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Published: September 4th 2012
I’m sorry for the lack of entries lately! For the past two weeks I have been traveling on the infamous Silk Road! I figured I would show everyone the places we went and the things we did one by one. I also thought some of you might like a little historical background and a sneak peak at what we learned while we were traveling!
The Silk Road did not obtain it’s name until 1877- long after it became the means for transporting goods, technology and ideas from east to west and vice versa. It begins in the east in Xi’an, a city that served as the capital to many of China’s dynasties. It runs west until it hits the Taklamakan desert, where it splits into a north and a south route. Taklamakan translates into: “you go in, but you don’t come out.” The desert is known for taking the lives of those who dare to cross it-thus the routes to skirt its borders were formed. The paths then move farther west out of China and converge into Eastern Europe.
The story of the name behind the road comes from underwear. Yes, underwear. Mongol warriors wore silk garments underneath their
battle gear because the fabric is so strong and doesn’t tear. When they were shot, the arrows would not shred through the silk but instead go into the wound and protect the warriors from sharp tips and infection! China kept their knowledge of the silk worm a secret from the rest of the world and became the sole producer of the precious commodity. The Chinese sent silk west to obtain allies against invaders, thus forging the path of trade all the way to the Roman Empire!
Xi’an
We took our first overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an on August 18
th. The train stations are packed to the max with people and so are the trains themselves. Each cart on the train has triple bunk beds with very little space to move or breathe! I unfortunately got two top bunks and two middle bunks over the course of our four overnight trains (the bottom is the best because you get the most room!).
We arrived the next morning in Xi’an, a city that served as the capital for 11 dynasties over 4000 years. The city has a rectangular wall surrounding the old, smaller city that
is about 9 miles in length. Although it was raining, some of us rented bikes and were able to ride on top of the wall all the way around the inner city! It is interesting to see the changes in the area over time. Inside the wall, there are no buildings higher than the wall because they did not want invaders to be able to see anything above it when they were shooting from the outside. But on the outer side of the wall are skyscrapers and modern buildings with flashing billboards. The two sides look like two different worlds.
Later that day we visited the Big Mosque in Xi’an. I was surprised to find such a large Islamic presence in China (we would see many more mosques and Muslim communities). The mosque is right in the center of the city and has a huge prayer room with hundreds of rugs spread out on the floor. Just outside the mosque is the Muslim bazaar and Islamic restaurant quarter. I had my first opportunity to bargain with sellers and paid next to nothing for a delicious Muslim panini-like dish.
The next day in Xi’an we visited the Terra cotta
Warriors Museum! Emperor Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor that united many warring states, was obsessed with immortality. He searched far and wide for an elixir to let him live forever and maintain his rule over China. He eventually drank mercury thinking this would do the trick but we all know how that turned out! Before he died he ordered that all of his warriors be buried alive with him. He thought that if he could not live forever, he could still continue to rule China in his afterlife and he wanted his army to protect him there. But this would have wiped out too much of the population and the community decided to appease Qin Shi Huang by making close to 7000 terra cotta soldiers to be buried with him. The burial site was discovered by a farmer digging a well one day when he found the head of a terra cotta soldier. The tomb was unearthed and so far three burial sites have been found. The tomb of Qin Shi Huang is said to be nearby but it has yet to be excavated. There are no two soldiers alike- each has its own facial expression and features. They
all stand more than six feet tall- which is much taller than the average Chinese person. It is thought that Qin Shi Huang specified that the soldiers be big and strong to protect him!
Xia’he
Our next stop on the Silk Road was Xia’he, which technically is in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Our ears were popping as we drove up more than 9000 feet into the mountains. It was so much colder but I enjoyed the fresh air- a change from the polluted cities of China. Our hotel was a rectangle with an open courtyard in the middle and our rooms were decorated with ornate Tibetan flags and fabrics. Although the city is very dirty and many people appear to be living under the poverty line, Xia’he is one of the better-known and popular Tibetan cities. Many Tibetans make a pilgrimage to the city in January to celebrate the New Year.
We spent our first evening in Xia’he with a Tibetan family that was kind enough to have nearly 70 of us over to their home for dinner and dancing. The husband of the house apparently left his wife last year and never returned
and she has been raising her family on her own. One of her children will be attending college this fall! Their house is very modest, made up of several rooms that are separated by dividing walls. We sat cross-legged on a raised carpeted floor with a short table for dinner. The animal that the Tibetans live off of is yak. Thus our dinner consisted of yak meat, yak tea, and yak bread made with yak butter and yak milk. A lot of yak. I was not a big fan of the meat, so I stuck to the bread and butter. After dinner the family greeted us in their traditional way. They sang Tibetan songs while draping white scarves over our heads. Once they placed the scarf around your neck you were then expected to down three large shots of alcohol. I was only able to do one! It tasted like acetone- I’m not kidding. Once we were all thoroughly drunk, we went outside into the cold night and danced with the family. They showed us some of their moves and songs, and some of us played guitar, sang backstreet boys and displayed some hidden talents. It was quite an interesting
night!
The next day in Xia’he we visited the Labrang Monastery. A young monk guided us through the many Buddhist temples on site. The monastery has a few thousand men enrolled and it includes several different academic disciplines. There is a medical school and a philosophy school for example. Young monks devote themselves to their study and many hours of prayer. Each temple houses a different Buddhist figure and people of any rank can come and make offerings. The sculptures of the Buddha are quite large and are decorated with paint, gold filings and scarves. Buddhists believe that life is an endless cycle of suffering and what we do in this life determines the life we will have when we are reincarnated. The Buddha teaches a way to end suffering through simplicity in order to exit this never-ending cycle and enter Nirvana. You can tell that these people live very simply. The monks wear maroon colored cloth in layers and thin boots to cover their feet. They depend on their families and the charity of others to support them.
One of my favorite parts of the monastery was the yak butter sculpture exhibit. During the celebration of the
New Year, artists depict the Buddha and Nirvana through elaborate sculptures made out of butter. They paint and dress their creations making them look like they were made out of clay! There were maybe 15 of the sculptures in the monastery and every year one winner is chosen among the artists. Another favorite area was the large prayer hall. We were asked to be very quiet as we walked around the perimeter of the hall while monks sat cross-legged on long carpets on the floor and prayed out loud. There was a leader who said the prayers and the others either repeated the words or hummed along. It was a very peaceful act to watch, as the monks were also arranging beautifully colored flower petals along the floor in front of them.
We were also able to visit the nunnery of Labrang. It is more difficult for a girl to become a Tibetan nun because the nunnery can only accept three students a year, whereas the men can take many more. To become a nun, one has to proclaim her interest and then study under a mentor for a long time. When she feels prepared she must take a
rigorous exam to enter the nunnery but only those with the top three scores get in. Women have very little status in this society. They typically take care of the livestock and family while simultaneously supporting their sons who have become monks. If a girl leaves to become a nun she is not necessarily lifting a burden off of her family because they still have to support her during her studies. The nuns are looked down upon and do not receive very many donations from the community despite the fact that they pray and study just as the monks do.
I also learned that there are such things as living Buddhas. A living Buddha is someone who has attained Nirvana but chooses to remain in the life cycle to help others achieve release from suffering. The Dalai Lama is the living Buddha that is first in charge. The living Buddha that heads the Labrang Monastery is third in charge. When a living Buddha dies, the community looks for the next living Buddha among the children. They present the kids with things that the previous living Buddha chose among things that are not related to him and see if the
child chooses the old living Buddha’s things. If he does, that is one indicator that he is the next living Buddha. These children are given high priority and trained from a very young age. They are so special because they believe that the living Buddha has been reincarnated in this child, so as to say he is the same person as the previous living Buddha who just passed away.
While in Xia’he we were also able to climb the mountains that surround the city. It was a difficult climb with the high altitude, but the view at the top was well worth it. We could see the entire city below us and it was just peaceful to be able to sit where it was quiet and think about all that we had seen so far.
During that final morning I woke up very early to see the community participate in the spinning of the prayer wheels. Along the borders of the monastery and inside some of the temples are these tall cylinder wheels that spin on their axis. There are prayers etched into the sides and each wheel has a different prayer. By spinning the wheels, it is
believed that those prayers are sent up into the sky and they will hopefully be answered. I tried spinning one but the old lady behind me was so fast that I couldn’t keep up with her and she soon surpassed me! I opted for walking the two-mile route and observing the wheels being spun. It was nice to just hear feet shuffling, wheels squeaking and the occasional hum of a prayer. All the while the sun was rising above the mountains.
Linxia
We did not stay overnight in Linxia and yet it was one of my favorite places and it left a lasting impression on me. We stopped to visit the Xichuan Big Mosque in the middle of an arid city. Linxia sits in a valley between two mountain ranges that were stripped of their vegetation during China’s wars. Because there are very few trees to hold the soil and return water to the atmosphere, dirt runs into the Yellow River that flows through its center and it hardly ever rains, making it difficult to cultivate crops. Linxia is one of the poorer areas in China because it has to import many goods to sustain itself.
Despite this, the Xichuan Big Mosque is well known and has three huge floors for praying instead of just one because it is a popular place to worship. The mosque is also affiliated with a Muslim school for pre-school children all the way to high-school teenagers. Many of the students board at the school and I believe they receive their education for free. Our guide told us that they really emphasize education so that their children can be more successful and live above the poverty level. They teach Chinese and Arabic history and they also demand that the students learn Mandarin, Arabic and English.
After visiting the mosque we were able to visit the school grounds. First some of the guys in our group challenged a very old man to table tennis. He may have looked feeble but he had a wicked backhand that nobody could beat! Next we walked around and peeked into some of the classrooms. Some were empty except for tables, chairs and the remnants of a lesson on the chalkboard. Others were filled with students repeating after their teacher. The school provides a pre-school for very young children that were coloring and playing on a
small playground. Some of the older male students challenged us to badminton. All of the girls were then asked to go upstairs to meet a group of female middle and high school students. We were greeted with smiles and shy stares and a few brave “hellos”. They sung a song for us in Arabic and we sang “You Are My Sunshine” back to them and they loved it! Afterwards they hugged us and asked us to write a little something down in their notebooks including our names and email addresses. I was surprised by how great their English was! They were constantly saying we were beautiful- especially to the few girls in our group who have blonde hair and blue eyes (something everyone is amazed by here!). We took tons of pictures and then unfortunately said goodbye. This was definitely the most rewarding and insightful parts of the trip!
Lanzhou
We left Tibet for the city of Lanzhou where we would catch our next overnight train. This was my least favorite city on the trip because it was so incredibly crowded and the pollution was horrendous. I had to hunt for something to eat for breakfast
because our breakfast tickets at the hotel were for the KFC next door (ew). The one thing I did like about the city was the Yellow River. It cuts through the city limits, traveling at a dangerous pace. It is not really yellow. It’s actually a dirty brown color.
Jiayuguan
We were now very far west from where our trip began. The city of Jiayuguan is just forming but I appreciated how much less crowded it was than Lanzhou. There was a lot of construction going on (like in all of China) and I noticed that there are a lot of females out there with hard hats on. I’m not sure if this is a sign that women can do what is typically thought of as a man’s job, or that jobs are so scarce that anyone will do anything for a little bit of money. The city is much cleaner and the food much better.
Our first stop was the Jiayuguan Fort. It is a rectangular structure with huge walls that let you get a great look at the snow capped mountains and the Gobi desert (polar opposites, I know!). Inside performances were being
put on for the many Chinese and foreign tourists. My favorite was a girl who could spin a table on one foot and three cloths on her other foot and both of her hands! Talk about multi-tasking!
Later in the day we visited the Overhanging Great Wall. Jiayuguan contains the westernmost part of the Great Wall. Because it is so hot and dry here compared to Beijing and because they did not have the same resources to build this wall it is completely made of clay, sand and straw. It was yet another difficult climb but we had an even better view of the mountains and desert next to each other.
Dunhuang
Dunhuang was my favorite city of all those that we visited! It is an oasis in the middle of the desert, meaning that it is basically isolated on all sides by sand dunes. It gets really hot during the day and drops to about 50 degrees at night. The food here was still a little bit spicy (China spicy is nothing like American spicy) but I managed to find a great sweet and sour chicken dish! My friends and I also found real
hard ice cream (the Chinese don’t believe in breakfast or desert it seems, my two favorite meals…)
We did not sleep in a hotel in Dunhuang but rather we camped out on the dunes! We had two person tents that were not as difficult to assemble as I thought they would be and very warm sleeping bags for when it got cold. We reached the desert at about 7pm, giving us enough time to set up camp and climb the dunes. I think climbing the Great Wall was easier because there are actual steps to maintain your footing! Here every time you took one step forward you sunk/slid three steps back. You kind of had to awkwardly crawl your way to the top. I made it just in time to see the sun set behind the dunes. Afterwards we had a bonfire and ate watermelon while playing games and telling stories. Despite the fact that we had to wake up so early the next day we all stayed up late.
At 4:30AM the next morning we were rudely awakened by our group leader, Justin, who said we had to be back on the bus in a half hour.
We quickly packed up our tents in the cold and headed for the bus that was taking us to our next excursion. We arrived at the park shortly after and were given a ticket with a number on it. Mine was #347- indicating that I would be riding a pretty, chocolate brown camel up a big dune to watch the sunrise. I named her Cecelia (even though I’m not sure if it was a boy or a girl)! She had a saddle between her two humps and a metal bar attached to the saddle to hold on to. I was in a string of four camels that was led by a guide. He instructed the camels to stand up and without warning they each extended their hind legs first and then their front ones, making us lurch forward and then back. I was surprised at how tall they are! I was at least 8 feet off the ground! The ride was a little bumpy but really fun! And the sunrise was absolutely beautiful. It made the sky orange and pink at first and then a big huge sun peeked out behind a sand dune.
Turpan
Our
next stop was Turpan, a city deep in the heart of the desert. Turpan is the second lowest city on earth making the heat almost unbearable. I am not sure how the men and women working in the bazaar in the blazing heat can do it! Turpan belongs to the Xinjiang province and contains the Uygur Autonomous Region. It is also the home to many of China’s ethnic minorities. One of the first things I noticed when we arrived at the Sugong Tower in Turpan was that many of the citizens looked more middle eastern than Chinese. This area is often called “Chinese Turkistan” because it borders so close to Turkey and many of the people have Turkish features and heritage. The Sugong Tower is home to another mosque but it does not look like the typical Middle Eastern mosque with the pointy bowl in the middle and four minarets. It has one large tower with a small minaret on top and a rectangular building made out of clay and straw for the prayer hall. The mosque has no electricity at all and it has very simple decorations if any at all.
Another stop we made in Turpan was
Karez. Karez is the well-irrigation system that allows the city to survive. Because it is so hot and dry in Turpan any water that flows from elsewhere evaporates before it even gets to the city. Over 2000 years ago someone came up with the brilliant idea to dig underground channels that lead ice and snow water from the Tien Shan mountains down to the desert cities and towns. The museum we went to explained exactly how they dug the channels and we were also able to go underground to see the Karez that feeds into Turpan. It was a relief to be somewhere cooler than outside.
One of the great parts about Turpan was the traditional Uygur food! The Uygurs are a minority in China but make up more than 50 percent of the Xinjiang province. Our dinner consisted of a chicken and potato dish that was quite spicy but delicious, sweet corn and a fruity, non-alcoholic beer that tasted like apple cider! We were all in heaven.
Uygur Village
For our second night in Turpan we went to a Uygur village to experience the life of the farmer, minority community. The Uygurs are Sunni
Muslims that mainly dwell in villages and they speak their own Turkic-Altaic language. When we arrived the village head greeted us into his cement floored home that had several rooms, two big platform beds in a covered courtyard and a bathroom that essentially is a raised block of wood with a hole in the middle…
The girls were asked to stay in another residence close by and when we entered the woman of the house greeted us with hugs, kisses on both cheeks and tears streaming down her face. I think she was happy to have us since conflicts in the past years prevented previous trips from visiting the village. We sat down on our own platform, ate some fried noodles covered in sugar and drank tea out of bowls. Some of us helped the woman and what I presumed to be her daughters make lunch. They rolled out noodles and chopped vegetables to make an incredibly good dish over a brick oven with a fire pit underneath. There was a little girl (I think she was the woman’s granddaughter) that continuously awed us by holding out her cute little dress and looking at our cameras. After we were
all stuffed and had plenty of pictures of this baby girl we went out into the sun.
Some men and women of the village handed us pairs of scissors and a basket and led us into the vineyards. In Turpan, the land is suitable for cultivating cotton but cotton requires too much water, a scarce resource here. Instead, the community is known for its delicious grapes, raisins and wine. We were given a taste (literally and figuratively) of what it’s like to work out in the blaring sun and pick grapes. I filled up two baskets and was completely drenched afterward. After the grapes are picked they are brought to these brick houses with holes in them to dry. The process takes about 10 to 15 days.
We were supposed to stay overnight in our Uygur home stay but unfortunately we were not allowed to after all and were led, by police escort nonetheless, to a hotel near by. We were supposed to experience traditional Uygur dance and music that night but we were lucky enough to visit another village the next day and see both! We sat down on padded cushions on the floor around long, short
tables for more Uygur food while three very talented musicians played for us. One instrument is like a tiny violin, played with a bow on strings. Another is like a recorder and there are special Uygur drums. In addition to the music, two ladies, one man and a younger girl displayed Uygur dress while they performed their traditional dance called “Mexilep”. Their movements are marked with staccato head movements and elaborate motions with their hands. They got us all to get up and dance with them too!
Urumqi
Urumqi is the capital of the Xinjiang province and is the largest Uygur city. It was surprisingly very western. We could hear American music emitting from stores and saw several fast food restaurants. A group of local students were brought to our hotel to meet us and show us the city. I was paired up with two clinical medicine students, one of which spoke excellent English. It was interesting to talk with them about health care in China and what their education is like compared to ours. Students take a test much like the SAT to enter college but they get to choose if they would like to attend a science based or a non-science based college. These students chose to go to a medical college so they essentially go straight from high school to med-school. I can’t imagine making that decision at 18! I’m glad I have the chance to explore other disciplines during my undergraduate career before I delve into something a lot more specific.
The students first took us to the International Bazaar in Urumqi. There was obviously a large Turkish influence but we found a good Western grocery store to pick up some things we missed. They are big on selling knives here but we were warned not to get them because they would be confiscated on the plane ride home! I almost bought a jade bracelet until one of the students warned me that it was fake. I would have never known! We then went to a restaurant for more traditional Uygur food. We each had to pay about 100 RMB, which by now we thought was outrageously expensive but in reality that was a $15 dollar meal. Sometimes we forget how much cheaper things are here!
The following day in Urumqi we visited the Xinjiang Provincial Museum. One exhibit displayed the many ethnic minorities that inhabit the province. For each minority there were wax figures of a man and a woman to display their physical characteristics and typical dress. They also made replicas of their homes or what their typical room would look like. In addition they showed us the instruments of each minority and sometimes played examples of their music. There were at least thirteen different ethnic groups on display and as we moved from Uygur to Russian, the wax figures had lighter and lighter skin and more European and Middle Eastern features than Asian ones. Another section of the museum was dedicated to mummies that were discovered in tombs in Xinjiang. Because the desert is so hot and dry their bodies were well preserved. Scientists have reconstructed what one of the female bodies was like when she was alive and discovered that she was from Indo-European, not Chinese descent. These mummies lived over 8000 years ago and yet they are intact and still emitting secrets from a past long ago.
Heavenly Lake
Our next and final destination on our two-week trip was the Heavenly Lake in Urumqi. We climbed a few thousand feet into the mountains to find a beautiful expanse of clear, still water in the midst of snow-capped mountains and pine forests. It is so quiet and calm in the mountains that when you throw a stone into the lake it literally may make waves. Part of our experience near the lake was to stay with another ethnic minority of Xinjiang, the Kazaks. These peoples are Turkic-speaking and mainly inhabit Kazakhstan. Typically they are nomadic and live in portable round tents called yurts. They follow their livestock and mainly live off of milk and mutton. They had several yurts set up for our group. All of the girls stayed in one large yurt that was raised off the ground, was carpeted and came with blankets. It gets extraordinarily cold at night near the lake and we were all shivering once the sun went down. In the evening a local Kazak family had prepared two large carcasses of mutton that did not look to appealing to me! (This trip may have convinced me to be a vegetarian). Then three Kazak ladies and one man sung, danced and played beautiful music for us and some of our group did the same for them!
After a frigid night we drove back down the mountain to the airport to fly the 2000 miles back to Beijing in four hours, which we had just covered in two weeks. Needless to say we were dog tired but much more informed and intrigued about this foreign country that will be our home for the next four months!
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Dad
non-member comment
Great trip!
Sam, What a fantastic trip you had! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog- I felt like I was reading National Geographic, very entertaining. Good luck on your classes now. Love, Dad