MAY 1st HOLIDAY, Part SIX: Around Turpan/Tulufan /吐鲁番

Debarking our 19-hour train from Lanzhou at approximately 5:30am, we (and by "we" I mean Dan) haggled with some drivers at the station to arrange for a car to drive us around for the day to see the sights in and around Turpan/Tulufan (Turpan is the Uighur name of the city, Tulufan is the Roman spelling of its Chinese equivalent).

It was still early in the morning when we got to the ruins of Jiaohe (交河故城), but it was already scorching hot.

The remarkably well preserved city was inhabited from the 1st century BC until it was sacked by the Mongols in the 13th century AD.

Jiaohe was built on what used to be an island between two rivers. The cliffs on either side provided a natural defense. Except against Mongols.

The old riverbeds are now prime agricultural land. Above, you can see the mud brick structures where grapes, Tulufan's most famous crop, become sweet delicious raisins.

Driving around Tulufan. We were pleased to see beautiful Arabic script popping up everywhere all of a sudden...

But there were still reminders that we were still in China.

I didn't really get any good shots of the Flaming Mountains from the road, but here's a little taste:

The mountains continue below, rising above the little grape-producing town of Tuyoq/Tuyugou/吐峪沟.

Tuyoq has been an important pilgrimage site for Muslims for centuries. The tomb of the first Uighur Muslim is located in the hillside above the village (though closed to non-muslims), but there didn't seem to be much happening in the mosque at the center of the town (you can see the minarets and dome on the left of the picture below).

It was a very picturesque town, though hardly anyone spoke Chinese so we had a hard time asking questions about the area and its history. I was ok with not harassing the locals for once, but Dan was very frustrated.

Outside of the village proper we came across a cemetery,

and lots more of the grape-drying structures.

In the other direction you could walk along the riverbed for a little ways and then up the hill to a series of Buddhist caves dating back to the 3rd century AD, before Islam came to the region.

The caves that were open had beautiful old paintings, but like the Bezelik Caves of a Thousand Buddhas we had visited earlier in the day, the vast majority of the painted Buddhas had had their faces gouged out by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately photography was not allowed.

We were able to communicate a little with the ethnically Uighur guard who told Dan he had served in the Chinese army. Although he was Muslim, a religion that famously forbids images of God, his job was to guard these 1,700 year old Buddhist images. A more complicated combination of national-religious affiliations doesn't readily come to mind.

It just makes you -- you know, think deep thoughts and stuff.

We had dinner at the night market in Tulufan which had a fine view of a spectacular musical fountain involving not only neon lights, soaring streams of water and blasting music, but also the occasional burst of flame. Fantastic.

These kids seemed to think so too.

MAY 1st HOLIDAY: Part FIVE: Xiahe (夏河)

I've been feeling guilty, and not a little self-absorbed, over the last few months of blogging. So much has been happening here in China, and from what I hear, the rest of the world has been paying quite a bit of attention. Needless to say, these developments have been much bigger than those in my own small life of language skill insecurity and brief excursions across the Chinese mainland. I'm conflicted, because on the one hand, one of the things that captured me the first time I came to China was how little I knew about its culture and history and how very weakly I grasped its rising economic and political power and influence. Given the excess of schooling I've submitted myself to and considering my strengths and weaknesses as a human being and future productive citizen, I thought that increasing cross-cultural dialogue and understanding was my calling.

So now I am here, at an incredible time, with what is perhaps a rare opportunity to cast light on a place and a historical moment... and I can't bring myself to do so, or at least not here. Part of this is that I don't really feel capable of doing an adequate and accurate job talking about what has been going on. I don't have the background, I don't have all the information, and I definitely don't have the time. Besides, I don't really see why I should bother, considering that a few of my dear readers have told me that they only look at the pictures (so you can blame them if you don't learn anything here).

More practically, I'm a little worried about putting things on the web-o-sphere that might endanger my relationship with China. My dad gave me a talking to about taking what I publish more seriously a few months ago and I've taken it to heart and verily resigned myself to fluff.

But given what we saw and heard on our visit to Xiahe and the Labrang Monastery, I was conflicted once again. From what we heard, we were the only foreigners to make it into town for quite some time. One monk said there had been one other man who had visited recently (little did we know it may have been a columnist for the New York Times who later published this piece), and in general people were visibly surprised to see us tramping around town. Afterwards, the four of us discussed the matter -- did we have the responsibility to report on what we had heard (and in some cases had been asked to make known to people on the outside)? I think so. But I don't think this is the right forum.

On the basis of that conclusion, I've provided a rudimentary narrative for my pictures. If you are interested, read the abovementioned NYT piece by Nicholas Kristof. On to the visit:

On the road, which was thankfully unhindered by roadblocks:

A mosque stands out in the midst of an earth-colored town in a mountain valley.

The bus stops for a goat crossing (amazingly, they were unaccompanied and seemed to be willingly making their way back home after a day out foraging).

Upon arrival I was first struck by the barren topography and crisp high-altitude air. The monastery itself was beautiful and very quiet. It felt more like Tibet than what (according to some who've been) Tibet proper looks like these days.

We arrived just before morning prayer. A gaggle of monks in deep red-pink robes and saffron muppet-like hats responded to the call of a horn and, discarding their boots, entered the prayer hall.

Pilgrims completing their 108 circumambulations around the holy hall had to stop occasionally to kick the carelessly removed monk-boots out of their way.

There are still more than a thousand monks living at Labrang Monastery. I didn't expect there would be so many.

Pilgrims taking a rest after making their rounds.

Monkchkins (boys generally enter the monastery around age 9, but they look so much tinier).

The sculptures below are made entirely out of Yak butter and various dyes. They are brought out for festivals and special occasions and are re-made about once a year after they slowly fall apart.

The level of detail was quite extraordinary.

And the rich buttery smell in the cool storage room was quite strong.

In consequence I passed on the Yak butter tea at lunch and instead had a sort of chai made with Yak milk. It was tasty and rich.

After several hours at the monastery we went roaming around the town, talking to anyone and everyone we met.

At the river, we met a large group of schoolchildren being herded by a few teachers. They didn't have much to say about the current political climate in the town. But they were really cute.

From our wanderings through back streets and alleys.

Large digital images of government visions for renovation of the town, just a small part of the large-scale, long-term plan to "Open the West".

MAY 1st HOLIDAY, Part FOUR of ABOUT SEVEN: Linxia (临夏）

The group splintered after returning to Lanzhou from the village; several folks heading back to Beijing, a few doing some local sightseeing, and the four of us, Dan, Rachel, Alan and myself, trying to see if we could make it out to Xiahe, an autonomous Tibetan region which was rumored to be closed off to tourists. We hadn't originally planned to visit Linxia, but decided at the last minute to stop there on the way.

Observing the workers enjoying a leisurely game of badminton in the largely deserted bus station, it becomes apparent that Linxia is not exactly a popular tourist destination. Although once a major terminus on the Asian Silk Road, Linxia has since lost much of its strategic economic importance. Still it remains a bustling market town, full of the antiquated charm of primitive person-to-person exchange, and has also become an important regional center for Hui Muslims. Besides, the four of us were looking much less for touristic experiences than for new views into modern-day China. And we got them...

A bicycle cart of fresh produce on the way to the market, and a man looking to sell a nice healthy sheep. (He told Rachel he would sell it to her for 1000RMB, but she declined).

A large outdoor market that spread out from both sides of an overpass. We went wandering around here for a few hours. I happened to miss out on visiting the slaughterhouse section, for which I am grateful, but I did see quite a few men emerging from the market with pelts tinged with fresh, red blood. Thankfully, there were plenty of other things to see.

Like this man, I very much enjoy having a goat companion along when shopping for accessories.

The motorcycle market.

I don't know if these guys were buying or selling, but I have a rule that if people blatantly stare at me and do so to an excessive degree, I will go straight up to them and take their picture (something I usually won't do out of respect for people's privacy). Usually it causes them to look away, but these dudes were unfazed by my retaliatory efforts.

There were also some services for sale in the market, like, (ouch!) dentistry. This woman had a fearsome collection of extracted teeth on the table in front of her.

An assortment of typical Linxia hats, some for sun, some for style, and some for religious identification.

Can you find one of each in the picture?

After perusing the market for a few hours and taking a short siesta in our strange hotel, we took a taxi out to Wanshou Temple （万寿观), a Taoist complex composed of seven levels extending up a steep hillside.

The temple itself wasn't enormously impressive, largely because the whole thing was almost completely destroyed in the Cultural Revolution and rebuilding only started in earnest a few years ago. There was no sense of history there and it didn't feel like a holy place or even a working temple.... but it was a nice climb anyway.

From the hillside, we could see some of what seemed to be the real working temples on the cliffs opposite.

Working on what was actually a very steep roof.

The pagoda and everything else at the top was all newly built, using revenue that we learned came from local government officials, most likely interested in restoring the old glories of their town.

We spent the last several hours of the day wandering the streets looking for local mosques. In the end we visited three mosques, from a tiny inauspicious one down a narrow alley, to a large, imposing, newly-built structure with a large Arabic school underneath. The caretakers and students of Islam that we met inside were unfailingly polite and surprisingly willing to answer questions from four white strangers that had wandered into their houses of worship. Less surprisingly, they seemed reticent, or at the very least uncomfortable talking about the attitude of the central government towards religious faith and its expressions. This was a theme that would continue into the next day, though in radically different circumstances.