Bananas Don't Travel Well

modern ChinaWe arrived in Dunhuang shortly after dawn, and headed to Charlie Jhong’s Café for an early breakfast. Charlie and his wife greeted us warmly and offered to take us to their new guest house on the edge of town. Cat, our travel companion, had already promised to meet friends there, so she accepted. We wanted to look around town first before committing to staying so far from the centre. But on viewing a few prototypical Chinese hotel rooms, we quickly changed our minds and opted for the more hospitable guest house. We weren’t disappointed. Charlie’s place had basic, cheap rooms positioned around a central courtyard, a common area for eating and socializing with a fire pit to huddle around after dark. Charlie himself was very uncharacteristic in his relaxed, pay-me-later attitude.

For us, Dunhuang was mostly about socializing. In addition to Cat, we found Will and Guy at Charlie Jhong’s place, two young Brits seeking adventure. They had driven a van from the UK to Kazakhstan, where they had donated it to an orphanage. In Dunhuang, they were preparing to travel by bus to Lhasa, buy bicycles in Lhasa, and ride them to Kathmandu. (We later learned they made it.) The four of us had a great couple of days playing cards, eating, drinking beer and swapping travel stories.

The Mogao Caves

But we did tear ourselves away from Charlie’s courtyard long enough to make the obligatory daytrip to the Mogao caves, the site of China’s earliest Buddhist art and one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the East. Dating from the 4th Century AD, the Mogao caves were carved into the cliffs near Dunhuang over the course of a thousand years, and filled with Buddhist paintings and statuary and a massive library of scrolls, not only a wealth of Buddhist scriptures, literature and art, but also documenting the migration of Buddhism along the Silk Road from India to China. It was Aurel Stein, a Hungarian explorer and British agent, that made the “discovery”, earning the eternal hatred of the Chinese by purchasing vast numbers of scrolls for a measly sum from the monk who then presided over them. (In fact, Buddhist scholars had always known of the caves, and they had been uncovered by the monk Wang Yuan Lu in 1900.)

cave reproductionNowadays, only about 30 of the 600-odd caves are open to tourists. The admission fee is steep—almost $50 a head—and you are obliged to take a guided tour and cannot bring your camera. When we first saw the cave complex our hearts sank—the cliff façade was spiffed up with tacky painted concrete, flanked with concrete walkways, and the caves were locked behind steel doors. But inside, the murals and Buddhist icons were very fine, and our tour guide was knowledgeable, despite the rather one-sided criticisms of the early-20th Century European explorers in her script (though certainly deserved, the conduct of the Chinese toward their own archaeological artifacts has also been less than exemplary). We saw about ten caves, each with a slightly different artistic style, representing different periods in the site’s long occupation. The pièce de résistance was a giant Tang-dynasty Buddha—at 34 metres the third largest in the world—which, viewed from close quarters at the base of his feet, gave a real sense of grandeur.

Though the art was impressive, there was some question as to the degree and authenticity of some of the restorations, particularly of the statues, and as I have alluded to, the site was somewhat lacking in atmosphere. The attached museum had reproductions of some of the caves that could be photographed, but as they weren’t the real thing they lacked impact. The other exhibits were disappointing.

Romance foiled

full moon at Charlie'sCharlie offered a number of excursions and as we had come almost to the end of the Silk Road and still hadn’t done a camel trek, we convinced Cat to sign up for an overnight excursion by bactrian camel through the dunes. But the next day the weather turned cold and there was no uncertainty of rain in the forecast. Romance aside, none of us really fancied the idea of camping out, cold and damp, with four bedraggled, ornery beasts. When we cancelled, Charlie understood—“next time” was his gracious response. With the weather taking a turn for the worse, and Will and Guy having left for Golmud, we decided to leave town that day. Charlie told us we could catch a late afternoon train to Jiayuguan and offered to drive us to the station.

There was only one problem: we still hadn’t gotten around to seeing Dunhuang’s main attraction: its megalithic dunes. We’d intended to get to know them intimately on the camel trek, but with our change of plans we now had only a couple of hours to fit them in. Most people visit the dunes at a designated tourist spot just outside town, where a not insignificant entry fee and the donning of oversized fluorescent orange rubber boots gives you access to the over-rated Crescent Moon Lake, a silty pond sitting incongruously in a depression in the sand, and a series of wooden staircases built into the adjacent dunes.

A brush with the law

beware!Never keen to bow to authority, we opted for the unofficial entry point, a gap underneath the endlessly long fence encircling the dunes, several hundred metres from Charlie’s place. A bit of scooping at the sand and we had a hollow just large enough for the three of us to squeeze under. From there, we staggered up the nearest dune. The sands on the steep slope shifted beneath our feet, as if some perverted creationist had decided to demonstrate the expression “one step forward, three steps back.” But we managed to huff and puff our way up, giggling at the ludicrous level of effort it took to reach the top. Once there we looked out over several rows of taller dunes—some of them 200-300 metres high—and down at the artificial landscaping around Crescent Moon “lake”, the visitor centre and restaurant plunked nearby, and the groups of Chinese tourists, frolicking around in their glowing orange boots.

Isolated from the crowds below, we could hear the breeze over the dunes and watch the lengthening shadows highlight the wind-carved ripples in the sand—this made all the more delicious by the knowledge that we were there illicitly. Until we noticed the guy with the loudspeaker yelling in our direction: we’d been spotted. We knew it would be at least fifteen minutes before anyone could climb their way up to apprehend us, but we decided it was time to be going; we had a train to catch. We turned and this time gravity, and fluid dynamics, worked with us. With every step we slid at least ten feet down: wheeeeeee!!! Our plunge was over all too quickly, and then we were crawling back under the fence and walking out along the path back to Charlie’s place.

It was as we were loading up Charlie’s van that the two policemen arrived on a motorbike. We instinctively knew that this was one of those play-dumb-and-pretend-you-don’t-speak-any-Chinese moments; we just made straight for the van and made like we didn’t notice them. Charlie’s elderly mom, who had seen us dumping the sand out of our boots just ten minutes earlier, provided an alibi and told the cops in no uncertain terms to go away.

A few thousand miles from the border, we arrive in China

At the train station, we said our goodbyes to Charlie, bought $2 hard-seat tickets for Jiayuguan and boarded a virtually empty compartment. We played cards with Cat on the journey, arrived well after dark and set out to find a hotel together. It being quite late, and Cat on a tight budget, we shared a triple room at the first hotel we found. At first glance, it looked passable, and it was cheap. But it held up rather poorly to closer scrutiny and the overhead light: there were huge lumps of snot stuck to the walls, an unidentifiable but organic-looking substance ground into the carpet, stained sheets with hairs in them, and a very grotty bathroom. But, although we eventually concluded from a circuitous conversation with the concierge that hot water was only available for one randomly chosen hour each day, the staff were really friendly, which counts for a lot in China. But I got out my sleeping bag that night rather than brave the sheets.

We were hungry after the day’s excitement, and found a nearby night market, where the locals all called out to us as we walked along the stalls. Although it was a Muslim night market, most of the people were Hui—ethnic Chinese Muslims—rather than Uighurs. We were getting further east, and the cities were gradually becoming more Chinese. We bought spicy noodles, served in bowls slipped into plastic bags to obviate the need for dishwashing.

the great wallThe next day was quite frustrating, as we searched for onward train tickets, for food, for a working ATM machine, bicycle rentals, and a better hotel room. In Jiayuguan, there weren’t a lot of foreigners in town, and we drew a little too much attention. Like the time we hailed a cab on a roundabout and nearly caused a multi-vehicle collision as four taxis all vied to reach us first. We stood dumbfounded for a few seconds, not sure which of them to climb into, but then realized we had to opt for the most pushy driver as she had effectively cut off the doors to the others. She got away with our fare and several curses and dirty looks thrown in her direction.

Mid-afternoon, we gave up on our errands and negotiated a cab to take us to one of the outermost sections of the Great Wall snaking over the mountains outside town—entirely rebuilt so as to look brand new, but a worthwhile diversion. We also went to see the more impressive Jiayuguan fort.

The edge of the world

welcome to ChinaJiayuguan fort marks the western-most end of the Great Wall of China. It is the furthest that the ancient Chinese ever established a garrison, and although in modern times Chinese influence did, obviously, expand further westward, it is here that—even today—China really begins. Like most Chinese historical monuments, Jiayuguan fort has been restored and an entrance fee slapped on, but we felt this one was better value than most.

gatehouseThe fort’s location was of great geographical importance, at the western mouth of the Hexi Corridor, a narrow strip of land flanked to the south by the foothills of the Tibetan plateau, and to the north by the Gobi desert, affording the only passage west. The walls of the present fort, built in 1372, were laid out in clean, square lines, as if to demonstrate cultural superiority through geometry. This would have been of psychological importance not only to the barbarians outside the gates, but also to the Chinese stationed there, and especially those Chinese citizens unfortunate enough to be punished by expulsion—a fate worse than death—for the wilderness of deserts, mountains and marauding tribes beyond presented a real terror. Even today, despite development around the modern town of Jiayuguan, the landscape is dry and desolate, truly giving the impression of the end of the world.

The fort has two encircling rectangular walls topped by four large watchtowers that look like Ming dynasty tea houses; unfortunately they were all locked. The crenellated walls are reached by ramps wide enough to allow several horses to ascend abreast. We walked around the ramparts, taking in the view. Some attractions had been set up for the tourists. For a few cents you could practice your archery, shooting straw dummies in the courtyard below. And outside the main Western gate were several camels which enterprising locals collected a fee to photograph. We didn’t need the pictures that badly, but some Germans apparently did, and we watched them get paraded around on camelback for their friends back home. Before long, the sun was going down, and we went back to wake up our driver, who’d been snoozing in the parking lot.

A better deal

Back in town we braced ourselves for the search for another hotel. We started with the one right across the street from our previous filthy room. Amazingly, it had a triple room at exactly the same price but in infinitely better condition. It was bigger, had central heating, 24-hour hot water, clean linens, and tiled (not yucky carpeted) floors. A welcome surprise after a long, exhausting day.

We took Cat out for dinner that evening, thinking we’d splurge on a nice meal. We followed a recommendation for a nice restaurant, had a full, tasty meal with beer, and were amazed to find it came to only $8 for three people. Whatever else you might say about China, it is (tourist-site entry fees aside) undeniably very good value for your money.