夏河和兰州

The exciting conclusion to the Silk Road journey! (I apologize again that this has taken so long to post – I just have been caught up in the day to day routine and preparing for our midterm on Friday and working out our independent travel weekend plans. Hint: I’m going to see the monument of China.)

From Dunhuang we took a train into Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province; after resupplying ourselves with snacks, we jumped on the bus for our roughly five hour ride into the highlands. Although we technically never left Gansu, much of southwestern Gansu and much of Qinghai province are historically Tibetan areas and therefore are inhabited by Tibetan people, their yaks, and dotted with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. We had some free time to wander around our new home, Xiahe 夏河, and then went to eat dinner with our Alliance classmates from Beijing. It was nice to see them all again, though I had forgotten a lot of people’s names (and even some people’s faces!). Luckily, a lot of them had also forgotten us, so no harm. Perhaps the most exciting part was after dinner when our hosts constructed a bonfire and began dancing around it. Some friends of mine and I naturally had to join in. They also shot off some fireworks and we had a singing contest; the Tibetans won hands-down, though we found out our RD has a really good singing voice.

Taken from the bus, a scene of the rolling hills at sunset

 

 Fairgrounds where we ate dinner with the Beijing group with magnificent hills in the background

The next morning we had an optional hike to a hill on the outskirts of town. We left the hotel at 7:00am and the seven of us— our guide, Tim, Karen, Cora, Josh, Andras, Laura, and I began the walk. The hill was a previous site for sky burial ceremonies. There are four traditional types of burial according to Tibetan Buddhishm: fire, water, earth, and sky. Sky and water burials are more or less the same except they are practiced whether hills or bodies of water are more abundant. Earth burials seemed to be reserved only for sick bodies (and possibly bodies of people who had lived a bad life); fire burials were reserved for more important people. Because the burials are all concerned with allowing the spirit to ascend to the heavens to continue the reincarnation cycle into a higher being, bodies had to be prepared for the ascension. For sky burials, this involved two main parts: a series of “roads” constructed of white cloth and prayer flags up the hill to serve as a guide for the spirit; the body was cut into small pieces to allow birds in the area to be able to grab the body and carry it into the sky. Because this practice has some potential health issues, apparently this particular sky burial site had been shut down, though there appeared to be some rather fresh articles at the site when we there, so some in the group wonder how strongly this restriction is enforced.

We walked around the other side of the hill and climbed our way up. We did literally had to climb on all fours for some parts because of the steepness and muddy footing; luckily, the plants are extremely well rooted and even long blades of grass could hold my weight as I climbed. The view from the top was spectacular, especially as the morning fog kept dissipating as the sun rose higher and warmed up the city. Descending was obviously a lot easier than ascending, though there were still some iffy spots; everybody made it down injury free. 

View from the hilltop

Beginning our descent from Sky Burial Mountain

Mani stone on the side of the road

Alongside the road we saw two interesting trinkets placed inside holes in the hill face. One of the types were called chatchas which were small clay Buddhas or stupas which apparently were prayers for protection. The second type were mani stones, named because of the famous six-syllable Tibetan prayer to Avalokitesvara, a Buddhist Bodhisattva of compassion. After rejoining our large group for breakfast, we bid farewell to our Beijing friends and headed to the main attraction of Xiahe: Labrang Monastery 拉卜楞寺.

Main entrance to Labrang Monastery

To our surprise, the Alliance students in Intensive Chinese from Shanghai were there as well. We didn’t get to say hi for too long as we were split up into two different tour groups. Our guide was hilarious and cute; he was a monk in his mid-twenties who was one of only a few monks who knew enough English to give tours to English-speaking tourists. He, however, was either extremely self-conscious about his English or just a naturally giggly and shy person, because he would often in the middle of a sentence or even word would stop, cover his face a little bit and giggle. Though he was hard to understand at times, we all grew to find him extremely endearing.

Inside the monastery, you are not allowed to take any pictures inside the temples as they house Buddhist statues; photography is thought to take away from the spiritual energy of the statues besides being a respect issue. The monastery is comprised mainly of buildings for education and living spaces; Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are almost as much colleges as they are places of worship. Monks typically will spend at least thirteen years in their discipline and then “graduate” with a doctorate in whatever subject they were studying, which all are highly integrated with Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan culture. We did see a good number of child monks, probably as young as ten or twelve, who were rather active and energetic and running around the grounds, which was a bit of the contrast to the solemnity of the inner sanctums of the temples. 

Picture with some monks excited to take pictures with foreigners

Courtyard where educational debates are held

Large stupa inside the monastery

Without delving too much into all of the information we learned about Tibetan Buddhism, there are a few different sects, the largest of which is the Geluk-pa or “Yellow Hat School.” Most Tibetan Buddhists follow this sect as this is the sect that follows the Dalai Lama. Geluk-pa is one of the more strict sects of Tibetan Buddhism, such that monks cannot get married or have families. Somewhat similar to Catholicism in a good number of ways, Geluk-pa also has nunneries, though nuns are not nearly as honorable as monks. Another similarity is that the stupas within the temples also are said to contain relics of various Buddhist saints.

After lunch, we headed back into the hills for a short horse ride and traditional Tibetan snacks. The horses are much shorter than the European variety we’re used to; however, it made mounting and dismounting a lot easier. We split up into two groups to take turns riding the horses. Although I had never ridden a horse before, these horses were not only highly domesticated (though they sometimes tried to push each other and one time even kicked another horse!) but also there was a fence on either side of us making it impossible to get lost. After riding, we had a snack of hot yak milk with yak butter for extra flavoring. I think partially because I had been playing with my nose a bit to imitate the little girl walking around, I got my third (but final) nosebleed of the trip. 

All saddled up and ready to go!

During the second group’s horseback ride, it started raining, which did make the walk back to the bus rather muddy, but also created one of the fattest rainbows I have ever seen. Unfortunately rainbows don’t really turn out on cameras.

Karen, Andras and I were then accompanied by our guide back to the monastery to hopefully catch part of a debate (debates are apparently a large part of the learning style). Although we had missed the debate, we were fortunate enough to see a farewell ceremony for some of the monastery’s Living Buddhas. Living Buddhas are reincarnations of high-ranking lamas but not necessarily people who have reached nirvana. The method of blessing was rather peculiar: monks had bowls of orangish liquid which they would drink and then spit out into the crowd. The liquid is apparently some form of Tibetan medicine that is supposed to resemble (and perhaps contain?) blood and thus connote longevity and vitality.

Monk (notice the yellow hat!) blessing Buddhist adherents

Monks learning sutras through recitation

The next morning we had another optional morning walk. This time only Andras and I were interested to go; we visited another temple (Gong Tong Pagoda) outside the monastery that had some of the most ornately carved wooden gate frames I have ever seen. The inside of the temple was also a bit different than the ones inside the monastery: there were a lot more Buddhist statues around the central pillar/ altar. Because there were only the two of us with our guide, we were also able to ask him a lot more clarifying questions about Buddhism in general and peculiar aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. 

Elaborate wooden gate into Gong Tong Pagoda (click to enlarge)

Later that day we were originally scheduled to bus another two hours to a Bon monastery and picnic in the nearby hills; however, because of the rain and subsequent mud, this plan was scratched. Instead, we were able to actually meet with a Living Buddha at Labrang monastery. When meeting such an eminent lama, according to Tibetan tradition, we should present him a yellow or white hatak. Hataks are scarves, presumably traditionally made by some particular method, that contain different meanings depending on their colors. White symbolizes the start of a new friendship; yellow is reserved for high-ranking or eminent lamas or royalty; blue refers to a friendship as wide as the sky and deep as the waters; green is a wish for longevity and is often given by elderly people to their grandchildren; red, of course, is for love and was often given between lovers (and perhaps was originally used as a wedding proposal).

After we had purchased some hataks and prayer beads to be blessed, we had a short audience with the Living Buddha. He seemed very happy to be able to talk with us and was rather interested in Buddhism in America. He was in his early 30s, but had been proclaimed as the reincarnation of a holy man at as fifteen and brought to the monastery to study. At seventeen, it was determined that he was indeed a Living Buddha. Most of the group was most interested in his iPad, which was filled with his lectures and Buddhist sutras in Tibetan; he apparently only studies with his computer.

[Picture with Living Buddha coming soon!]

Since the day trip was cancelled, we were given the rest of our last full day in Xiahe off. However, we had been told there was a Buddhist nunnery in town as well and so there was an optional excursion to visit the nunnery. As usual, Andras, Karen, and Cora were my fellow travelers for this excursion. We walked past Labrang Monastery and were surprised to find a much more run-down section of town; I was also surprised to see a halal restaurant and some people wearing the small white caps that many Chinese Muslims wear. The nunnery was much less funded than the monastery, though apparently the monastery donates some of their money to help with upkeep. The nunnery has over one hundred nuns, compared to the thousands at Labrang Monastery. They weren’t used to having visitors, it seemed, since our “guide” basically opened a door to a temple and then sat down as we walked around. She also apparently answered back with some sass when I asked what meaning a specific type of decoration had; apparently it had none. 

After the nunnery, we walked to a Nima-pa monastery. Nima-pa is another sect of Tibetan Buddhism, sometimes referred to as the “red hats.” Nima-pa is the oldest sect and also retains some mystical practices; furthermore, Nima-pa monks do not shave their heads (they braid their long hair and wrap it around their heads like a headband) and some monks are even allowed to marry and have families. Like the nunnery, this monastery seemed rather underfunded and not used to visitors. It was really interesting to see more of how people lived on our walk to these places and learn more about the intricacies of Tibetan Buddhism, but I’m having difficulty finding ways to articulate them right now, my apologies. 

On the way back to the hotel, we returned to a tangka 唐卡 studio we had stopped by earlier as a group for Andras to purchase a scroll for a good friend of his. Click the link for more thorough information, but tangkas are religious scrolls embroidered and painted to aid with meditation; the largest scrolls he made usually take him around three months; the painting he is working on in the picture below he started during the summer. 

Tangka painter at work in his humble (home) studio

During our first visit, a goat wandered over to group and began “playing” with some of us. We later learned from the tangka painter that this was a “holy goat” that has been protected from being injured (or eaten) by the locals. He also wore a green and a white hatak around his neck. We never did learn how this goat was declared holy, but he definitely seemed to take advantage of this policy by scrounging up food from interested people like us.

The next day, we returned to Lanzhou for our train ride back to Xi’an. On the way, we stopped in the town of Linxia 临夏. This town had two interesting features: elaborate mosques constructed with traditional Chinese architecture and Lanzhou hand-pulled beef noodles. We stopped by for a quick walk around a mosque that houses the graves of some important Muslims for the Chinese and was highly ornamented with concrete wall sculptures. Interesting note about this mosque: they depict living creatures—such as birds and deer, despite most mosques restricting this as only Allah is able to create. My teachers didn’t seem to quite know why they were more lax here. Also, apparently there is a decently sized Sufi community in Gansu, which is surprising considering it is a rather small portion of Islam.

Inside the Chinese-styled mosque

Fusion of Chinese architecture and Muslim function

Corridor lined with cement wall reliefs

Close-up of one relief

Chinese reads: 鹿鹤长青 "Deer and Crane Eternally Youthful"

The final excursion of our trip was the raft on the Yellow River (Huang He 黄河) in Lanzhou. The river wasn’t that yellow—it was much more of a muddy brown, but I imagined the river used to contain more of the yellow loess and less of the dirt that accompanies a large population and rapid development. The rafts were buoyed by inflated animal skins; we originally thought they were pig skins, but upon further reflection (namely that our “drivers” were Muslim men) made us think that they were probably sheep skins. We rafted for many twenty minutes down the river and then rode a motor boat back to the original dock. Then we had some free time to wander Lanzhou and eat dinner and then hopped on our final train back home to Xi’an. 

Our humble dock on the Yellow River

"Long live China!"

玉米在马路的旁边

Here is a break from my Silk Road trip; I promise to finish soon!

Below are a few vignettes of interesting things I’ve done since returning to Xian from our Silk Road trip. They are loosely in chronological order and will unfortunately feature less pictures than my travel journal entries.

教英语的机会

The first episode involves teaching English. Andras, a classmate of mine from the East Coast, has been studying Japanese for around seven years and actually has spent two of those years teaching English in Japan. Andras has already graduated and so in the process of looking for jobs after this semester, he had come across some different opportunities involving his language skills so he wanted to maintain his teaching skills while here in China. I had overheard him talking about this before we had left for our trip and voiced my interest as well. Though I have no experience teaching, I have been interested in possibly taking six months to a year teaching English abroad, so this would serve as a perfect trial run. One of our program assistants, Orion, mentioned a few options he would follow up on while we were travelling.

Upon arrival in Xian, we learned that a literature professor at our university often goes into the countryside (about an hour and a half to two hours by bus) to help disadvantaged kids learn English. I think he also has family in that particular town, which is why he goes so far away; if I remember correctly, his nephew is currently in charge of the English cram school. Apparently this professor has been nagging Orion himself to come out and volunteer for quite some time, so now seemed like the perfect time to try it out. The professor, Andras, Orion, our other assistant director, Li Shaohan, and I all went the first Saturday we were back (October 1). The five of us hopped on the bus chartered for our trip and were off on the start of a rather long journey.

October 1 is the Chinese National Holiday, so it’s been cool to see all of the stores put up their Chinese flags and see and hear all of the various celebrations. The day prior, Karen and I were walking back from Xiao Zhai (小寨), a shopping district, when we were stopped by a lady with a camera and a microphone. They asked if we could understand them, in Chinese of course, and having satisfied that request asked if we knew what tomorrow was. Failing to come up with “National Day” in Chinese, I said it in English, which they understood and told me just to say “中国生日” (China’s birthday); they then asked me if I knew how old China was turning. I promptly responded with “90!” which was only met with laughter. They corrected me with 62. (The last dynasty fell in 1911, which was 100 years ago, the Communist party was founded in 1921, which was 90 years ago (what I was thinking because I had seen a lot of 90^th anniversary posters), and the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, or 62 years ago.) After correctly saying 62 years, they asked if I had anything to say, which I responded with 中国生日快乐 “Happy Birthday, China!” They had me say the whole thing through in one take and add “Happy Birthday” in English at the end, too, so we may have been on some local Xian channel…

The professor is a very interesting person. He is rather sprightly and energetic for someone who is apparently almost 60. He is also extremely curious and talkative, so Andras and I were able to practice a good amount of Chinese with him as we tried explaining different aspects of American culture to him. [For those of you reading this who are from Michigan, this professor’s mannerisms remind me a lot of Ryan Bridges’.]

Once we arrived at the cram school, we were immediately whisked into the classroom and told to teach. That day there were six students, three boys and three girls, who were aged fourteen to sixteen; the professor also decided to sit in. Luckily Andras has teaching experience, so the hour they had us there went rather smoothly. We started by introducing ourselves a little and about where we are from; we then had the students tell us a little about themselves. Afterwards, we decided to play a modified version of Pictionary. It’s interesting to see how people decide to depict things. We ran into a bit of a snag when I tried to illustrate “jungle” and when Andras tried to draw “vampire.” They understood what they were, more or less, but I don’t think they knew the English for it.

After class, the five of us were invited to have lunch with a local family who must somehow be related to the professor. They had a little son who they affectionately call 小肥猪 xiǎo féi zhū “Little Fat Pig;” he was pretty chubby and literally ate as much meat as the rest of us combined at lunch, though we probably ate more vegetables than he did. The family was very excited to host us for lunch, which meant they kept bringing more and more platefuls of food. It was all delicious but way too much.

After lunch, we had a short walk and were given a short history of the area. The family whom we ate with, and the majority of the townspeople, all live in a series of apartment complexes built by the local factory and “given” to the workers’ families as justification for lower wages. We saw some girls playing with a sort of hackey sack, but instead of a cloth ball filled with beads, they were playing with a few metal washers tied together on the end of a pom pom. I’m pretty bad at hackey sack, but I was atrocious at this game. I wasn’t much worse than anyone else in our group, though. With our short visit over, we headed back to Xian.

One the subject of teaching English, a rather interesting event happened last Wednesday (10.5). As Andras, Karen, and I were leaving the school, a random Chinese girl walking by us said, “Hello!” I responded back and was surprised to see her stop to chat with us. She then immediately asked if we wanted to teach English. She continued by saying that some nearby schools that all had some connection with each other were all looking for teachers on the weekends. After some other random information about ourselves and this potential job, she asked us what salary we wanted, which we thought was rather odd because we hadn’t agreed yet to the position nor actually talked with the headmaster of the school for final details. We agreed to meet on Saturday with the headmaster, but heard back Friday that because we are only here for such a short time, that we weren’t viable candidates.

坐地铁去教堂

The second episode involves going to church in Xian. A few days before we left for our trip, the Xian subway system (these are actual ads they air on TV and all throughout the subway system) opened its first two lines. Plans are still underway to complete all six lines within the next few years. One of the lines completed runs north-south and has a stop right near our campus and plenty of stops within the city walls. A one-way ticket is a mere ¥2, so the subway is a cheaper, easier, less confusing and stressful way of getting into the city every Sunday than trying to hail a taxi. Thank you, God. I still haven’t had enough time to just wander inside the city (also, I couldn’t find any routes on the website, which seems like essential information) to find the closest station to the church, so I just take the line to the city center and walk about twenty minutes to the church. Going to church has become a much bigger ordeal than I’ve ever been used to. I have to leave almost a full hour before church starts in order to get there on time, which is way longer than the three minute drive in Canton, the fifteen minute drive in Naperville, or the fifteen minute walk in Champaign that I was used to.

The church itself is rather old and small, especially if it actually is a cathedral as I thought I overheard. The English Mass is at 3:30pm on Sundays, so I’m starting to get used to afternoon Masses, which is a very different feeling than I was used to; I’d much prefer to attend the 10:00am Mass, but I don’t think I’m ready for full-fledged Chinese yet. However, apparently the bishop (possibly a cardinal) presides over the 10:00 Mass every week, so it would be worth checking out at least once.

Last Tuesday, the church held special Masses in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, whom the church is named after. They had Masses scheduled for 7:00am, 10:00am, and 3:00pm. On Tuesdays I have class from 9:00am – 12:00pm and again from 2:30pm – 5:30pm, so the 7:00am Mass was the only time I could make. I got all prepared to go (waking up around 5:30 wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be), but ran into a few problems on the way. First off, there are only three entrances/ exits on campus, two of which close during the night. I was headed for the New West Gate, which happens to be one of the gates which locks, and realized halfway there that it might be closed. However, I thought I was running late, so I continued anyway. Side note: walking the campus around 6:15am is rather nice, as it’s basically empty, still a little dark out and absolutely quiet.

Well, the gate was closed, so I had to hop the fence to leave the campus to go to church. Some girls waiting for the gate to open to leave “ooed” at my rather quick jumping of the fence, mostly because the guy before my took a bit longer and did it more awkwardly. A little frazzled because of this setback, I set out for the station. I didn’t have any small bills on me, so I had to wait for the ticket counter to open to get change for my ¥50 bill; by this time, I had seen that the first train departing north wasn’t until 6:45, which meant I wasn’t late for the first train, but that I would definitely be late for church at 7:00am. I arrived at church as the priest was giving his homily. Some interesting things about church in China: there were a lot of nuns at this early Mass that I haven’t seen, quite understandably, at the English Mass; no one holds hands during the Our Father; the Peace Be with You is a bow with folded hands at people; and a lot of people go up during Communion to be blessed but not receive, and I have never seen them offer any Blood. I headed straight back to class afterwards—I had thought I would be around fifteen minutes late for my first class, but the morning Mass was shorter than normal, so I ended up being on time to both my and the teacher’s surprise.

Right next to the church is a small Catholic store. This past weekend after church I had some free time before I was meeting up with people for dinner and stopped by. I got to talking with one of the women in there; I don’t think she was an employee, but she must just hang out there. Anyway, we talked for probably a good half hour in my broken Chinese and I learned some new Catholic terminology in Chinese. Perhaps I’ll get involved with something through the church. Right now is the least involved in church activities I’ve ever been and it’s really starting to affect me; I feel extremely disconnected spiritually despite going to church (almost) every week since being in China and saying a good number of rosaries.

参加有名的画室

The third episode worth mentioning happened last Saturday. Every weekend, the program directors try to find something interesting in or around Xian to take us to; these trips are optional, so only those who are interested go, which means it’s a smaller group and a lot better because everyone wants to be there. This latest excursion was to the home and studio of a famous Chinese folk artist named Pan Xiaoling. Here are some examples of her famous style. It took about an hour by bus to reach the city where she lives; along the way on the highways we could see some trees starting to turn a very vibrant autumn red. It’s nice even in the outskirts of China to be able to be reminded of home. Another interesting thing on the side of the road that could conjure images of home was all of the corn. Not merely fields of corn growing, but corn husks, corn on the cob, empty cobs, and corn kernels all lying out to dry. Sometimes the piles were so big that the roads were reduced to one lane (this was off the highway and once we had actually entered the city limits); other times, the corn was in people’s front “yards” or on top of their roofs. Perhaps the strangest way we saw corn being hung was in bundles like bananas.

Corn-banana tree-- only in China?

Back to the artist. She started out with learning paper cutting, a rather traditionally Chinese art form cutting up paper using scissors and exacto knives into highly intricate shapes and patterns. She then learned the traditional Chinese painting style, 国画. Some time afterwards, she blended the two, along with an interest in the every day lives of farmers, to create her own unique style as a part of the “farmer’s movement.” According to our program director, this initiative was pushed strongly by Communist propaganda as a way to glorify the every day laborer and agricultural work (remember the communal living and missions into the countryside during the 1960s). She gave us a short demonstration on paper cutting by making a butterfly.

The butterfly paper cut-out she made in approximately five minutes

She then taught us how to make a simple cut of a pair of 喜 or “double happiness.” We then learned a little about painting and Chinese numerology and symbolism and then were invited to paint a little of our own. We were told to think of things in our everyday lives and paint them, so naturally one girl painted a unicorn in space. :P

                                                         

Pan Xiaoling’s studio, exhibiting her paintings

Pan Xiaoling’s studio, exhibiting her paper cut-outs

敦煌--充满砂子的地方

After Urumuqi, we spent about three days in Dunhuang. The interesting thing about Dunhuang is that although it was an important stop along travel through the western regions of China and a strategic location for exploring the western regions / protecting the Chinese heartland from invaders, until very recently, this city had been rather neglected and remained rather undeveloped. Because of this, our train actually had to stopp about two hours away from Dunhuang; we had to ride in a bus from the train station to arrive to our destination. The desert was very beautiful (in a desolate kind of way). It was especially interesting to see the sand change from small pebbles, gravel, and cliffs into finer grains and dunes, and every now and again spot an oasis and some less scraggly looking bushes and trees.

Once in Dunhuang, we had the first afternoon free to explore the city and relax; Karen, Andras, and I ended up eating some Lanzhou hand-pulled beef noodles. Lanzhou is the capital of Gansu province (the province just west of Shaanxi that Dunhuang is in). They were pretty good, though the noodles in Lanzhou were better (we ended up eating in Lanzhou on our last day; more on that later.) Afterwards, we wandered the streets and found a large expanse of stalls, markets and a bazaar. They were mainly selling food when we arrived and so didn't buy much. Karen and I have been doing our best to practice Chinese by buying Chinese books (we bought a comic book before the trip), and we stumbled upon a comic book stall. After debating amongst ourselves for a good fifteen minutes about how we were going to go about haggling for the comics books, we went up to the vendor and asked (translated into English): "How much are these?" She replied, "Ten yuan each." We responded with, "How about ten yuan for both?" To which she just stared at us and said, "You can't bargain the price." We embarrassing then confirmed the twenty yuan price and paid her. We also stumbled upon a store that was selling some "Engrish" clothing. We were especially excited about this store because some of the attempts at writing English were hilarious because they were so uncomprehensible and because this store must have been some outlet because all of the clothes were on sale significantly. I ended up buying a hooded pullover (you'll see it in some following pictures) for ¥30 that originally was priced at ¥120. They did all the haggling for me!

Sign literally translates to “Leisure Chain; Ant Cowboy Store; Dunhuang Branch”
*Note: “Ant” 螞蟻 are traditional characters, so I think this chain is from Hong Kong

We also had an interesting first evening. Andras, Karen, Cora, and I went walking again and stumbled upon a very large complex of restaurants in a single courtyard; we ended up eating very tasty Korean food; afterward we stumbled upon some sort of festivity. There were a good number of inflatables for little kids to play on and a large stage set up for performances. We stayed for four performances: a man singing, a troupe of girls dancing with ribbons on batons, some adults doing a “traditional” dance (we think that’s what the emcees said), though they were dressed similarly to flight attendants and their dance didn’t evoke any images I had of traditional Chinese dancing, and a group of girls doing a more Central Asian inspired dance (incorporated elements of belly dancing, especially in their costumes), although most of the girls looked Han Chinese and not Uyghur. Afterward the “talent show,” as we dubbed it because of the mediocrity of the performances, we stumbled back into the bazaar, which had transformed completely in the evening. Rows upon rows of stalls stood lit up and various street vendors had set up chairs and tables for customers to eat and drink and visit at. We ended coming back to this night market every night we were in Dunhuang.

The next day was probably our most jammed-pack day of the entire trip. Everybody had rather loudly voiced our opinion about how excited we were to ride camels in the desert, which meant we all got to wake up at 5:00am to make the trek to see in the sunrise in the desert. We arrived to the gate to the desert – that’s right, there’s a gate that you need to pay at in order to enter the desert that surrounds the entire city. Actually, the gate is merely the main entrance to the 鸣沙山 (Singing Sand Dunes) and the Crescent Lake Pagoda. We didn’t know that at the time of arrival, since everywhere was pitch-black.

The entrance to the desert at approximately 6:00am

We all were so impressed with the little bit of sand we could see in front of us because of the artificial lights, that we all scurried to take pictures in almost absolute darkness. I remember laughing to myself about this after leaving the desert a few hours later when everything is visible outside the gate once the sun had risen. Just inside the gate were two things that we would soon see a lot of: camels and orange protective sand boots. We all were excited about the camels, of course, but cared little to pay for boot covers to prevent getting sand in our shoes. It seems, however, that we were the only tour group who thought this way; except for us and maybe one or two other couples, every other single person we saw on the dunes wore these “desert fashion statements.” (See following pictures for evidence of orange boots.)

While on the camels, because we were in the desert outside a fairly small and not very developed city, the view of the stars in the night sky was amazing. I wish my camera were able to capture it, because I have never seen so many stars in my life. The Milky Way band was easily visible (I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually seen it in person before) and it seemed as if there was as much black space as white stars. However, the amazing view was slightly offset by the rather cold climate of the desert before sunrise. After riding the camels for maybe fifteen minutes, we dismounted and were allowed to climb up a sand dune to get a better view of the sunrise. However, climbing a sand dune in pitch black darkness is somewhat difficult; we made it eventually after one or two short breaks. Apparently there was a “ladder” to help make the ascent easier, thought it, too, cost some extra money; even if I had known about it before climbing the mountain the hard way, I don’t think I would have taken advantage of the shortcut. Plenty of tourists later did, though some were rather elderly and thus excusable. :P 

Taken before sunrise, a sense of the scale of the desert and the dunes

Watching the sunrise was an interesting experience, as light was dispelling the darkness long before any of the actual sun was visible above the mountains in the distance. It didn’t immediately get scorching; surprisingly, I only started feeling hot as we were leaving around 10 am. The view atop the dunes was spectacular and my sense of perspective and scale were completely thrown off because of the massive scale of the dunes in a relatively barren landscape. One of our fellow students determined himself to climb up the sand dune over; after looking for him for a good ten minutes, we found that he had made the trek, but only after using the full zooming power of another student’s camera.

The sun peaking up over the mountains; the experience reminded me a lot of the opening of The Lion King movie

Looking away from the city (southward) during sunrise

We were given the option of sand sledding down the hill we had climbed earlier to get back to the camels. They were a lot of fun and although it bore many resemblances to sledding down a snow covered hill in the winter, the completely different setting made the whole thing seem surreal. After all successfully sledding down, we returned to our little camel troupes to head to the Crescent Lake Pagoda for a small breakfast.

The hill we first climbed and then sled down

A lot of people come to ride the camels, so naturally they all need to park somewhere

The Crescent Lake is some form of natural phenomenon, but I don’t really understand it enough to try to explain. It is surrounded almost completely by sand dunes, so it was surprisingly quiet in the “sand valley.” The pagoda had historically been a Buddhist temple, but during the Cultural Revolution, the entire structure was completely destroyed. According to our guide, during the 1990s, the government decided to rebuild this structure (since a tourist industry around Dunhuang’s unique history was starting), but because it no longer has any religious purposes, the grounds are filled with snack stands, souvenir shops and art galleries.  It made the visit a lot less interesting and underwhelming despite the amazing architecture and views. 

Close-up of the pagoda tower

View of the pagoda and the Crescent Lake

After a brief return to the hotel and time for a shower and some quick rest, we headed out to Dunhuang’s main attraction: the Mogao Caves. This complex of around 500 caves carved into the face of the cliff houses the third largest Buddhist statue in China, some of the most elaborate Buddhist paintings, some dating as early as the 4^th century BC, and used to hold over 50,000 ancient manuscripts that currently are all over the world due to prior archaeological excavation techniques and practices. (As it’s been put before, the “white devils” came in, destroyed a significant part of the caves in order to take back parts to their home countries/ institutions, who continue to refuse to return them back to China; however, the artifacts have been better preserved, studied, and made available to the public in the foreign countries than they have been in China.) 

View outside the cave that houses the third largest Buddha

Politics aside, the caves were as equally fascinating and as new an experience as the desert was earlier that day. Picture taking was restricted as the caves are all very dark and the flash would damage the paintings, but it’s almost incomprehensible that people for over 1,000 years had been carving small meditation rooms and painting them so elaborately. One particular cave depicted a Buddhist story about a Deer Goddess.

One day, a shepherd had fallen into a river and on the verge of drowning, was saved by the Nine-Colored Deer. As repayment for saving his life, the Nine-Colored Deer merely asked tha the shepherd not reveal the deer’s whereabouts, as many people wanted the nine-colored pelt. However, the local king later offered half of his kingdom to whoever could bring him to the Nine-Colored Deer because his wife desired its pelt. The shepherd was tempted by this offer, and told the king where the Nine-Colored Deer lived. The king then set off to hunt the deer, and upon trying to kill her, was stopped by her words. The Nine-Colored Deer told the king of how she had saved the life of one of his subjects; the king was so moved by the story that he refused to kill her. The Nine-Colored Deer then punished both the shepherd and the queen for their greed.

This Deer Goddess apparently has some strong connection with Dunhuang, because a good number of souvenirs had her depicted and an acrobatic play we attended was another story about the deer goddess and her daughter. The play was very interesting to watch, as it took a traditional story from the area (we think) and acted it out primarily through acrobatics. [Random note: in the middle of the play is when my first nosebleed of the trip happened. Luckily we had a lot of tissues with us, though I wonder what the Chinese man next to me thought…]

Dance in the forest with the Deer Goddess, apsaras, and woodland creatures

Full cast bow; girl in green and the girl in pink were the two main characters
*Note: just noticed there are two girls in pink; one must be an understudy/ double

The next day had an optional bike ride to Baima Pagoda. I, unfortunately, thought it best to skip the bike ride tour as I was still taking anti-inflammatory medicine for my prostrate and was specifically told not to ride bicycles by the Chinese doctor. Instead, I went with another student and we ate lunch together at a very small dumpling place and then went to an Internet café. While checking emails, my nose started bleeding again; it ended up bleeding for about 45 minutes to an hour, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go on the bike ride. Afterwards, we all boarded our next train to Lanzhou.

喀什市和乌鲁木齐市

After Lake Karakul, we returned to Kashgar for two days. We returned to the same hotel, so first some brief introductions:

View of the hotel from the hallway

Our hotel was rather interestingly decorated—there were a lot of pastel colors, floral patterns and glitter… It had a strangely Russian feel, and it turns out this hotel served as the Russian Consulate in 1890. The first morning in Kashgar (before the trip to Lake Karakul) there was a Uyghur wedding being hosted at the hotel restaurant. Our tour guide for Kashgar, Mamajahn, explained to us a little about Uyghur ceremonies during our long bus ride. (Disclaimer: this is all from memory, so it is probably not 100% accurate.) Uyghur weddings typically extend for two days. The morning of the first day, all the male relatives of both the bridge and groom meet together for breakfast (this explains the long line of men sitting outside the restaurant all shaking hands); afterwards, the groom and some of his close male friends all go to pick up bride. The wedding party then gets married by an imam according to Muslim tradition. They both sign a contract agreeing that they voluntarily are getting married. Afterwards, a long reception follows with lots of dancing. The next morning, according to Muslim tradition, the bed sheets are shown to the uncles of the bride to verify that was a virgin before the marriage.

Besides learning a lot about Uyghurs and Islam, we visited the Grand Bazaar of Kashgar, which reportedly is the largest open air market in Central Asia. This bazaar was huge, though a lot of the stalls had the same wares, which made the experience more interesting but slightly harder to find special objects. Some of the vendors are very aggressive to get you to even enter their stall; also, they all seemed more comfortable speaking English with us rather than standard Mandarin. This is partially because the Uyghurs have their own language and so many of them don’t or can’t speak Mandarin and probably because we were white so English seemed more appropriate. 

Just one of the many rows of scarves for sale

The next day we started with a visit to the Old City; apparently there are three sections in Kashgar that have maintained the traditional ways of living— including building materials and style. The Old City reminded me very strongly of the fluvelas I saw in Brazil. Inside these people’s homes, however, were sometimes very nicely decorated rooms converted into stores for tourists like us.

View outside the Old City

One of the houses in the Old City has been standing for around 500 years! We had a small contest to see who could find this house again first and get someone in the house to write us a word in Uyghur (which uses the Arabic script). My group found the house first, though we struggled getting people to first understand what we wanted and then waited for a bit as they called one of the kids to come over and write for us. The asking was difficult because it seemed most of the adults didn’t know any Mandarin and the writing was difficult because many Uyghurs cannot write their own language.

Photo inside the small courtyard of the oldest house

We had lunch in a restaurant in the Old City that was rather abundant and delicious! There were a lot of bread-like foods and an assortment of dried fruits and nuts, which we don’t get often in the rest of China, so I especially savored them. Mutton is also a specialty of the Western Regions (basically everything west of Xian), as sheep are relatively easier to raise for a somewhat nomadic population and pork is traditionally forbidden because Uyghurs are Muslims. We all loved the sheep meat, especially since at one restaurant the meat came out skewered on a large metal “tree” that we aptly named “The Meat Tree.” After the lunch, we were able to see a small demonstration of Uyghur dancing. It seemed a mix of belly dancing and the harsh Russian type male-dancing, though both were less severe— the woman’s dancing was much less revealing or sexual than our standard ideas of belly dancing and the man’s dancing was ‘sharp’ though not as energetic as my notions of Russian dancing. After a few songs, they invited us to dance with them, which was very awkward but a lot of fun. They then asked us to show them an American dance. After ruling out grinding immediately and debating about how to square dance or if we knew any line dances, we decided on salsa since one of the girls is from Panama and likes to bring up salsa dancing a lot; luckily I had taken a few classes back home and also was feeling uninhibited enough to make a fool of myself so the two us improvised some salsa for them.

In addition to the Old City, we also visited the Idkha Mosque, which is apparently the largest mosque in Central Asia according to our guide. The outside didn’t seem that impressive, but the grounds of the mosque are rather large. There are various courtyards and groves of trees creating a natural fence and partial walls between the courtyards. Inside the actual prayer hall, there are rather ornate carpentry on the floor and hanging from the wall. Within the entire complex, over 5,000 Muslims can pray together at one time; at this particular mosque, only men are allowed to pray inside and women usually pray at home. Muslim customs are also very concerned with hygiene, such that both men and women must clean their bodies (typically with a shower nowadays) and put on fresh clothes before praying; men and women are also supposed to shower after sex because of beliefs of impurity about women’s bodies.

View of the Idkha Mosque from the main gate

After our tour of Kashgar, we flew back to Urumqi. Urumqi is the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and as such contains more Han Chinese people than Uyghurs or any other minority populations; Kashgar was by far more populated with Uyghurs. We only spent one day in Urumqi.

Originally, we were scheduled to visit the Institute for Ethnic Minorities and talk with some professors or students, but that was cancelled because apparently our paperwork was not filled out correctly. Our Resident Director feels that recent tensions between Uyghurs and the Han Chinese may have affected our ability to visit the school. However, instead, we ended up touring an orphanage outside the city; this orphanage receives funding from the “Half the Sky” foundation and also has some international donors, so the facilities were extremely nice and updated; they are in the process of building a facility that would imitate “normal” family like more accurately, such that there are different units (more or less apartments) with at least one adult worker who acts as a parent to the children. In most orphanages in China— this one no exception— the majority of children have some form of mental or physical disabilities, which obviously makes caring for them and getting them adopted more difficult. Beside living and school facilities, since many of the children could not keep up in the standard school system, the orphanage also does a lot of community work to outreach with families who have disabled children and informing the wider community about disabilities and working to eradicate the stigma associated with disabilities.

It was a rather bittersweet experience; it was obviously very sad and hard to see all of these orphaned children, but almost every child immediately lit up once they saw us and said hello to us. When we were in the infant/ toddler section, one of the other guys, Roy, in our trip was squirming his fingers around like a spider to play with one of the kids, who seemed to enjoy it but playfully had run away; after Roy had left to see other parts, the kid came back and one of the female workers playing with the child gave me his hand to shake. It was adorable…

The sign for the orphanage— despite the somewhat damaged sign, the orphanage itself was rather nicely furnished; we weren’t able to take pictures inside

After the orphanage, we went to the Xinjiang Museum downtown. The museum has two main exhibits and is famous mostly for its mummies. Yep, China has mummies, too. In fact, the mummies found in the Taklimakan Desert are more numerous, older, and better preserved than the mummies in Egypt. Another interesting note about the “Chinese mummies” is that these people are actually ethnically Caucasian. We’re leaning more about these people currently in our Anthropology class, but archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that people from Eastern Europe had migrated into this desert region currently within Chinese borders. (Note: The Uyghur people are not descendants of these Caucasians; the Uyghurs actually have Turkic roots.)

View of the extremely modern looking museum in Urumqi

Besides an exhibit about the history of Xinjiang in relation to China proper (Eastern China, places that you think of as “being Chinese”) that had a lot with the Silk Road, the museum also had an exhibit on the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang.

This exhibit was somewhat unsettling for a few reasons. First of all, there were a few tremendously large tour groups of Chinese tourists who seemed somewhat overly excited about the exhibit and also made it rather impossible to walk the exhibit except at their pace. Secondly, almost every group had a life size diorama displaying their living quarters, complete with mannequin-like dolls. There was something very eerie about it, perhaps because we had met, talked, and even danced with some of these kinds of people being displayed in the museum…

Part of another exhibit, 永远和祖国在一起 Forever With the Homeland, this exhibited various ethnic children but gave off a similar eerie feeling to the other displays (and with the “It’s a Small World” ride in Disney World)

A more humorous experience while walking this exhibit was with one of the security guards. He definitely was not 100% Han Chinese (if at all), and I think he was Uyghur. He started off asking me, in English, a little about myself, where I’m from, why I’m in China, rather standard questions we’re getting used to. He than asked me some rather strange questions, such as if Uyghurs or Indian people lived in the United States. Later on, he asked me if I were scared of Osama bin Laden (by this time we were speaking Mandarin), which I was rather confused by, so figured the answer, “No, because he’s already dead” was a rather safe answer. However, if I remember correctly, he shook his head a little vigorously and after looking around a bit, said that bin Laden wasn’t actually dead and pantomimed someone jumping up and scaring people. Me and another security guard, who I think was Han Chinese, both laughed awkwardly for a bit; we talked a little more, I taught him how to say “I am twenty-six-years-old” in English, and then we left the museum. I still don’t really know what that was all about, but it was definitely memorable.

We took a train from Urumqi to Dunhuang, which we slept on overnight. However, our train was delayed a few hours. The wait inside this particular train station was also memorable. First, everyone had to queue outside the station in lines; we were given our own line and had all of the Chinese people gawk at us; inside the station, there were a lot more people than there were seats (or even space it seemed), which led to a long wait in a crowded Chinese train station with a lot of people very interested in merely looking at us. One of the girls, Karen, is half Filipino and so has some Asian features mixed with her clearly Caucasian features, which confused a lot of people into think she might be Uyghur. This slight confusion, along with her nose ring and scandalously short shorts by Muslim standards (normal to a tad short length by American standards), led to a lot of unwanted interest; one man even started talking to her in what I think was Uyghur, so I tried to explain to him that she doesn’t speak Uyghur in Chinese, which led to him trying to speak to me in Uyghur.

Photo inside the train station; it stayed this crowded for about two hours