Mogao CavesOn any trip to Dunhuang, the Mogao Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a must see. The carved out caves feature one of the largest collections of Buddhist paintings and sculptures at a site established in 332 AD that has survived not only the withering effects of time but the actual torching of the caves by nonbelievers, looting by invaders, serving as refugee housing in 1921 for Russian soldiers fleeing the revolution along with the rampant plundering by legions of foreign, allegedly well-meaning, archeologists from Britain, France, Hungary, Japan, among others and a untold years of tourist marauders.
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Ancient legends say the area containing the Mingsha or Singing Sand Dunes just south of Dunhuang used to be flat. One day a fierce battle raged there and an army was annihilated, leaving the ground littered with bodies. A Goddess scattered incense ashes over them and from the ground rose up a giant sand mountain to bury the warriors, while the tears of the dead soldiers’ loved ones pooled to form Crescent Lake. Even now, it is said, when the wind comes from a certain direction, military drums rumble, the dunes echo the sounds of battle, the sand blows out sad laments for the fallen and mournful vapors of ghosts, drift. But this day, there was no wind, no battle cries, just sunlight and temperatures in the high 50’s and Xuxiangdong (whose name I shortened to Xu) beckoning me to follow. He led me to the camel ranch and pulled out money to pay for both of us, but I stopped him and paid my own way. I have found this is typical of Chinese generosity. If you are invited, the inviter expects to pay for everything. I guess he thought he had invited me by saying, “follow me, follow me,” and that became the tagline of the day, uttered in an amusing way as one would usher along a clueless child, along with repeating, “good friend, good friend.” I suddenly realized this was the extent of his English. No matter, we were on the same wavelength, everything was making us laugh, everything was blowing us away and we communicated our wonder with double thumbs up, shrieks and whoops of surprise and delight. We were joined by another Chinese tourist straggler and lined up for the camels. The legendary singing sand dunes outside of Dunhuang, China were not singing for me but they were not entirely silent, either. They say the desert sings of lost Silk Road traveler’s ghosts whose lives were taken by bandits or thirst or starvation, though it was mostly by the desert windstorms that rose like waves and extinguished all life that wasn’t smart enough to ride it out, yet all I heard were my own thoughts, desert dry, blooming, beckoning onward over the dunes and into what’s next. Erika wrote this: “ . . . just ready to live sensations only our soul understands.” I rode the train to Beijing standing between the cars in solitude, watching the fields, the villages, and the ordinary, unassuming Chinese life sweep by, my soul alive and bursting, yet every now and then a roving Chinese passenger would pause trying to figure out what I was taking such joy in, scratching their collective heads wondering what in the hell I was looking so raptly at. When you travel, what you see is who you are. What enters you depends on how much you are willing to allow in. How safe you need to be. What you are willing to part with. What you are willing to condone. Still, you are always left with more than you came with.
Here is a travel tip useful in every city in the world: if you don’t want to be ripped off, walk a few blocks away from the train station or bus station, and then hail a taxi. In my train stupor I forgot this and the waiting predatory taxi driver wanted to charge me 100 RMB for a 16 RMB cab ride. I just looked at him and laughed. When I opened the door, he pantomimed that just for me he would do it for the bargain price of 50 RMB. Exactly two blocks away I flagged down a taxi and showed him the address, written in Chinese. When I asked him how much it would cost, he looked at me as if I were an imbecile and gruffly pointed to the meter. And away we went; cab fare to the hotel: 14 RMB. At the front desk, I waited while the clerk gave directions to an English-speaking chap, then conveyed that I had a room reservation made by my friends, Paul and Claire. Suddenly, the man was back. He had come with Paul and Claire and knew that I was expected. And just like that, I had found my people. It was still very early so we decided to go get breakfast. His name was Pat, and also like Paul and Claire he was from the United Kingdom, and they all taught English in the same city in China. As we were searching for breakfast in the Tibetan Quarter we stumbled upon a bizarre scene. There, right on the streets of Chengdu, an ultra-modern city in most respects, a man and woman were murdering a chicken with a meat cleaver, draining blood and guts down onto the curb and into the gutter. While I was taking photos, they calmly whacked another chicken, which, although headless, flapped its wings furiously in protest. While I was waiting for my own trip to begin I watched the city empty out. Traffic unsnarled. Strange apparitions usually hidden behind the veil of commerce revealed themselves. Shops I liked to patronize retreated behind roll-down accordion metal doors. Firework stores appeared overnight and the sound of their wares exploded constantly, making it seem as if we all were under attack. Under attack by the Year of the Snake. The city buses that travel major roads during rush hour are usually so crowded they would evoke a sardine’s pity were half full. Red lanterns were strung everywhere. Relatives, returning to visit my neighbors, were unused to me, and stared and pointed—laowai.
I asked a friend what she thought of the empty city and her only comment was that there was less spit on the sidewalk. And so there was. The journey began with a caution: If you are traveling during the Spring Festival (AKA Chinese New Year) you had better get your tickets early. With twelve days left before my scheduled departure, I thought—piece of cake. Yet, at the ticket office, it was another story. On the day I wanted to leave, all trains were booked. The ticket seller, dressed smartly in a railroad worker’s uniform, blue shirt, red tie, dark blue pants and military-style jacket, spoke no English but conveyed that message clearly.
“What about the next day,” I said in English. She looked at me like a dog looks at TV until I pulled out my phone and pointed to the calendar. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, shaking her head no-no-no-no-and-no, wait a minute . . . pause, squinting her eyes at the computer screen, yes! One last bed in the hard sleeper car, the top berth. On Chinese trains, there are basically three types of tickets: a regular seat, which are arranged as two, separated by the aisle, then three more; the so called ‘hard sleeper’, which consists of bays of 6 bunks, 3 per side; and last, the more expensive ‘soft sleeper.’ I wanted a ‘soft sleeper’ there and back, but it was not to be. |
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