She says that she will not give her own child a choice but will send her to Chinese school.  Thus is a culture slowly obliterated…

--lines of laundry neatly hung out in the courtyards.  The poor folks in the hideous cities not only do not have their own four walls, they must hang their clothes outside in the sooty air inside cages they build in front of their windows.  The cages can hold plants, but most often they are used as storage places for boxes, junk, and clothes.  These folks may not have indoor plumbing—or any plumbing, but at least they have some clean air

We visit the ruins of a 5th century town with temples, a stopover for the caravans, clay-colored, ancient straw-reinforced bricks, niches now empty, windows, walls, shadows of ancient painting.

We too arrive by donkey, six to a colorful cart, the donkey driver shouting “Let’s go! Let’s go!” and “Trot! Trot! Trot!”!

At the entrance, a bazaar, kids milling around, practicing their hellos, a shoeshine man cleaning off your dusty shoes, rows of glittering vests and hats, scarves, music, various nationalities looking at all the fine colored goods

Next to the excavated tombs of various officials, a treasure trove of homely objects, and some paintings in one of the tombs of birds and flowers, and I am called upon to say something about these flowers, which I more or less manage to do.  There are two desiccated bodies in one tomb, a man and his wife, and offerings of money have been left, just in case, I think

Next we visit a series of cave chapels in a fabulous setting of red mountains and dunes, sere, large forms with barren slopes. 

In the valley just below, a river is heard and seen, poplars fluttering and showing their white verso; a solitary man weeds in his little plot, but he has arbors and a few rows of some crop, and his house—all at the very foot of this ancient and sacred site.  Doubtless his ancestors provided services to the artisans and artists and worshippers who came here to build these and worship at them.

Planted along the dirt road going to and from this place are parallel rows of plants, startling with the barren-appearing desert behind.  Parida tells us that these have been planted, desert-adapted plants, in order to help the farmland, but I think it is to prevent sand from covering the road.  They do a lot, exploiting plants for their mechanical properties, but never seeming to pay attention to their other wonderfulnesses, except as aesthetic or symbolic objects.

Last to a museum where we see some of the objects removed from the tombs we saw earlier.  There are wonderful things, tiny figures of women rolling out dough on a form, a tiny ewe with lambies, shoes, bows and a lovely case with arrows still in it.  Upstairs are six desiccated adults and two babies, one possibly premature, the other about eight months old with a sweet expression still on her face.  I feel a bit uncomfortable just staring at these people.  They were real people, and they don’t deserve to be ogled.

Then to a bazaar, not for tourists, where I take a lot of wonderful pictures.  A very beautiful young woman sits easily on the table next to her offering of green beans, I take her picture and indicate to her how lovely I think she is.  She laughs and smiles and puts her hand to her mouth.  There are the alarming sheep heads, as well as lungs, shown proudly to us by their vendor.  There are carts of decorated breads. 

We have dinner out, at the home of a family headed by a rich widow, who serves company under her deeply hung grape-arbored courtyard, served by her daughter-in-law, and viewed by  some of the neighborhood kids.  It seems in order to receive foreigners she must have a government permit, and it is prominently displayed over her door.  The fourteen of us take quite a while to get ourselves comfortable in sitting-on-the-floor positions.

And so home to our hotel, with its birds, flowers, and grapes.

We will be home a week from tomorrow.


Kuqa (pronounced coo-cha)
Early this morning I hastily buy a violet silk shirt at the hotel gift shop, speaking universal woman’s language to the clerk.  I have lost my entire pillowcase of dress clothes—don’t want to write of it, but I hope some hotel maid made good money off my things--  yesterday on the street I saw a woman in a lovely red dress, and as we passed I signaled to her how great I thought it was.  She responded in universal woman’s language, and we both laughed.

Then a three hour bus ride across a high pass, where the caravans crossed,   At first a dark gravelly landscape ringed by distant mountains.  Then the mountains draw nearer, and I swoon over an exquisite long drawn out angle of repose, a heart-breakingly elegant sweeping line down from the craggy mountains.

We pass through looming and formidable ranks of barren mountains.  Once or twice there are tiny clusters of abandoned mud brick structures, lonely beyond reckoning.

Then we leave the mountains behind as we open into a high pastureland, with herds of sheep and goats, and soon a big wind farm set against the distant and snowy mountains.

We enter Urumqi (oo-ROOM-chee), the name of which in Uighur means beautiful pastures, but there are none here, just horrible soviet style hi rises (some with cyrillic signs), a definite military presence, garish huge advertising, and nothing to recommend it.

At the airport I get ice cream, and we fly here to Kuqa.

By this time I have begun to feel sick, and stay in the room, in bed, while John goes off to lunch and some caves.

By the time he gets back, I am genuinely sick, with a fever.  Outside we hear a person practicing the trumpet, he plays Ode to Joy, and some other western things, and then some I do not recognize.  His final notes are sweet and long-lasting.  I take some antibiotics, and spend a very scary night, a long night far from home.



This day, too, I am sick, and spend it all in bed, taking my pills, listening some to the sounds outside my window, but mostly sleeping.  John is away all day, seeing more caves.  I am glad when he comes home.  I seem to be improving—the fever seems gone—but I have not eaten for a long time and just the thought of food is nauseating.