Travels with Li Dongni – Xinjiang, China (October 2011), part 2

Ancient cities, temples and towers

Gaochang city

Gaochang, located near to the modern city of Turpan (or Tulufan), was originally constructed in the 1^st Century BC – an oasis in the Taklamakan desert (see my first Xinjiang travel post) for travellers and traders on the Silk Road.  It now exists as an expansive ruined site, with the mud-built walls and buildings serving as impressive and ghostly remains of a once great settlement.

The best way to see the site is by donkey cart, and there are plenty of locals at the entrance ready to haggle with (though when we were there they were seemingly led by some twelve year old gangster-kid who was busy bossing everybody around and strutting rather too much).  Our transport was provided by a friendly old chap with a slightly moody donkey, who took us to the centre of the ruins and then back again once we had wandered around for a while.

While exploring the ruins, we came across a one of the local inhabitants – a sand boa, which was halfway through devouring a bird when we came across it.  A local guy (who we think worked at Gaochang though it was hard to tell) started playing with the snake with a stick, and it soon abandoned its meal.  It slithered away but we came across it about an hour later cooling itself down behind a rock.

Sanpu temple

This was one of those sites that makes me remember why we travel independently and not with travel groups, as it’s not open to the public yet but our driver knew some of the locals working on the site and they let us in for a wander around.  The temple is close to Gaochang, and part of the wider city remains.  It’s actually pretty easy to climb over the low boundary walls though, and we soon had a group of local kids following us, wanting to have their photos taken by the foreigners.

The site is currently having wooden platforms installed, and will soon have interpretation.  As it stands, it’s an impressive temple monument that will surely be a feature on the local tourist map and bring some revenue to the local community.

Astana cemetery

Astana was the cemetery site for the city of Gaochang, and the source of the well preserved mummies now on display at Urumqi museum (see my blog post here).  The cemetery contained people from all walks of life and social classes and was used from AD273 to AD778.  It covers over 10,000 square kilometres and houses over 1,000 burials, though only about half of these have ever been excavated.

The site now is a strangely desolate landscape, but a handful of the underground tombs are unearthed and visitable via long staircases.  Photography is forbidden inside the tombs, so I’m sadly unable to share the wall paintings inside, but suffice to say they are fascinating examples of Buddhist art.  One tomb even has a mummy in situ, but it is in a very old display case and in drastic need of some TLC.  I fear that the mummy might not last much longer without some curatorial intervention, and it exists in stark contrast to the condition of the mummies in Urumqi museum, where this one should undoubtedly also be.

The site also has a rather intrusive modern reconstruction of a platform over a tomb, Chinese zodiac statues, and a large statue of Fuxi and Nuwa, the Chinese mythological creator deities, with serpent tails entwined.

Jiaohe city

Jiaohe is one of those fantastic archaeological sites that, because of its setting, is never forgotten.  When I first saw a model of Jiaohe in Urumqi museum, I instantly related it to the Jewish fortress of Masada (taken by the Romans in AD72).  Jiaohe sits atop a sheer 30 metre cliff-top, with a river running around each side of it, as the site map below shows.

Jiaohe was an important place on the Silk Route, and between 108BC and AD450 it was the capital of the Anterior Jushi kingdom.  It continued to be an important site under various Dynasties until its abandonment after it was destroyed by Genghis Khan’s Mongols in the 13^th Century.

The natural defences meant that Jiaohe didn’t need walls, though it had large gates protecting the routes up the cliffs.  The city had an organised layout with eastern and western residential districts, and a northern district reserved for Buddhist temples.

Kezikalahan war signalling station

When you go travelling, sometimes it’s the small sites that you’d never heard of that leave the biggest impression on you – often far more than the famous sites do.  It’s one reason why we prefer to travel independently rather than with organised groups and tours.  This mud and timber signalling tower dates back to the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220), and is apparently the best surviving example of the many such military structures built in Xinjiang.  It sits in a rather featureless piece of open, sandy landscape close to the edge of a cliff (at the base of which a road seems to be in the early stages of being constructed).  It’s a plain structure with the remains of a wooden platform still visible on top (though the wood could be any age), but it stands so prominently in the landscape that you can’t help but be impressed by it – and feel sorry for any soldiers stationed on the top of it for any length of time!

Subash

Subash (sometimes seen written as ‘subashi’) is a difficult site to label, but I suppose ‘monastic city’ is as good a title as any.  It was originally constructed in the 1^st Century (Han Dynasty), but continued in use until the 13^th and 14^th Centuries, when the rise of Islam saw its decline.  It reached its zenith in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and the monk Xuanzang (of ‘Journey to the West’ fame), stayed at the site for 2 months.  At its height it was home to 10,000 monks and exists today as an open site with well preserved ruins, which are fantastic for exploring.

When we visited, there was a rather eccentric old lady there who I suppose was acting as a sort of site warden, but basically just sat at the entrance and was keen to sell us things when we were ready to leave!  The gods on offer were in a series of backrooms which seemed to double as store cupboards, and heaven knows where most of the stuff had come from (though she kept claiming that things were much older than they obviously were, no doubt assuming that all westerners are gullible fools)

One rather nice touch was a small alcove inside one of the temples which has become a makeshift shrine for tourists, and is now full of incense, candles and money left as offerings

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Travels with Li Dongni – Xinjiang, China (October 2011), part 1

Museums, mummies and natural beauty

During our trip back to China in October, we decided to go and spend a week and a bit in Xinjiang, the mainly Muslim province at the far northwest of China – the tail of China’s chicken, as it were.

Xinjiang is one of China’s ‘Autonomous Regions’ (like Tibet), and is home to the Uyghur people (pronounced ‘wee-gur’), one of China’s 56 official ethnicities.  Sitting as is does on the silk road, Xinjiang has seen wealth and diversity throughout its history, and is culturally closely connected to the lands to its west – modern day countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan.

Xinjiang is growing as a tourist destination, though thankfully it is still very easy to avoid major tour parties.  Western tourism is still very small, and we represented a very rare and intriguing sight in some of the more rural areas we visited.  Interestingly, many Chinese seem to consider Xinjiang to be some lawless, violent place (there have been various incidents in the past few years, including the well-known Urumqi riots, and in the weeks before we went a police station was firebombed), but in reality we found it much the same as anywhere else in China, and certainly felt at far less risk of violence than we would late on a Saturday night in an average chav-filled English town...

Because we visited so many amazing places (we hired a car and driver so we could get off the beaten track), I’ve decided to split this travel blog up into three different parts to keep it manageable.  This part, as you may have already guessed, will look at museums and natural sites.  Part 2 will look at Ancient sites, and part 3 will look at Buddhist grottoes and other religious sites.

Oh, before I start I should put out a warning that there are pictures of mummified human remains in this post, so you might want to avoid the sections on Urumqi museum and Turpan (Tulufan) museum if you don’t want to see them.

Xinjiang Regional museum, Urumqi

The Xinjiang Regional museum is housed in an attractive building, built in 1953 but surely having seen a facelift since, considering how modern the architecture looks.  The museum only allows 2,000 visitors a day in, but as it was quiet when we went, we were in no danger of missing out.

Inside, visitors are greeted by the fantastically translated ‘Museum of Commodity department’.  Of course, what they really meant was ‘Carpet shop'.

The museum itself is divided into a number of large galleries, in a style reminiscent of many other similar regional museums in China.  As might be expected, these take you on a chronological tour through the region’s history, with some nice dioramas and geological models.  It was particularly nice to see artefacts from sites such as Gaochang, which we would see during the trip.  The displays aren’t earth-shatteringly modern, or interactive in any way, but they are neat and tidy, and the collections were very interesting indeed.

The star of the show is the display of mummies from Xinjiang.  These preserved bodies are internationally famous, and fascinating to see in person.  The preservation is completely natural (and, one assumes, unintentional), as it is the desert conditions that preserved them rather than any deliberate act of embalming.  The most famous of all is the ‘Loulan Beauty’, but to our eternal regret she was on loan to another museum when we visited and we had to miss out on seeing her.  Disappointing as that was, the other mummies are still very special indeed.  They attract particular interest because they are clearly not all Chinese in appearance, and some DNA testing has suggested that some of them have European origins.  This jars somewhat with the current 'official' history of China, which tells of Xinjiang being Chinese for a long time, and non-Chinese scholars are now barred from studying the mummies.

Turpan (Tulufan) museum

Turpan museum is the second largest museum in Xinjiang, and is another relatively new institution, being built in 1990.  Sadly, despite its modernity and attractiveness, disabled access was far from the designer’s top priority - just look at those stairs!

Actually getting into the museum was a lesson in pointless bureaucracy, as we climbed the steps to the entrance, only be sent back down again to ‘register’ at a little office – registering requiring us to have our passport details recorded and receiving a little ticket for our trouble.

Once inside, the museum shows itself to be a little gem, and it has become one of my favourite museums in China.  The main chronological tour through local history is inside the ‘Unearthed Relics Exhibition Hall’.

The area is known for its paleontological discoveries, and the Hall dedicated to displaying the local dinosaurs is colourful, vibrant, and about as innovative as any Chinese museum display I’ve seen.

One of my favourite elements of the gallery were the little projected animations of dinosaurs and marine reptiles.  Although slightly crude in terms of technology, they are hugely endearing, and the image below really doesn't do them justice at all.

The main attraction is undoubtedly the mummified bodies, given their own gallery known as the ‘Unearthed Archaic Body Exhibition Hall’.  As with the mummies displayed in the Xinjiang Regional museum, these are naturally preserved bodies, and their display is both fascinating and sensitive.  The display of human remains is a challenge for any museum, and displaying such well-preserved ancient bodies is especially so.  The museum definitely deserves praise for the way it has arranged the gallery.

During our visit, there was also a temporary exhibition of Bronze Age bronze vessels from Henan Province.  Although a common feature of British museums, the idea of the touring exhibition seems less common in China, so it was a pleasant surprise, and a well constructed exhibition.

The Flaming mountains

The flaming mountains were one of the sights I was most excited about seeing before going to Xinjiang.  They are a range of sandstone hills sitting below the Heaven Mountains, which run across Xinjiang.  The flaming mountains acquired their name from their fiery colour, which is exaggerated in low light, making the mountains appear to shimmer as if burning.

Their main claim to fame is that they feature in the story of ‘The Journey to the West’ (known to most western audiences through the Japanese TV series Monkey).  This Chinese classic is incredibly accessible and enjoyable, and I’d recommend everyone to read it at some point.

According to the story, the flaming mountains were created when the Monkey King was causing trouble in Heaven, and kicked the Eight Trigrams Furnace over, spilling hot coals onto the earth below and setting fire to the mountains.  Later in the story, when the Monk Xuanzang and his followers need to cross the flaming mountains, the Monkey King needs to trick the Iron Fan Princess into giving him her fan so he can blow out the flames.

Taklamakan desert

We skirted the edge of the bleak Taklamakan desert quite a bit during our travels, and took some time to venture away from the roads into the dunes themselves.  The dead trees are particularly fascinating - locals say that the larger trees were about 300 hundred years old when they died, and that the dead trees can stay like this for a thousand years.

Lotus Lake (part of Bositeng hu)

I very much enjoyed my time in Xinjiang, but I have to confess that this was one of the low points – very rarely has a lake ever made me as angry as this one did!

Lotus Lake is one small part of the much larger lake known as Bositeng Hu (or Bosten Lake).  The entrance fee for this part of the lake is 45RMB (about £4.50) per person, which is a lot by Chinese standards.  Sadly, the site wasn’t anywhere near value for money, being very small and consisting only of a small bit of water and a reed bed with some very knackered buildings (I kid you not, one of them had a human poo on the viewing platform on the roof!)

I’m still not sure what annoyed me most – the rip-off entrance fee, or the fact that there was an entrance fee in the first place (considering there wasn’t anything there that needed maintaining, or any public services on offer).  Imagine having to pay a fiver to see a small stream a few miles away from Lake Windermere.  Would you pay?  Of course not.  Surely nature belongs to everyone?  If you ever find yourself in Xinjiang – save yourself the time and the money and give this one a miss.

Heaven Lake

Having had a poor experience at Lotus Lake, the trip to Heaven Lake almost didn’t happen.  Having seen beforehand that it would cost 100RMB entrance, 70RMB for the compulsory bus trip to the lake from the entrance and 45RMB for a boat trip (a total of £23 per person), fears were high that it would be another white elephant.  Thankfully we went, and not going would definitely have been a mistake, as Heaven Lake (mass tourist attraction that it is), was rather beautiful and second only to Sichuan’s Jiuzhaigou of the sites I have visited so far.

The compulsory bus ride turned out to be an hour trip up a steep and winding mountain road, with local villages (complete with yurts) and random wandering mountain goats aplenty.  At the top, a short walk past some obligatory gift shops brought us to the edge of the lake itself, some 2,000 metres above sea level.  We decided to go for the boat trip, on the ‘we might never get back here’ principle, which offered some closer views of the mountains, and was worth the money, despite being so unbelievably cold that I struggled to hold on to my camera!

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