Day 8
Dunhuang to Turfan by Train
Dunhuang to Turfan by Train
Monday,
April 2
DUNHUANG Enjoy a
leisurely morning before heading northwest of
Dunhuang for a visit to Jade Gate Pass, named for the traffic of Khotanese jade
that traveled this route. You’ll have
lunch here and visit the small onsite museum as well as a nearby section of the
Great Wall. Continue on to the less-visited Western Cave of a Thousand Buddhas
before returning to Dunhang. Here you’ll have time to browse the local market
or even have a refreshing reflexology foot massage.
Later,
board your
overnight train for the desert oasis of Turfan. Leave classic China and enter the Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region, a huge and
beautiful land largely populated by Turkic peoples: Uighurs , Uzbeks,
Tadjiks, and Kazakhs. (The people we
call Chinese are called Han in China,
and make up 91 per cent of the country's population. In China this means there
are upwards of 125 million non-Han Chinese). Xinjiang was a daunting, romantic place for the Chinese, a weird and wooly west. And it still is in some
ways. One of China's most vibrant literary genres specializes in stories of
present-day Xinjiang and Tibet. It's called by its practitioners the
"Chinese Western, " with a
conscious nod to Western films and novels.
The "Jade Gate" represented the end of the Earth to the Han Chinese. Every caravan had to pass through the gate and the goods were recorded. At Cambridge, I learned that every person was "stripped searched" and cavity searched to make sure they were not smuggling silk worms our of China.
The "Jade Gate" represented the end of the Earth to the Han Chinese. Every caravan had to pass through the gate and the goods were recorded. At Cambridge, I learned that every person was "stripped searched" and cavity searched to make sure they were not smuggling silk worms our of China.
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