C & C globetrotting around the world…

Dunhuang is really far in the Northwest of China. We were happy to have had hard sleepers on the train because 23 hours of sitting is no fun. Cecilia had the middle berth while Christoph had the bottom one and he could even stretch in it. During the day the passengers from the higher berths usually sit on the lower one or on the seat in the corridor for chatting and eating. After 10pm the lights go out and everyone goes to bed. The train was very clean, we had nice people around us and the waggon attendant came to clean and wake people up during the night so they wouldn’t miss their stop.

We finally arrived in Dunhuang, in the middle of the desert. After the rain in Xian, it felt good to be in the dry. It was Cecilia’s first time in the desert with sand dunes and she was very excited. The fertile Dunhuang oasis is situated at the westernmost end of the Hexi Corridor and was the most important station on the Silk Road. While most people used to just stop here to swap a camel, others stayed and built forts and cave temples. Now the town has about 150,000 inhabitants. The city is really not what we imagined for a desert city. It’s very clean and pretty modern. Our hostel, right by the dunes was nice and had a traditional Chinese courtyard.

The Mogao Caves are said to be one of the greatest repositories of Buddhist art in the world. At its peak, the site housed 18 monasteries, over 1400 monks and nuns, and countless artists, translators and calligraphers. Wealthy traders and important officials were the primary donors responsible for creating new caves, as caravans made the long detour past Mogao to pray or give thanks for a safe journey through the treacherous wastelands to the west. The traditional date ascribed to the founding of the first cave is 366AD. In total there are 492 caves, although only about 20 are open to the public. We visited 2 enormous seated Buddha figures (34.5 and 26m tall respectively) carved during the Tang dynasty (7^th -10^th century), when 230 caves were built. They were carved from the top down into the cliff, but also using straw and clay for the clothes. The 34.5m tall one is the world’s third-largest Buddha and is inside the 9-storey cliff pagoda, while the smallest one is 2cm high.

A dark chapter in the history of the Mogao Caves was when in the early 1900s, the Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovered a walled up area behind one side of a corridor leading to a main cave. Behind the wall was a small cave stuffed with thousands of manuscripts dating from 406 to 1002 AD. These included old hemp paper scrolls in Chinese and many other languages, paintings on hemp, silk or paper, numerous damaged figurines of Buddhas, and other Buddhist paraphernalia. There were original workbooks, books of prayers, Confucian works, Taoist works, Nestorian Christian works, works from the Chinese government, administrative documents, anthologies, glossaries, dictionaries, and calligraphic exercises. Unfortunately Wang sold (voluntarily?) the majority of them to English, French and Japanese archeological expeditions. This is why you can find most scripts today in French and British museums.

It was interesting to see the different caves because they were carved in the span of 1000 years, so styles differ considerably. The early ones are more Indian in style and iconography, while later they became more Chinese with more rigid strokes and sculptures. During the Tang dynasty there is an appearance of court life with music, dress and architecture. The colours used in all caves are green, blue and red, with the rare yellow colour. Overall they were very impressive and interesting (even though our guide’s English was horrible), but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the caves.

Dunhuang is different from the other cities (it’s also considerably smaller) as in there is no KFC and McDonald’s yet. Also, motor-scooters are still powered by fuel here as opposed batteries in most other places we’ve visited so far. In the area, the main crops are wheat, corn, cotton, melons, fruit, and vegetables. We’ve seen cotton plantations from the train on our way here and melons and grapes are for sale everywhere. We even saw chars for the “Dunhuang Grape Festival” with girls dressed in traditional costumes, but we couldn’t find more information about it. The wine from this region is actually quite good table wine, even the cheap one. We also went to the Dunhuang Tourist Information Center because we wanted to see what else there is to do in town since we had a free day. The people there didn’t speak English, but called someone on the phone. Christoph asked if this was the Tourist Info Center and they said yes. When we asked them what there is to do, they replied “We don’t know”. Wow, very helpful Tourist Info Center!!! After seeing how chilly it gets in the evenings in Dunhuang and hearing stories from other travelers about how cold Szechuan gets, we went to a town  market and bought a jacket and a pair of long-johns for each of us.

The other major reason we came all this way: the sand dunes. We first went to Crescent Moon Lake, which is really close to the entrance. It’s an oasis with a pagoda in the desert with a lake in the shape of a crescent moon. It’s very nice, but there are so many tourists and you cannot get a picture without the stupid orange boots used for sand walking… Still very nice though and it must have been magical when it was first discovered. We then started hiking on the sand dunes of Mingsha Shan (Singing Dunes Mountain)– really strenuous work, but the views were rewarding, even though we didn’t actually hear the dunes signing. It’s probably one of those things like in Hangzhou where they give places really poetic names. The best part was when we decided to go on the other side and hope to see some camels. It was Cecilia’s first time in sand dunes and she really enjoyed running down on them. We hiked in the dunes for a few hours, going up and down. Christoph discovered a spot where he was able to take gorgeous pictures of camels and the sunset. Mission accomplished!