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Published: August 21st 2010
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Jiayuguan
Jiayuguan Fort, also known as the Impregnable Defile Under Heaven
Or so a sign read at a park in Zhangye. Now I am no expert, but as far as I know fields lay fallow, not people. However I did decide to heed the sign since relaxing and laying fallow sounded quite good at the time.
Before stumbling upon this sign I was still travelling at a fair pace and exhausting myself in the process. After Dunhuang, I got a bus to Jiayuguan, a name I kept mispronouncing and falling over. Reason for coming to this tongue twister of a town, was that it holds the western most gate in the Great Wall. Here civilization stopped as far as Imperial China was concerned and those that passed through either had a smile on there face if they came from the west or looked rather worried if they were leaving towards it.
These days of course nobody worries much about passing further west, you just catch a train or night bus and realize quickly that the barbarian hordes are no longer there. The gate, named Impregnable Defile under Heaven, is impressive and damned expensive to visit. From it you can admire the mountains and 'the beautiful industrial landscape of Jiayuguan' as
Jiayuguan
Tower above the western gate
a signs euphemistically puts it. With this they presumably meant the chimneys belching out brown toxic fumes that could be seen on the horizon. Those same fumes that effectively blocked me from admiring the snow capped peaks that one can see on good days. A wonderful photo-op no doubt, but lost in the haze.
Included in the ticket was a disappointing restored section of the wall, called the Overhanging Great Wall, but what exactly it was overhanging is anyone's guess. The views over the desert were nonetheless impressive.
Having had my fill of industrial landscapes I left in high speed to Mati Si, a little village with some Buddhist caves and a Tibetan monastery. The Chinese always quick to catch onto a money spinner, have put up an entry gate just to enter the valley in which the village is located in order to extract some money from any unsuspecting tourist coming this way. Mati Si itself is a small cluster of fake, Chinese/Tibetan style houses full of souvenir stalls, a couple of guesthouses and hotels and a restaurant or two.
At first I thought I had made a good bargain, because the ticket was cheaper than
Jiayuguan
Gate of Concilliation, the last gate, after this was the Western Desert mentioned in the good book and seemed to include the caves. This was of course a trick, the caves mentioned on the ticket turned out to be different from the ones everybody comes to see, for which you have to pay extra! Those on the ticket were for some second rate ones that nobody even bothers to visit, except of course me, since I paid for it. As for the real ones, well they are nice enough, the un-restored bits more so than the restored parts. It is interesting to see the destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution to my unprofessional eyes looks a lot like the iconoclastic upheavals in Europe during the Middle Ages, or more recently to the idol smashing that was done under the fundamentalistic Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In all cases, statues, temples, paintings and carvings were destroyed, though the reasons varied of course. But seeing the headless Buddhist statues and carvings whose faces had been deliberately wiped away in the Kabul Museum and looking at the destruction visited upon the caves I had a definite feeling of deja-vu.
And so I headed down to Zhangye and the fateful day arrived
Jiayuguan
Painting on one of the doors that I saw the sign and was enlightened by it. Lay fallow it said? Relax?
'Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea' I thought to myself. But not in Zhangye, because I had heard the accommodation options were rather pricey and dire. However somebody who did lay fallow here was none other than that great traveller, Marco Polo. He actually seemed to have taken the sign literally and stayed for a year, almost turning into a field himself. I suspect that accommodation was cheaper during his stay or else he wasn't on a budget. I on the other hand left to Xining in the hope that laying fallow there would be cheaper.
Now Xining looks a lot like Urumqi and coincidentally has a similar number of inhabitants, around two and a bit million. I suspect that many cities of two and a bit million in China look like Urumqi or Xining. It is the copy-paste look that is so favoured by the government here. However I found Xining a pleasant enough city, it was surrounded by nice mountains and the air was clean, the people a nice mixture of Tibetan, Han Chinese and Hui Chinese and most importantly it
Jiayuguan
Another tower at the fort has a few very pleasant hostels and some good and cheap restaurants. And so in accordance with the sign I relaxed and lay fallow for a while.
Not that there isn't anything else to do around town, in fact there are a few interesting sights surrounding it, but I wasn't in the mood for them. The free ones were, as always, difficult to get to by public transport, and requiring at least part of the way a taxi ride, the others had entry fees making them just as unattractive to me at that time. I wasn't in for anything as exhausting as haggling for a cheap taxi after a bumpy bus ride to some small village along the way. No way! I was going to lay fallow!
After doing as the sign in Zhangye recommended, I was utterly recovered and ready to leave again. Tongren was next, famous throughout the Tibetan world for its Thangka's and Thangka artists, with commissions coming in all the way from Lhasa for their work. I would have loved to see them at work, but for some reason all the workshops and most shops were closed. Perhaps they too were laying fallow at
Jiayuguan
'Beautiful industrial landscape of Jiayuguan' as seen from the fort the time. Instead I had to console myself with more Tibetan monasteries, none of them free. By this point in my life I have seen quite a number of them and so I made the decision to pick and choose which ones I was willing to pay for. None in Tongren fit the match.
What did fit the match was Labrang Monastery in Xiahe. The town itself also was to my liking. Here was a place that I could once again rest for a while, as I watched the pilgrims and monks alike making their rounds along the monastic walls and spinning the prayer wheels. Xiahe is for relaxing and laying fallow, and that is exactly what I am going to do for a while.
Relax and lay fallow my friends, those are words to heed!
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