A Silk Road Trip Or I Gobbed In The Gobi
A Silk Road Trip Or I Gobbed In The Gobi China1992 By Philip Spires
In August 1992 myself and my wife Caroline arranged a trip to postTiananmen China. It was in the days when the London China Travel office was on Cambridge Circus opposite the Palace Theatre on Charing Cross Road. It took me at least twenty books a latenight Japanese television series and several months to plan and arrange the trip from what was then our base in Balham south London. In those days you could arrange the visit via China Travel and then as long as the itinerary was lodged in advance you could travel absolutely independently. Everything was prepaid but on setting off we had no tickets or confirmed reservations apart from our air tickets in and out of Beijing. As ever I kept a journal of the trip which ran to more than fifty pages. A few years later I condensed the experience to two sides of A4 ignoring rules of grammar and syntax and produced the following ramble a perhaps poetic impression of nearly a month of travel.
ExLondon while the Sun dissected Michael Jackson’s nose and praised Boardman’s hooterless goldmedal bicycle. Air China to Beijing where taxis cost more than Lonely Planet predicts. A Chinese character itinerary from one Tim Han of China Travel whilst fellow workers drool over televised lithe AfroAmerican sprinters at the Olympics. Then to the nolonger Forbidden City. Piles of local tourists to negotiate.
Four hours of Xinjiang Airlines to Urumqi. Signs in Chinese and Russian plus Uigur written in Arab script a recent innovation. Land lines across Inner Mongolia. Why and how so straight? Urumqi multiplepeaked. Piles of coal scruffy high rise snowcapped Bogda Shen at streetend. Pavement fortune tellers traders. Food stalls. Women washing sheeps’ stomachs in a stream tripe kebabs. Uigur town now Han Chinese populated by Shanghai overspill over 2000 miles from home. The second long march.
Uigur breakfast. Hot sheep’s milk Chinese tea flat tomato bread sugared tomato and cucumber pickled cabbage thin congee sheep’s milk butter two giant sugar lumps. Uigur market. Fruits amid a forest of hanging lamb. Chinese market. Live vegetables and meats. Tank overspilling with energetic eels unit price. Selfknotting spaghetti.
Woman losing her gold watch at an illegal ‘find the lady’. Policeman looking on. Tears when the loss hits home. Renmin Park for noodles and rocketfuel chili sauce. Bag slashers with fingerring knives on a crowded bus. Care needed.
Car to Turfan. Fertile valleys. Barren mountains. Occasional snow. Road ploughed. Kazak yurts. Semisunken shademaking rammedearth Uigur villages invisible at a distance save for chimney smoke. Steep downhill gorge spectacular river rocks white water and slategrey hills. Into Turfan depression snowcapped distance surrounding grey stone pit 100 miles across. 42 degrees at its base 200 metres below sea level. Car ahead leaving tracks on molten road. A hefty gob from the driver irrigates. Gobi means stones. Plenty here. And then green. An oasis. A giant mirage?
Turfan. Latticed vines for streetshade. Hanging raisin grapes. 15 yuan fine for casual picking. Hotel tea in galvanised buckets. Turkishstyle dancing and music. Genghizsacked rammedearth cities of Goachang and Jiaohe. Painted tombs and brick minarets. Flaming mountains. Karez underground irrigation system. 3000 kilometres of channels. 1500 years old gravityfed from mountains at the depressionedge. Uigur culture’s greatest feat and in full working order.
Bus to Daheyan. Two hours over bumpy stones to depressionedge. Dump of a railway town. Coal heaps box buildings waste land. Two women at war on station forecourt. Ramming victim’s head onto the ground. Blood. Onlookers. Inaction. A tense town of resentful postees.
500 miles to Liuyuan in Gansu. Featureless flat grey shale stone. Spectacularly unique. Snow mountains to the north. Utterly empty save for smoking coal towns. 40 above in summer 30 below in winter. Overnight by train. Dawn reveals same massive scene now in brown.
Arrive Liuyuan. Daheyan writ similar. 120 miles south across the desert black at first! past remnant ramparts of Han Dynasty GreaterGreat Wall. Camels and dunes of Taklimakan world’s largest sand desert. Near Dunhuang oasis blossoms again. Sand and scree suddenly crop and tree. Feitian Hotel with complimentary toiletries labelled Sham Poo and Foam Poo. Lunch. Fourteen dishes. Duck fooyong cucumber cabbage oyster mushroom chicken coriander pork steamed buns steamed bread rice beef broth and noodles pork and green beans pork and sweet chili chicken and squash plain noodles water melon. Then to get the essential torch for the caves. Houses huddled together. Wood stores for winter piled on top. View across the roofs like a scrap heap. Ground level claustrophobic stoneware maze.
Cave day. Mogao Buddhist caves closed from 12 to 2 full day needed for perhaps the most stunning sight on earth. 400 ‘caves’ some cathedral size in a sandstone gorge between 400 AD to 1100 AD. Utterly dry always dark perfectly preserved. Everything painted. Tang period complex and colourful. A world of scenes by torchlight. Buddhas reclining sitting standing posing. Thirty metre seated figure with thousands of unsmoked cigarettes and coins on his lap as offerings. Shock of Qingrenovated cave with Taoist figures. Ghoulish features contorted and a face in the groin. 40 caves seen in the day archaeologist as a personal guide. Stunning. Fourteen dishes for dinner.
Desert bus back to Liuyuan. Always a fight for seats. Three dusty hours. Train to Lanzhou. 800 miles along GansuQinghai mountainous border. More black desert then yellow earth. Jaiyaguan fort at the limit of the Ming empire. Overnight by train. Country changed. Mountain pass green rolling hills and stepped fields. Wheat harvest in. Straw dollies like children at assembly. Houses still of rammed earth. Lanzhou a thriving industrial city. Thirty hours of travel. Walk by Yellow River.
Fish in hotel restaurant tank all dead. Lanzhou bus expensive. 50 fen per trip. Radios and knitting banned. Han dynasty flying horse and bronze warriors. Steamed carp with rape on menu. The fish comes first. Train to Xian through yellow loess country. Deep furrows and gorges. All flat land cropped. 500 miles overnight.
Terra cotta warriors facing east to guard Qin Shihuang’s tomb. Made in pieces. Assembled in situ. Partly excavated section where piles of dismembered limbs emerge from the earth. New terra cotta warriors for sale from the factory behind the museum. Exact replicas of originals. Wheeze at the thought of the whole thing as a sham for the tourist trade.
Xian like all Chinese cities a square. Roads straight intersecting always at right angles. Ancient centre walled Ming rebuilt. Old mosque exquisite. Xianyang nearby with Seventh century Qian tombs museum with another 3000 Han terra cottas like a football crowd. Train to Beijing. 800 miles 26 hours. Houses often caves in valley side. Later immense flat land maize everywhere.
Temple of Heaven Tiantan and then Beijing Opera. Pause for beer at wayside stall. Served by moonlighting trainee stockbroker! Breakfast pickle amazing like four year old camembert out of a shotgun. Takes the head off. Great Wall. Mucho touristico but still stunning. Like climbing a giant ladder in places. “I climbed the Great Wall” Tshirts prices lower the further you climb. Must be the air. Ming tombs dismissed by guidebook. Wrong. Amazing barrel vaulted rooms nine stories underground. Jade doors carved thrones marble marble marvel. Reminiscent of renaissance Italy. Everlasting bricks etched with names of their makers. Souvenir jade boat for 55000 pounds.
White drapes over erotic statues in Tibetan Lama Temple. Same bestial content in wall paintings. 24 metre gold Buddha through the incenseblur. No smoking signs everywhere.
Mao’s Maosoleum an emperor’s tomb. Lines for queues painted across the square. Feet pointing north towards Tiananmen Gate upsidedown feng shui. He is shiny waxy and painted about the face. Moving lines file past on either side. No pausing. Outside stalls with Mao Tshirts Mao key rings cuddly toys post cards magic lantern shows. Mao Zedong candy floss by the armful. Then Great Hall of the People. Dining room for 5000. Now fast food for tourists. Great Hall chop sticks cigarettes Tshirts. Great Hall of the People cuddly toys.
2500 miles. Three and a half weeks. 5 destinations. 50 caves. 6000 terra cotta warriors. 1 each Great Wall Forbidden City Beijing Opera Mao Zedong. Hundreds of tombs temples pagodas parks bendibuses and bicycles. 3 silk shirts on the Silk Road. One amazing trip.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Philip Spires
Author of Mission an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk
Michael a missionary priest has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident but Mulonzya a politician exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface a church worker has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet a teacher and the priests neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh however.
Related posts: