Dunhuang, CHINA - 01 june 2002
We arrived in Dunhuang early in the morning, our ears ringing with the dance music from our driver’s favourite tape which he played over and over and over again in the 20-hour journey. I noted with disdain [YO!!… YO!!…] that the two well-coiffed ladies still had their hair [ARE YOU READY TO PAAARTY??!?!…] well-coiffed, while my deranged look was marginally subdued [BABY, LET’S GO!!…] by wrapping a bandanna over my dishevelled hair.
I lumbered, blurry-eyed, to a hotel next to the bus station and I must have been really sick with cold then on agreeing to the hotel, because on hindsight (by afternoon, that is), I knew I had made a terrible choice.
The toilet was not too far from my room but should be far enough for me NOT to smell it. Yet, I could smell it even through my blocked nose. The shower was right by a window that opened to the street. There was a curtain of sort for modesty but it left a gap adequate for any sharp-eyed voyeurs to spy through. The mattress was so thin, the thinness had to be measured with laboratory calipers…
Yes, I was sick and miserable. I blew my nose and inconsiderately built a mountain of tissue paper on the next bed. Despite the illness, I still attempted to walk around town later in the afternoon to hunt for food.
Now, after the previous exotic towns with interesting mix of people and culture, Dunhuang looked almost too ordinary. In Langmusi, we saw yak-men in 1970s sun-shades and with such wild hair you want to run your comb right through it and go, “There!”. In Xiahe, we saw internet bars filled with Tibetan monks surfing and chatting on the internet and playing violent computer games like COUNTER-STRIKE. In Xining, I saw a large Muslim population wearing white skull caps and velvety scarves and er… many dry-cleaners (OK, Xining was perhaps not THAT interesting).
But here, in my first foray around town, I could not detect anything unique about it. The faces around seemed to be more Han Chinese again.
I arrived at the Night Market and walked down the area with food stalls. There were rows and rows and rows of food stalls with a table each in front of them. In one row, the stalls were selling spicy noodle soup, spicy noodle soup, spicy noodle soup, etc… In another, the stalls were selling knife-cut noodle, knife-cut noodle, knife-cut noodle, etc… This totally bewildered me. Why were all the stalls selling the same food lined up next to one another, with signs that hardly distinguished one from the other? It gave me no choices at all. What was to tempt me to sit in one stall and not the other? I just did not understand it.
The aunties and helpers tried their ways and means to holler out to me to entice me but I walked around, totally dazed. Finally, I grew tired and sat down at one stall and had apparently made my choice.
Downed an aspirin at around 8pm but I tossed and turned in bed until midnight, almost delirious by then, unable to get comfortable on the wafer-thin mattress.
Dunhuang, CHINA - 02 june 2002
The aspirin must have worked. I did not feel that bad to stay in bed the whole day. It seemed I would be able to go to the Mogao Caves today.
I recalled my time in Ta’er Si Monastery, near Xining. I had been accosted by tour-guides near the entrance asking if I wanted to employ them for my visit around the Monastery. I decided against it because I was a cheap-skate. But while I was making my rounds, I attempted to follow, oh alright, sneak behind certain groups and try to siphon some information from their guides.
However, to my horrors, I realised I could not understand what the guides were saying and they were speaking in Mandarin!! I flitted from guide to guide and I must say, 85% of the time, I was lost. I realised that perhaps the Mandarin they used was too difficult for me to comprehend, especially with all those complicated Tibetan Buddha names.
Now, back to Mogao Caves. On learning there was an English tour but with Y20 extra, I decided to stop being such a cheapie and pay the extra and have a proper English tour.
I waited around for more than 40 minutes for the English guide and no one near the gate seemed to confess that he or she was the English guide. I started to wonder if I should have just saved my money and gone with the Chinese tours which were leaving every other minute after forming groups of 20-25.
In the end, I realised this guy who had earlier told me he was NOT the English guide was actually THE English guide engaged by a group of American Chinese. He had been waiting for them to arrive before starting the tour. I trailed behind them unhappily at having been lied to.
All but one guy from this group of American Chinese spoke some Mandarin. They had engaged the English guide more for the benefit of this one guy. Our English guide, happy to learn almost everyone knew Mandarin, embarked on his explanation entirely in… Mandarin. What the…?
After his poetic rendition of the ‘Library Cave’, the wife of the English-only guy requested my guide to explain everything again in English and he agreed. “There were many documents in the caves… Long time ago, they put… they HIDE documents in the caves… So, many many documents are in the caves… Now, no.” I rolled my eye-balls. Rrrrrrright…
The admission ticket to the Mogao Caves was really expensive at Y80. I hope they put the money to really good use to restore the caves and preserve the amazing art-works. What I saw in these caves and grottoes were really astounding, although many squares of the wall-art and several Bodhisattvas’ heads had been taken and now, probably reside in the dungeons of some European museums.
The admission ticket to the nearby Mingsha Sand Dunes, on the other hand, was a different story. This was a natural sight, nothing as far as I could see to restore, and yet, the Chinese are charging an exorbitant Y50 to see the sand dunes. I had to try and get around this inconvenience if I visit the sand dunes later this evening.
However, I still did not feel well enough and decided to postpone the sand dunes trip to another day. The sun was evil from noon onwards and I hid in internet bars and my room. I walked around town only in the bearable evening and, haha, stumbled upon Jane. We had gone our separate ways a couple of days ago and now, we meet again.
We caught up on the missing days in our lives and decided to try and sneak into the sand dunes tomorrow evening together.
Dunhuang, CHINA - 03 june 2002
One of my Chinese room-mates in my dodgy hotel room had sung praises for a sight out in the western desert called Ya Dan Di Mao which basically had fantastically formed, wind-eroded structures. She had gone on and on and on about it and really encouraged me to go.
So, today, I went to the hotel organising the trip. While waiting for the bus, I observed with amusement the mass physical exercise lessons organised in front of the hotel for the staff. Yes, every staff, from cleaning lady to finance accountant, had to gather in the compounds and do their morning exercises to recorded beats ‘Er-Er-San-Si-Wu-Liu-Qi-Ba’ [2-2-3-4-5-6-7-8] in public view. Eewww, how embarrassing! I simply stood there and gaped in amazement.
There was no bus. I asked a few drivers nearby and found that the tour did not leave today (Monday). They only left on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Darn! The reception should have been better informed. I had turned up yesterday and made inquiries and they had told me the tour left everyday. Alright, so I woke up really early for nothing.
I headed to Jane’s hotel to see if I could write a note for her to tell her I was still in town. At the desk, I inquired if a lady from Ireland stayed here and the receptionist wordlessly went through the entire stack of registration forms and shoved me the Ireland one and told me, “408”. Some security.
Jane had a lovely, lovely room for only Y5 more than me, with her own bathroom, bouncy beds and wonderful decorations and even a fan! I was envious but I knew I was too lazy to move.
We lounged all day in the comfortable room, escaping from the harsh rays of the sun, curiously watching B-grade Mandarin-dubbed English classics like ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’.
By evening, we took a bus out to the sand dunes. Between us, we had obtained some information from the internet and a tips book in a Western Café on how to sneak around the admission gate and enter the sand dunes without paying.
“Jane, I had never committed any crimes until I met you!” Jane pondered over this and recalled her criminal days years ago when she and her drunk friends shoved £800 worth of books down their pants from a book-store. Bad bad girl!
I reminded her, if we were challenged by guards making their rounds, we had to pretend we ‘no speaka Mandarin’. We had to act like we were really interested in the farm-lands and trees around the sand dunes. Understand?????
We hiked out through the fields until the edge of the dunes. There was a barrier that attempted to draw a circle around the dunes but well, the sand shifted and had buried parts of the barrier.
“See you on the other side…” I muttered to her solemnly as I made my attempt to cross. We were half-way up the dunes when someone started yelling at us. What… what??!? Oh, OK… just two other foreign tourists who knew Jane and apparently, knew this sneaky way too.
We huffed and we puffed and made it all the way to the top of the dunes. What a feeling! There, we simply sat and stared. It had such a wonderful view from up here. Down between the sand-dune valley is a curious-looking crescent-shaped lake which apparently had been in existence for at least 2000 years. The dunes had come all the way to the edge of the farmlands. Strange to see sand and fertile lands side by side. Three more foreign tourists later sneaked in and joined us.
I wondered if the guards ever wonder why they only have Chinese tourists paying the Y50 admission. And I wondered if the guards ever wander their eyes upwards and spot little unaccounted dots high up on this dune.
As the sun set over the horizon at 9:30pm, I tried to watch out for the green flash which someone told me about and I had once observed over the Egyptian desert. Previously, just as the sun went down the horizon, I had seen a white light that went anti-clockwise on the spot. Now, we could not quite see that anti-clockwise light but the area around the horizon flashed and blinked white light for a while after the sun went down. What in the world were those flashes? I thought my eyes were playing tricks but everyone else saw them too. Nuclear testing in the desert??
Dunhuang, CHINA - 04 june 2002
I was surprised to learn that although I was the only one on the bus to visit the Ya Dan Di Mao site in the western desert, the bus still left. I guess the hotel which organised this trip had some employees out in the desert and this tour bus also provided transportation for them.
We passed by an ancient gate called the Jade Gate Pass. This was one of the Han dynasty beacon towers that marked the caravan route. The ruin is historically very important but not impressive to look at. But since the road to Ya Dan Di Mao passed by this gate, I had no choice but to pay admission for this site whether I wanted to see it or not. Yet another rip-off, I guess.
3 hours of very hot travel later, we arrived at Ya Dan Di Mao and I was surprised to learn I had to fork out yet another payment of Y80 to rent a jeep to go into the grounds for the visit. Argh!!!! What an expensive trip this was turning out to be!
Gosh, with me as the only tourist around, there was no one else to split the cost. It was 11:30am and more than 45°C out here. I guess it was not wise to stay around and wait for other individual tourists to drive up here.
As for the wind-eroded formations, maybe my Chinese room-mate was more easily impressed than I was, for I did not find them so worthwhile to make the arduous 3-hour ride here (and back later) and pay so much for admission plus the unjustifiable Y80 for the 1-hour trip around the grounds. The Chinese seemed less concerned about paying for admissions, it appeared.
Maybe I was too hot to enjoy it and would change my mind when I see the photos. One thing though, it was a good experience to be out in the desert and learn a lesson: You fry. Then, you die.
I met up with Jane at the Night Market that evening for dinner. By then, we had noticed what was the unique thing about Dunhuang and kept cracking jokes about it.
Dunhuang has many ‘beauty parlours’. These ‘beauty parlours’ are open until very late at night and are lit by neon pink or blue lights. The services they provide include ‘leg washing’ (sort of foot massage, I suppose), ‘dry-cleaning’ (I had no idea what this was), ‘bone-stepping’ (probably some sort of massage), etc… The ‘hair-dressers’ are always dressed in hot-pants and sexy skimpy tops. At midnight, there were still customers, er… having their hair washed.
Well, we really liked Dunhuang. While it was not very interesting itself, it had a great relaxing feel about it. The town sounded quieter somehow. By nightfall, deck chairs were set out in the Night Market and one could relax with a drink or two. It was a wonderful place to relax but do watch out for over-charging.
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