Jiayuguan

Leaving Xian and Shaanxi Province behind the train heads North West through the Hexi Corridor. A natural passageway between the snow-capped peaks of the Qilian Shan mountain range to the South and the Ala Shan mountains and Gobi Desert to the North. This line of least resistance has been the main road to Central Asia since time immemorial. We reach and pass Lanzhou, Gansu Province’s capital, just as dusk is consuming the last warmth of the day. It is ten hours since we left Xian, in the days of the Silk Road however it would have taken a colossal 20 days to cover the same ground. Food for thought.

At four in the morning we are woken by the conductor, at five we disembark to a notably cool desert morning. We have arrived in Jiayuguan. The whole purpose for coming to this industrial wart of a city is to visit Jiayuguan Fort, a place that holds an important historical significance for the Chinese. For many years the gates of this fort were essentially the gates of China. Beyond lay the vast hostile wastes of the Gobi Desert, to compound the environmental dangers were the Xiongnu and a whole host of other nasty barbarian raiders who were willing to slaughter their grannies for a nickel or a dime.

There were three reasons for venturing beyond the West Gate, retrospectively referred to as “The Gate Of Sighs”. Merchants did it for the money, People like Zhang Qian (the Indiana Jones of the diplomat’s world) did it because it was their job and some, the unfortunates, did so because they were exiled. Any departure involved a substantial amount of risk. Zhang Qian for instance was sent out by Emperor Wu Di in 131BC to try and establish a military alliance with the Yuehzhi against the Xiongnu. On his way he was captured by the Xiongnu and spent the next 10 years as their “guest”. After escaping he, amazingly, carried on with his mission only to find that the Yuehzhi were not interested in an alliance. On his way home he was recaptured spending a further two years in captivity before escaping once more. Arriving home thirteen years later it is understandable that Wu Di was surprised to see him. It would be easy to see Zhang Qian’s mission as a failure but his records help prove otherwise. Not only was it the first recorded crossing of the Pamir/Tian Shan Mountain ranges, providing the crucial link between two existing trade routes out of the Pamirs, one heading East towards Europe and the other heading West towards China. They also contain the first Chinese references to a magical land called “Lijian” where people ate pizza and ice cream, wore tight trousers and rode around on scooters saying “Ciao” a lot.

Today Jiayuguan Fort pushes my imagination to the limits. If I am able to ignore the flag waving tour guides long enough I can just about recapture something of the essence of this place. Fleetingly I get the sense of what it must have been like to leave the security of China behind and venture out, risking all on the possibilities of making a fortune selling silk to a bunch of Sogdian middlemen. Standing atop the fortifications it still feels like a lonely outpost at the limits of the known world and it must have been with an enormous sense of relief that caravans saw the towers and silk banners of the fort rising above the dusty earth of the desert on their return.

Much of this insane country is strangely endearing but recently I am discovering something that I am less enthusiastic about. In our quest to relive the Silk Road we have had to shell out some significant wads of cash on the classic silk road sights. China cottoned onto the value of the tourist dollar a long time ago so high entrance fees are par for the course. Jiayuguan Fort, rebuilt from a bunch of crumbling ruins into an immaculately restored piece of history is amazing but it doesn’t stop there. They went on to build a lake, a souvenir village selling the usual tourist rubbish, a local culture village, a museum, a selection of overpriced hotels and a large carpark. Next they threw in an electric buggy service to ferry you around all these places, a bunch of camels, horses and quadbikes to ride around on, a deer to feed and a range of historical costumes to have your photographs taken in, giving them a multitude of ways of extracting every last Yuan from their punters. Not bad when it all started life as a bunch of crumbling mud ruins in the middle of a desert.

The worst thing however is that the local Chinese tourists love this ‘Theme Park’ approach to it all. Just south of Jiayuguan Fort the original ruins of the Great Wall end dramatically at a deep river gorge. A magical combination of wild scenery and thought provoking history combine to produce a spot worthy of an SSSI, AONB, UNESCO World Heritage award and half a dozen other protective orders. A place so perfect in its isolation that you could sit for hours drinking in the age and wonder of the natural and human world. Sadly not anymore. “What this place needs is some improvements” I hear The Party’s head of tourism say. “Yes, a recreation of a Dung Dynasty military encampment would be wonderful here. I went to Frontierland on Morecambe Promenade once and that is just what we need”. To top it all off they didn’t put this blasphemous theme park creation off to one side, that of course would be flinching away from making the killer move. Instead it is plonked on both sides of the gorge right next to the Great Wall with a suspension bridge linking the two. The previously inspiring view and postcard quality photo opportunity is now polluted in the most bizzarely ridiculous way by tourists playing, child like, on the idiotic amusements completely oblivious to the reason they decided to build it here in the first place. Our taxi driver seems genuinely surprised when we return from this ‘wonderful’ new facility looking like we have just been informed that out pet hamster has died. Talk about culture clash.

I also get a sense in China that the country operates on a policy similar to that asked of Kevin Costner in the film ‘Field Of Dreams’, “Build it and they will come”. So much of this country is a building site as it rampages headlong into a 21st century chock full of capitalistic money making opportunities. The result is six lane super highways and grandiose tourist facilities that are all but deserted. Perhaps in years to come the party chiefs will be proved right and glasses of rice wine will be raised to their brilliant foresight. In the meantime however I have moments when I feel like a character in the film ‘28 Days Later’, “Hello, hello, is there anyone here?”

Driving back to our hotel an aroma wafts in through the open windows of our cab. Smell is such an evocative sense, it has that strange ability to put you back into a particular time and place that sight and sound are rarely capable of. For me the one smell that reminds me of China is the one I breathe in now, that of stale urine. I am not deliberately trying to demean China, I really do love this place, it is without doubt my favourite travel destination. The fact is that budget travel in China exposes you to countless wash room facilities that you wouldn’t dream of washing in. Whether it is Chinese bus stations, hotels or trains I will be brought vividly back to all of them as soon as I enter any multistory car park stairwell in Europe. Thinking on this, as I do during long bus journeys, it occurs to me there is a very good reason for it. Bare with me and my crude mathematics, I have used approximate figures that allow easier calculations, none of what follows may bare any resemblance to reality.

Approximately 1.5 billion Chinese peeing, conservatively speaking, 1 litre per day.

There are 1000 litres in one cubic metre so that equals 1.5 million cubic metres of pee per day.

or… 60,000 per hour or 1,000 per minute.

In other words approximately 16 cubic metres of pee is produced in China every second.

16 cumecs! That is the size of a very scary white-water river, or yellow-water river in this case.

I’d like to know how many dog ends are stubbed out each second too, I imagine that is yet another disturbing statistic.

As merchants exited the West Gate of Jiayuguan Fort they would apparently turn and throw a pebble against the wall of the fort. Depending on whether the pebble fell straight to the floor or bounced back would indicate whether or not they would have a safe return. My source didn’t identify which result predicted which outcome so I decided to avoid any superstitious actions. Besides, we were leaving on a air conditioned bus traveling on a metaled road and showing Jackie Chan movies with bad Mandarin dubbing, I think our chances were substantially better than those of the aforementioned merchant.

The Gashtun Gobi desert spreads out in front of us like a blanket of rock and dust. The tendrils of humanity reach out into the wilderness, electricity pylons, telegraph poles, roads and railways, all attempting to tame and control the these bad lands.

The wick of asphalt burns ever onwards through the hot wax of the desert. We pass through dusty oasis towns where a lattice of green cultivation is sheltered beneath tall lines of poplar trees. Outside of these settlements there is not an ounce of shade to be found. The endless tarmac and dust devils to the side of the road reminding me of Mad Max. Speeding along in such a way makes it desperately hard to appreciate just how tough it would have been for the ancient silk road adventurers. The scenery out here is as uniform as it is dangerous. At a camels plod that would have meant pretty much the same view day after day for many days. There would have been little evidence of the slow but steady progress being made, I imagine the demoralising monotony of it all and perhaps even the insanity that would come to those not cut out for such hardship and privation.

At the far western edge of the Gashtun Gobi lies the major oasis town of Dunhuang. Beyond this is a desert so fierce it was literally called the “go in and you won’t come out” desert or Taklamakan. Here traders had a three choices as the route splits. The original Silk Road goes South to where the Taklamakan borders the Kunlun Shan mountains. A route difficult to access these days and to begin with one that passes through a less than pretty asbestos mining area. Then there was a central route going via a place by the name of Lop Nur. Today the desert is even more hostile than in years gone by and with the addition of China’s nuclear weapons programme using Lop Nur as a test area this route is all but impossible for silk road tourists these days. The northern route is the most recent and easiest route out of the three and the one we will take to the next major stopping point at Turpan. Conversely silk road traders in the past would perhaps have chosen the most difficult route rather than the easiest, the harsher and more unforgiving the route, the less likely it was to find bandits there. They certainly were a breed apart from the rest. I’d like to see a few of todays merchant bankers run the kind of risks these chaps took.

Before we press on however we have another tourist hell hole to avoid. The Magao Caves are the finest repository of Buddhist art anywhere in the world, at least they were until French and British ‘archaeologists’ (read thieves) came and carted away armfuls of the stuff so that it could live in dusty museum vaults in Europe instead… By all accounts the artwork that remains is still something to behold but for three reasons we are going to pass. First, the entry fee is something of a legend in itself, next you aren’t allowed to take photos and lastly, I don’t think I could survive a buddhist artwork theme park. Instead we are going to visit a similar but lesser sight in the opposite direction. We hope that less tourists will allow us a slightly more ‘authentic’ experience, my hopes are only partially raised...