Tomb Bag
A Silk Road Trip, or I Gobbed in the Gobi, China, 1992, by Philip Spires
In August 1992, myself and my wife, Caroline, arranged a trip to China post-Tiananmen. It was in the days when the London China Travel office was on Cambridge Circus, opposite the Palace Theatre on Charing Cross Road. It took me at least twenty books, a late-night Japanese TV series and several months to plan and arrange the trip of what was then our base in Balham, South London. In those days you could arrange the visit through the China Travel and then as long as the itinerary was submitted in advance, you could travel absolutely independently. Everything was prepaid, but about setting out, we had no tickets or confirmed reservations apart from our Flights in and out of Beijing. As always, I kept a diary of the trip, which ran to more than fifty pages. A few years later, I condensed the experience to two sides A4, ignoring the rules of grammar and syntax, and delivered the next walk, perhaps a poetic impression of nearly one month travel.
Ex-London Sun decompose while Michael Jackson's nose and praised hooterless Boardman bike gold medal. Air China to Beijing, where taxis cost more than Lonely Planet predicts. A Route from one Chinese character Tim Han China Travel, while colleagues drooling over television lithe Afro-American sprinters at the Olympic Games. Then to the no-longer Forbidden City. Piles of local tourists to negotiate.
Four hours to Urumqi of Xinjiang Airlines. Signs in Chinese and Russian as well Uigurs written in Arabic script (one recent innovation). Landlines in Inner Mongolia. Why and how so straight? Urumqi multiple peak. Piles of coal, dirty high-rise, snow-capped Bogda Shen-end street. Pavement soothsayers, traders. Stalls. Women wash sheep 'stomachs in a stream, tripe kebabs. Uigurs Han Chinese city is now populated by overspill Shanghai, more than 2000 miles from home. The second long march.
Uigurs breakfast. Hot sheep's milk, Chinese tea, flat bread, tomatoes, candied tomatoes and cucumbers, sauerkraut, thin congee, sheep's milk butter, two giant sugar cubes. Uigurs market. Fruit surrounded by a forest of hanging lamb. Chinese market. Live vegetables and meat. Tank over-spilling with energetic eel (unit). Self-knots spaghetti.
Wife's gold watch with an illegal 'find the lady. " Policeman search. Tears when the loss hits home. Renmin Park noodles chilli sauce and rocket fuel. Bag slashers with a finger-ring knives on a crowded bus. Care is needed.
Car to Turfan. Fertile valleys. Barren mountains. Occasional snow. Road plowed. Kazak yurts. Semi-underground shadow make rammed-earth Uigurs villages, invisible from a distance to save the chimney smoking. Steep gorge, spectacular river, rocks, white water and slate-gray hills. In Turfan Depression, snow-capped range surrounding gray stone sinks 100 miles across. 42 degrees at the base, 200 meters below sea level. Cars for leaving tracks on melted away. A large gob of irrigating the driver. Gobi means stone. Enough here. And then green. An oasis. A gigantic mirage?
Turfan. Latticed vines for street shade. Hanging raisin grapes. 15 Yuan fine for casual pick. Hotel tea in galvanized buckets. Turkish-style dancing and music. Genghiz-fired rammed-earth Goachang cities and Jiaohe. Painted brick tombs and minarets. Flaming mountains. Karez underground irrigation system. 3000 km channels. 1500 years old, gravity fed from the mountains the depression-edge. Uigurs greatest achievement culture, and in order.
Bus to Daheyan. Two hours over bumpy stones to depression-edge. Dump of a railroad town. Coal Mountain, box buildings, derelict land. Two women at war on the station. Rams victim's head on the ground. Blood. Spectators. To sit still. A tense city hateful Postes.
500 miles to Liuyuan in Gansu. Flat featureless gray slate stone. Spectacular unique. Snowy Mountains to the north. Completely empty, except for smoking coal towns. Above 40 in summer, 30 below in winter. At night by train. Dawn reveals the same huge scene, now in brown.
Liuyuan come. Daheyan similar writ. 120 miles south through the desert (black at first!), Beyond remnant walls of Great Han Dynasty Great Wall. Camels and dunes of the Taklimakan, the world's largest desert sand. Near Dunhuang oasis flourishes again. Sand and gravel suddenly crop and tree. Feitian Hotel, with complimentary toiletries tagged Sham Poo Poo and Foam. Lunch. Fourteen dishes. Duck, foo yong, cucumber, cabbage, oyster mushroom chicken, coriander pork, steamed buns, steamed bread, rice, beef broth and noodles, pork and green beans, pork and sweet chili, chicken and squash, plain noodles, watermelon. Then to the main torch for the caves to get. Houses close together. Wood stacked for winter stores. View over the roofs like a junkyard. Ground stoneware claustrophobic maze.
Cave day. Mogao Buddhist caves – closed 12-2, a whole day before perhaps the most view of the earth. 400 'caves' (some cathedral format) into a sandstone canyon, between 400 AD to 1100 AD. Completely dry, always dark, perfectly preserved. All painted. Tang period, complex and colorful. A world of scenes with torches. Buddha lying down, sitting, standing, posing. Thirty meter seated figure with thousands of unsmoked cigarettes and coins on his lap as sacrifices. Shock of the Qing renovated cave Taoist figures. Ghost-like features, distorted, and a face in the groin. 40 days seen in the caves, archaeologist as a personal guide. Amazing. Fourteen dishes for dinner.
Desert bus to Liuyuan. Always a struggle for seats. Three dusty hours. The train to Lanzhou. 800 miles along the Qinghai-Gansu mountainous border. More black desert, the yellow earth. Jaiyaguan fort on the border of the Ming empire. At night by train. Country changed. Pass, green rolling hills and stepped fields. Harvest Wheat Straw inch dollies as children during assembly. Houses still rammed earth. A thriving industrial city of Lanzhou. Thirty hours of travel. Walking Tour Yellow River.
Fish in the restaurant tank all dead. Lanzhou bus expensive. 50 Fen per trip. Radios and knitting prohibited. Han dynasty bronze flying horse, and warriors. Steamed carp on the menu with rape. The fish comes first. The train to Xian by yellow loess country. Deep grooves and fissures. All flat land cropped. 500 miles overnight.
Earth cotta warriors to the east of Qin Shi Huang's tomb to guard. Made in pieces. Assembled in situ. Partially excavated area where piles of dismembered limbs arise from the earth. New terra cotta warriors to sell the factory behind the museum. Exact replicas of the originals. Wheezing at the thought of the whole thing as a sham for the tourism sector.
Xian, like all Chinese cities, a square. Straight roads, always intersecting at right angles. Walled old town, rebuilt Ming. Beautiful old mosque. Xianyang nearby, with seventh century graves Qian, Han museum with another 3,000 terra cottas like a football crowd. The train to Beijing. 800 miles, 26 hours. Houses often caves in edge of the valley. Later vast flat land, corn everywhere.
Temple of Heaven, Tiantan, then Peking Opera. Pause for beer boat stall. Operated by undeclared work intern stockbroker! Breakfast pickle great, as four years old camembert from a shotgun. Take the head off. Great Wall. Mucho Touristico, but still beautiful. If the climbing a giant ladder in place. "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirts, prices are lower as you continue to climb. Should the air. Ming tombs rejected by the guide-book. Wrong. Amazing barrel vaulted rooms, nine floors below ground. Jade doors, carved thrones, marble, marble, Marvel. Reminiscent of Renaissance Italy. etched Everlasting bricks with names of their creators. Souvenir jade boat for £ 55,000.
White curtains on erotic imagery in Tibetan Lama Temple. Same brutal content murals. 24 meters gold Buddha through the incense-blur. No smoking signs everywhere.
Mao's Maosoleum an emperor's tomb. Lines painted for queues the square. Feet north towards Tiananmen Gate, upside-down feng shui. It is shiny, waxy, and painted over the face. Moving lines file past on both sides. No interval. Outside, stalls selling T-shirts with Mao, Mao key chains, stuffed animals, postcards, magic lantern shows. Mao Zedong candy by the armful. Then Great Hall of the People. Dining room for 5000. Now fast food for tourists. Great Hall chopsticks, cigarettes, T-shirts. Great Hall of the People hugs.
2500 miles. Three and a half weeks. 5 destinations. 50 caves. 6000 terracotta warriors. 1 each Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Beijing Opera, Mao Zedong. Hundreds of tombs, temples, pagodas, parks, buses and bicycles bendi. 3 silk shirts on the Silk Road. A great trip.
About the Author
Philip Spires
Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk
Michael, a missionary priest, has just killed Munyasya. It was an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician, exploits the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a church worker, has just lost his child. He did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael went to the Mission to retrieve a letter from Janet, a teacher, and the priest’s neighbour. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however.
If you had to beat up by a person of the female persuasion who would it be?
Please someone famous … your sister will not work … lol … just to get the ball rolling I would say Lady Croft (aka Laura Croft, Tomb Raider) … I would say Angelina Jollie, but in real life with those skinny arms could they are not winning her way out of a wet paper bag … I suspect lol …. yourmuda a person of the female persuasion: a chick, a babe, a girl … duh … or is that doh!? lol
Nicole Richie Just when I go to pick someone up that could possibly whoop me? LOL
Let’s Play Tomb Raider 4 Part 2 – Lara The Bag Lady
