02-Aug-2008
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| China |
A gentle three hour drive took us from Jiayuguan to Dunhuang; and yes, Orlando was right, there was nowhere to stop for lunch, indeed there was nowhere.
The motorway towards Urumqi passed through desert and the odd patch of scrub with fine views
of the increasingly distant Qilian Mountains. After an hour or so we turned onto a smaller, but still well maintained, road. There had been little
traffic on the motorway; there was none on the side road.
Approaching Dunhuang, the desert to our left rose into a cliff. Between the cliff and the road were a series of burials, each marked by a small headstone and a metre high cone of earth from which a stick protruded. Each stick, Orlando informed us, had once been covered with paper flowers, which time and the wind had scattered across the Gobi. The first graves appeared maybe twenty kilometres from the town, haphazardly strewn over the long strip of land, their density gradually increasing as we neared habitation.
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| The empty motorway towards Urumqi |
Approaching Dunhuang, the desert to our left rose into a cliff. Between the cliff and the road were a series of burials, each marked by a small headstone and a metre high cone of earth from which a stick protruded. Each stick, Orlando informed us, had once been covered with paper flowers, which time and the wind had scattered across the Gobi. The first graves appeared maybe twenty kilometres from the town, haphazardly strewn over the long strip of land, their density gradually increasing as we neared habitation.
Desert towns have a
way of appearing suddenly from nowhere; the first sign of Dunhuang was a large
tollbooth. Once through, we found ourselves in a small city with the usual wide
roads and grid pattern but with remarkably few high-rise buildings, almost
nothing over three or four storeys. Life, it seemed, moved slowly here, neither
people nor cars exerting themselves under the hot desert sun.
.JPG) |
| Beside the road to Dunhuang |
 |
| We have just driven from Jiayuguan to Dunhuang, both ringed on the map above |
We drove past the
hotel we thought we were staying at. ‘It is full,’ Orlando told us, ‘because of
the eclipse. You have been rebooked into another hotel, it is better, it is
four star.’
This problem was
not the quality of the new accommodation, nor the promised views of the dunes,
the problem was that it was right by the dunes, four kilometres out of
town; a purpose-built luxury ghetto for foreigners.
We parked and
Orlando phoned her boss to explain our misgivings. The message was firstly
disbelief, then that the town was very full, and finally, in the face of our
continued intransigence, that the boss had a cousin who knew somebody who…., I
did not listen to the full story. ‘You can see the room if you like,’ Orlando
said, clearly expecting we would reject it. ‘Where is it?’ ‘There.’ She pointed
out of the window.
It was a bog
standard Chinese three star hotel. The room was dingy but clean and had air
conditioning and a bathroom. There was no fridge, which was irritating, and the
bed was as hard as a board, which was normal, but most importantly it was right
by the entrance to Dunhuang night market. It even had a view of the dunes - if
you hung out the window a bit. We took it at once.
Dunhuang night
market covers several city blocks. At dusk, the stalls in the central square
are replaced by low tables and comfortable chairs. Food and drink are provided
by the restaurants around the edge of the square and a host of portable cookers
that appear as if by magic. Although we were now beyond The Great Wall, we were
still in Gansu Province and Dunhuang is largely a Han Chinese town. Despite
that, and as much by accident as design, we sat down by another Muslim kebab
merchant. Had we known what would face us in Xinjiang, our choice might have
been different, but lacking the benefit of hindsight, we were happy to eat more
kebabs. Beside us a fountain tinkled merrily; on the far side a busker tootled
the Titanic theme on a soprano saxophone..JPG) |
| A view of the dunes from our hotel, Dunhuang |
Our kebabs arrived
with some cold beers, and we felt pleased with ourselves and our choice of
hotel. The busker finished sinking the Titanic, picked up his music and moved
across the square. The big ship set sail again.
.JPG) |
| Dunhuang night market |
Four Chinese lads
sat down next to us and ordered beers. After much discussion and some teasing,
one of them accepted the dare, turned to us and said ‘Where are you from?’
.JPG) |
| A few kebabs and a bottle of beer Dunhuang night market |
‘I am from China,’
he replied earnestly.
There is nothing
funnier, particularly after a few beers, then a solemn statement of the
blindingly obvious, a fact not lost on his friends. As they slapped their knees
and hooted with derision, he covered his face with his hands and blushed a
shade of beetroot.
His confusion was
covered by a karaoke machine set up where the Titanic man had been. I am not
musical, but even I could tell that the singing bore, at best, only a passing
resemblance to the tune, or indeed any tune. Then the sax man set himself up by
us. I knew what he would play before he lifted his instrument to his lips – he
only knew one song. There was nothing for it, we ordered another beer.
03-Aug-2008
Yumenguan, the Jade
Fort, is not worth driving 80 km to see. Fortunately, an 80 km trip into the
Gobi is worth doing just for itself.
We nearly did not
get there at all. At a roadblock near the city centre we were warned that our
route was closed. On the edge of the oasis, where green gives way to the grey
of the desert, we reached Dunhuang Gucheng - Dunhuang Ancient City - an
impressive looking old town which drags the Chinese tourists in by the
thousand. Built as a film set in the 1990s for one of the endless torrent of
‘Three Kingdoms Epics’ that flood out of Chinese studios, it held little
interest for us, but we were forced to stop at the roadblock at the head of the
access road.
We could go no
further, the policeman said, the road to Yumenguan was closed and would reopen
this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow. Orlando told him we were leaving that
afternoon, a white lie. The policeman wavered. She told him that the Olympics
were starting and he must be nice to foreign guests. We were on the point of
being waved through when a younger, smaller, weasel faced individual came over.
He had no uniform and looked more like an angry teenager than the man in
charge, but the red triangular armband safety-pinned to his sleeve must have
counted for something, as the police officers deferred to him instantly. Our
policeman was just a bloke doing a job and, as such, open to a little cajoling.
This man looked a different and altogether nastier breed.
Orlando did not
back down. The small man’s body language was not encouraging, but she was
persuasive. He shook his head and pursed his lips, but still Orlando kept on at
him. He waved his arms and made his point with emphatic fingers, but Orlando
resisted. Eventually persistence paid off; with a final sneer, he waved us
through and we set off into the desert.
At Dunhuang’s
eastern edge, the Gobi rises in wave after wave of huge dunes. This may be the
popular perception of deserts, but they are rarely like that. Driving west, the
dunes dwindled behind us while the Qilian Mountains lined the southern horizon
with a blaze of white. We drove down an arrow-straight road over a featureless,
monochrome plain. There was little to look at, yet the desert has an austere
beauty that somehow commands your attention. After some 40 km we reached what
appeared to be a small fort where a chain had been extended across the road.
This was the Yumenguan ticket office, and if the road was closed, nobody had
told the ticket seller. A kilometre or so later we came across a gang painting
white lines. Perhaps the road had been closed for their safety; we saw no other
reason. Mr Lu generously decided not to run any of them down.
.JPG) |
| Two old fools near the Yumenguan ticket office with the Gobi behind and the white-capped Qillian Mountains in the distance |
The road
ends at Yumenguan, the stump of a Han dynasty fort standing all alone in the
desert. Behind the fort a long, shallow depression is marked by a rare streak
of green where an underground river almost struggles to the surface. Birds
fluttering through the reeds were the first wildlife we had seen since leaving
Dunhuang.
.JPG) |
| Yumenguan |
Back in Dunhuang,
Orlando recommended a restaurant perched on the edge of town among the cotton
fields.
Designed with
tourists in mind, it was built round an atrium where three musicians sat
bashing together sticks and clanging cymbals every time a new diner turned up.
Suitably serenaded, we were ushered into a private room, but declined in favour
of one of the tables round the edge of the atrium.
.JPG) |
| Bashing sticks to serenade new arrivals Dunhuang |
The food was not
memorable. In response to our requests, there was a little less, but the
spicing was no more marked than in Jiayuguan.
We were halfway
through eating when the cymbals clanged to welcome a group of Americans. The
cymbals kept on clanging and the Americans kept on coming as several busloads
of elderly eclipse spotters trooped past the musicians and disappeared into a
private area at the back.
We were still
eating when the cymbals announced that the Americans were leaving. Some had
already wandered out and were browsing in a gift shop, the others were now
being chivvied and chased by a group of Chinese guides, trying to act like
sheep dogs but appearing more like yapping Jack Russells. Barely five minutes
had elapsed between the last entering and the first leaving; they could have eaten
very little.
We put down our
chopsticks and Lynne went to the toilet while I sat finishing my beer. The Jack
Russells were becoming anxious, running all over the place trying to round up
the more independent minded of their charges.
Inevitably, we became
involved. A guide approached me; ‘Which bus are you on, sir?’ The politeness of
his words disguised neither his anxiety, nor his irritation at my sitting there
with the air of a man going nowhere in a hurry. ‘I am not on any bus,’ I told
him, just a little too smugly. Lynne, meanwhile, was being treated less
politely. She found her way barred. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she was
asked. ‘Somewhere people do not speak to me like that,’ she thought but spoke
more graciously. Coming out she was again accosted. ‘Which bus are you on?’
Group travel on an
over-tight timetable looked no fun for travellers or guides.
In the afternoon we
walked to the Dunhuang museum. It was free because of the Olympics and although
it would be unkind to say that was the best feature of the small collection, the
scraps of ancient silk and hemp did not delay us long.
We spent some time
trying to photograph the city’s symbol, a young lady whose concrete effigy
stands on a roundabout in the town centre playing a stringed instrument behind
her back. When and why this proto-Hendrix act was deemed necessary we never
discovered, but Dunhuang seems proud of her. Given the position of the sun, the
tangle of telephone wires and the fussy façade of the post office, finding the
right angle proved challenging. We lacked the style of the Chinese family who
merely walked out into the traffic and stood in the middle of the road. Nobody
seemed to mind, the cars describing slow arcs around the knot of photographers.
Afterwards we found
an internet cafe to write home. On the news, we read of trouble in Xinjiang.
Several policemen had been killed in an attack on a ‘customs post near
Kashgar’. Though regretting the loss of life, we assumed a ‘customs post’ would
be out near the Kyrgyz border, and hoped it would not affect our plan to be in
Kashgar within the week. With the Olympics almost upon us, the Chinese were
anxious that rebellious Xinjiang would not descend into the violence seen
earlier in Tibet. We feared the authorities might close the area to foreigners,
although I suppose that would have been preferable to actually becoming caught
up in a terrorist attack.
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| Photographing not-Jimi-Hendrix Dunhuang |
.JPG) |
| There's an internet café somewhere on the left Dunhuang |
04-Aug-2008
Breakfast was not exhilarating. The cold buffet offered chopped vegetables - cucumber, tomato, celery - prawn crackers and diamond shaped biscuits like Jacob's crackers. The inevitable steamed buns were grey and unappetizing - even to those who like steamed buns. The prospect of thinly sliced cold liver was a little daunting at that hour, but it went down surprisingly well. While we were at the buffet they poured us coffee - glasses of black, unsweetened Nescafe. Ungratefully, we persuaded them to take it away and bring some tea. A little later a cold fried egg appeared – especially for westerners – and a couple of slices of sweetish bread with generic jam and a blob of unhappy butter.
Like Huashan,
Mingsha Shan - The Singing Sand Dunes - provided a real Chinese day out.
Mingsha Shan is one
of the few major dune systems in the Gobi desert – and impressive it is, too.
Given the Chinese desire to package and sell off natural phenomena, we were not
surprised to find a car park, a ticket office and an official entry to Mingsha
Shan lurking on the desert’s edge. The Gobi is big and presents an
insurmountable problem to anyone daft enough to try to fence it off. I am
reliably informed that with a little legwork it is possible to reach the end of
the fence and enter the desert ticketless. That is not what we did. We paid our
money and entered the Gobi through a turnstile.
Several dozen camels
sat quietly in the sand while a similar number of would be riders milled
around. Before acquiring a camel ticket, we needed to hire the necessary
equipment. This consisted of bright orange knee length boots, slipped on over
our sandals. They looked ridiculous, but everyone else was wearing them so why
be left out?
Our tickets
assigned us to numbered camels but by the time the Chinese families had sorted
themselves out among the trains of five, we found ourselves separated and
astride camels with numbers unconnected with our tickets.
I have a lot of
time for the two-humped Bactrian camel. They are docile yet dignified, and
unlike cats, dogs and horses cause no dramatic allergic response in my
unnecessarily sensitive eyes. They have an obvious place to sit, which their
single humped Arabian cousins conspicuously have not, and they lack their
permanent sneer.(For more camel riding see With the Mongolian Nomads).JPG) |
| Lynne models the orange boots, Dunhuang |
My camel rose with
a mildly alarming lurch and we plodded off into the desert. I found myself
riding fourth in line, interrupting a family of four. Mother in front had
clocked that there was a foreigner on board and was encouraging teenage
daughter behind to practice her English. Suppressing the momentary desire to
claim I was a monoglot Frenchmen, I tried to be helpful, but our conversation
was limited, not just because neither of us could see the person we were
speaking to.
.JPG) |
| Off into the desert |
.JPG) |
| A merchant caravan battling across the desert - not really |
Given that nature
provides a comfortable chair with a well-stuffed back, little by way of a
saddle is required, just a blanket and a pair of stirrups. The Chinese,
incidentally, invented stirrups in the fourth century AD. It is difficult to
believe that Alexander the Great led his legendary charges and the Roman
cavalry conquered the known world riding without stirrups, but they did. On the
other hand, the heavily armoured mediaeval knights on their mighty warhorses
could never have developed without this simple piece of technology. In a sense,
the Hundred Year’s War was a product of the Silk Road.
We reached the
camel terminus, a natural bowl a kilometre or so into the dunes. I dismounted
and waited for Lynne to arrive on a later train, wondering vaguely how long we
would be there and whether I was supposed to catch the same camel back, or just
bag a random passing ruminant.
A stepladder had
been laid up the steep face of the dune on our right, and this was where
everybody seemed to be going. Lynne arrived, we paid the small fee and joined
them on the long stiff climb that seemed as steep as the ‘Heavenward Ladder’
though through soft sand not over hard rock.
.JPG) |
| Lynne reaches the camel terminus Dunhuang |
As we struggled
higher, I hoped Lynne would not do anything silly, like look down. In places
the rungs had sunk into the sand and we had to kick in our feet to make steps.
Occasionally we had to use our hands – and discovered the importance of the
orange thermal boots. Grabbing a buried rung was one thing, but swift removal
of the hand was essential before it fried in the red-hot sand. The climb would
have been impossible wearing only sandals.
From the top, the
Dunhuang oasis was laid out below us. In Hollywood mythology, an oasis is a
circle of palm trees round a small lake. Such oases may exist in the Sahara,
but they are unusual even there. Dunhuang oasis covers ten square kilometres
and is roughly rectangular with no obvious open water. The town is in the
centre, its buildings rising above the trees, and around it are fields of
crops, mainly corn and cotton. The town may be hot and dusty, but it is never
obvious that you are in an oasis. From the dunes, though, every edge of the
green rectangle was visible.
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| The Dunhuang Oasis... |
.JPG) |
| ...and looking slightly to the right |
Having marvelled at the view and taken the obligatory pictures, we considered the problem of descent. The standard method, available on the same ticket as our ascent, was by sledge. It was a long run, and steep enough for Lynne to be unnerved. Watching others, it seemed that it was hard to make the toboggans move at all, but when they went, they whizzed on down.
.JPG) |
| Ready to descend, the sledges are down to my right |
Meanwhile, I
climbed aboard a sledge and launched myself off. Nothing happened. Jerking up
and down only managed to dig me deeper into the sand. I tried rowing with my
hands, but the sand was too hot. Although gravity seemed more concerned with
driving me into the sand than down the slope, I did eventually get going and I
soon overtook Lynne shuffle-bottoming her way down. Then I stopped.
After more, largely
fruitless, effort I was off again, heading straight at the stationary toboggan
of a middle-aged woman. I desperately dug in my right hand to change direction,
and just as desperately pulled it out before it started to blister. I thumped into
the back of her toboggan, which appeared to irritate her, but at least it got
her moving again and the only real damage was to my dignity. When we reach the
bottom, she gave me the benefit of a few strong words about, I assume, reckless
tobogganing. I shrugged and played the idiot foreigner. It is not a difficult
part; it may even be the part I was born for.
We have been in
direct sun for too long, and at the stall by the camel terminus we haggled for
a much needed bottle of water.
Somehow, we found the
right camels and roughly the same people we came up with and headed off round
the dune in the direction of Yueya Quan - Crescent Moon Lake.
The Singing Sand
Dunes failed to live up to their name. I detected not the slightest hum – not
even the Titanic theme. Crescent Moon Lake, however, does exactly what it says
on the tin. Hemmed in by hundred metre high dunes, it is a curving sliver of
water maybe fifty metres in length which common sense says should not exist. It
is fed by an underground spring, and the shape of the dunes whirls away
drifting sand that would otherwise bury it. It looks like it must be a
temporary phenomenon, but its existence has been documented for over a thousand
years.
.JPG) |
| Somehow we found the right camel |
Sadly, the growth
of Dunhuang has lowered the water table so the spring now provides far less
water than is lost by evaporation. The solution was to build an artificial
feeder lake in the adjacent gap in the dunes, thus saving the natural lake by
turning it into another artificial lake. Chinese officialdom does not understand
irony..JPG) |
| Yueya Qua - Crescent Moon Lake, Dunhuang |
The mock-Ming
visitor centre did little to enhance the view, but it did provide a cooling
drink. Sim pi shray (or so it sounded) - a local speciality produced from
apricots - is cool, clear, brown and sweetly refreshing.
We caught a camel
back to the entrance and left the desert through the same turnstile as we had
entered.
We were hot and had
been too long in the sun when we sat down for the third and final meal that
Orlando would order for us. It consisted largely of molten lava. The main dish
had a little chicken among the chillies; the others were spicier..JPG) |
| The end of the camel trek |
I was pleased that
Orlando had at last taken us at our word. It was perhaps a touch hotter than is
truly enjoyable, but we ate it with relish. A point had been well and truly
made.
05-Aug-2008
Next morning we
rose in time see the nurses lined up for their morning exercises in the
hospital courtyard opposite. They were better than the restaurant staff in
Shanghai, but still lacked the military precision of a branch of KFC.
After breakfast, I
tried to persuade Lynne to visit the Baima Ta - the White Horse Dagoba. In AD
384 the monk Kumarajiva was busy spreading Buddhism eastward. Near Dunhuang his
white horse died and as he turned out to be a Dragon God rather than merely a
white horse, it seemed reasonable to build a Dagoba over his tomb. Lynne felt
unwell after the previous day’s sun, dehydration and over-exertion, so I went
on my own. Outside the hotel I accosted a taxi driver leaning against his cab.
'Baima Ta' I said and he nodded. Once in the car, he asked me where I wanted to
go. It is not easy making yourself understood in Mandarin. I showed him the
Chinese characters and we set off.
We drove south on
the main road, then turned left past the stump of the city wall. The further we
went down this rural side road the more I heard Lynne's 'what if' in the back
of my mind. ‘What if you get there and can't find a taxi back?’ A kilometre
later I thought I would be facing a long trek back to the main road. We turned
left again and after another half kilometre duly arrived at the entrance to the
Dagoba. I was relieved when the taxi man indicated that he would wait.
The dagoba was a
handsome nine-tiered stupa, the four bells hanging from the top tier chiming
merrily in the breeze. I had a good look, walked round it and photographed it
from several angles. It was a pleasant spot amid green fields and away from the
slow but persistent bustle of the city. It was also, I thought, in remarkably
good nick for a building that had been there seventeen hundred years. As I was
leaving I read the plaque 'The White Horse Dagoba, rebuilt by Dunhuang City
government in 1992’. I felt a tad cheated.
.JPG) |
| The stump of the city wall, Dunhuang |
Outside the driver
had left the meter running, my time inside had clocked up a princely 2 Yuan
(16p) extra..JPG) |
| Baima Ta - The White Horse Dagoba - Dunhuang |
Back at the hotel
Lynne had perked up, so we headed to the market for lunch. We had earlier
noticed a stall offering ‘pot noodles’ in cast iron urns. I chose one with
meatballs; Lynne chose slices of meat and vegetables. They poured on stock,
stuck the pots on a gas brazier and boiled vigorously; then they were delivered
to the table still in the cast iron urn. Apart from Lynne's meat turning out to
be fish – which did not displease her - they were very good. On the wall was a
large photograph of the Crescent Moon Lake in winter, the sand dunes dusted
with snow. It was hard to imagine yesterday’s boiling cauldron in the grip of
winter cold.
We met Orlando and
set off for Mogao, a few kilometres north east of town. Here over a thousand
caves have been chiselled into a cliff beside a dried up river. The statues and
paintings they contain date from between 400 and 1300 AD and are one of the
most important collections of Buddhist art in China.
Peter Hopkirk’sremark about the romance of the Silk Road ending the day the first British
tourists got off their bus at Mogao, may have been snobbish and wide of the
mark, but it unfortunately holds some truth as far as Mogao is concerned..JPG) |
| Outside the Mogao Caves |
There were indeed
many tourists, and many of them in buses, though they were overwhelmingly
Chinese. The pressure from tourists and the need for humidity and temperature
control mean that a visit is limited to eight caves, different tours seeing
different caves. It is theoretically possible to trace the development in
religious art through almost a thousand years, but not when the visit is so
limited. We joined the foreigners’ tour, which consisted of four Italians and
us. The tour was conducted in English, which we appreciated, despite Italian being the group's majority language. Fortunately, one of the Italians was able to
translate for his compatriots.
We started with the
cave containing what was, until the Taliban blew up the Bamyan Buddhas in 2001,
the world’s fourth largest Buddha. Working from the top, the cliff had been
hollowed out to leave a huge seated figure. Some of the brightly coloured
painting was original but much had been added more recently. It was
breathtaking, but after that our visit went downhill. We were shown several
caves in which the murals had been defaced or stolen, and the statues
mutilated. We finished in the ‘library cave’, which is the dullest cave in
Mogao, being only an empty hole in the rock, but is politically the most
important. If you want to see the contents, we were told, go to the British
museum, the Louvre and the Hermitage in St Petersberg. We were treated to a
general slagging off of the collectors – or looters – who came from Britain, France,
Germany, Russia and the USA to cart away China’s heritage. The Italians looked
smug, but thousands of Egyptian artefacts found their way to Italy, so
innocence here seemed more a matter of chance than intrinsic national virtue.
At the end, I felt
a little cheated and left with the belief that we had not seen the best that
Mogao had to offer. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I suspect the reason was
political.
.JPG) |
| Lynne and a Flying Apsara outside the Mogao Caves |
When the Silk Road
fell into disuse around 1300, the caves were gradually forgotten and filled with
drifting sand. European interest in what was then called Chinese Turkestan
awakened at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1900 a wandering monk called
Wang Yuan Lu stumbled upon the Mogao Caves and set about restoring them to
their former glory. Inevitably this came to the attention of the European
collectors.
Abbot Wang was
energetic and devoted, but he was also artistically and archaeologically naïve.
He threw out damaged statues and replaced them with replicas; he repaired
others as best he could and retouched, even repainted thousand year old murals.
He also had no idea of the value of the documents he discovered in the library
cave. More than 40 cubic metres of manuscripts, sutras and silk and paper
paintings, all over a thousand years old, were tightly compressed and perfectly
preserved in the dry desert air. They were in a huge variety of known and
several unknown Asian languages; some were even in Greek and Hebrew. Their
value was not lost on Sir Aurel Stein a Hungarian born British archaeologist/adventurer
who bought a quantity for the British museum. He was only the first of the
European collectors to take advantage of Wang Yuan Lu’s dedication.
.JPG) |
| The landscape in which to the Magao Caves became lost Mogao, Dunhuang |
It is easy to
sympathise with the Chinese, but Sir Aurel Stein and the others should be
judged by standards of their age and not merely dismissed as looters. If they
had not bought the contents of the library cave, the manuscripts may well have
ended up as firelighters. In the 1920s the caves were used to house White
Russian prisoners, who scrawled graffiti and mutilated statues in the hope of
finding jewels secreted in their eye sockets. During the Cultural Revolution
only a personal intervention by Zhou Enlai prevented wholesale destruction by
the Red Guards – lesser sites were not so lucky. Glossing lightly over the
murals Albert von Le Coq took to Berlin and were bombed to pieces by the
British in 1944, the Europeans did look after their booty better than the
Chinese. But that was then; today the Chinese would undoubtedly be
conscientious custodians of their own treasures. Perhaps both sides need to
swallow their nationalistic pride, realise that neither has a claim to the
moral high ground and find a compromise.
From Mogao we went
to the Dunhuang silk carpet factory. We were not yet in the heartland of silk
production and it is a small factory where most of the work is outsourced,
although two women were operating looms, largely for show. There had some very
beautiful carpets, with price tags to match. We bought some small things, then
drank tea and chatted to Orlando until it was time to go.
.JPG) |
| With Orlando at the Dunhuang silk carpet factory |
Until recently
Dunhuang was 100 km from the nearest station on the Lanzhou – Urumqi line, but
now a branch line has been built and Dunhuang has been equipped with a shiny
new station.
The car park was
not yet finished which made wheeling our cases difficult, but the X-ray machine
was definitely up and running. Our suitcases had exactly the same contents as
at Xi’an, but this time we were told to open up and they confiscated our
scissors and knives. Despite protestations, we were told very firmly that it
was the rule and it could not be bent, even for foreigners. Perhaps they had
been lax at Xi’an or maybe the rules had changed because of the Olympics, or
because we were going into Xinjiang, but we never found out. Fortunately, the
stallholder had halved our melon – a present from Mr Lu - and we still had our
spoons, otherwise our evening would have been spoilt. We tried to ensure the scissors and knives went
to Orlando not the officious X-ray machine operator, but as she insisted on
accompanying us onto the platform we have no idea if we were successful.
The train left on
time and we waved goodbye to Orlando. We soon discovered that not only did we
have the four-berth compartment to ourselves; we had the whole of the 'soft
sleeper' carriage. After watching the sun set over the barren emptiness of the
desert, we ate our melon, drank our bottle of 'Mogao dry red' (not a great
wine, but I have tasted worse) and settled down for the night.
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