Retracing the Silk Road

For five days, we traveled to the Western border of China.  We followed the Silk Road that was used by Chinese camel caravans to sell their goods in India and Europe.  The oasis at Dunhuang was the last outpost of civilization where water skins could be filled and the hazardous trek through the Gobi Desert could begin.  We had the opportunity to scale sand dunes the size of mountains.  We experienced being part of a camel train and noticing how, without a camel, one could never, never, never walk through the Gobi Desert.  Can you guess why?

Here is the route we followed, 3100 km of roadway, a 33 hour car drive.  This is just about equal to the trip from NYC to Portland.  Hence, Elena scheduled for us to fly 60% of the distance by plane and then to use train and bus to get a ground view of the final 1000 km.

Marco Polo (with his father and uncles) traveled by horse/camel 4000 km on the Silk Road from Venice, Italy to Dunhuang, China.  From Dunhuang, they traveled in China another 2000 km to the summer palace of Kublai Khan (near Beijing).  He arrived in 1275 (at the age of 21) and undertook the mission to explore China on behalf of the Khan for 17 years.  Then he returned to his homeland (1290) but was imprisoned as “a raving lunatic” who told “fantastical fictional stories” of the great cities and wonders of China.  In prison, he dictated his recollections of his travels to a fellow prisoner.  This was later published as the “Travels of Marco Polo” [Info regarding multiple versions and authenticity of texts.]  Polo’s book entirely transformed how Europeans imagined the Far East.

Even Christopher Columbus had purchased a copy of Polo’s travels, and he had made hundreds of marginal notes because he fully anticipated meeting the descendants of Kublai Khan in the “new world” that he set out to explore in 1492.  Columbus went to his death in 1506 with the firm belief that he had found the Western water route to Asia.  In 1513 Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and found a great body of water (only later named the Pacific Ocean or the China Sea).  It was only a matter of time before map-makers would discover that a great land mass (the Americas), hitherto unknown, had blocked Columbus and others from finding India and China.  Columbus, as it turns out, used an erroneous low estimate of the earth’s diameter given to him by Ptolemy.  Thus, when he sighted land after ten weeks, his navigational computations allowed him to believe that he had indeed reached India.  If America had not been there to block his way, he would have had to turn back because he had not stocked provisions for a voyage outward of more than ten weeks.

The Silk Road

The Silk Road was the land route whereby Chinese merchants sold jade, silk, glass, pottery, paper to folks in India and Europe. This trade began in the 2^nd century BCE with the Roman Empire.  Silk soon became so popular in Rome that it produced a massive trade imbalance.  The Roman Senate passed laws prohibiting women from wearing silk garments.  But the upper-class women who could afford silk garments held out because of the unique sensuous feel of silk on their skin and because of the intricate color patterns woven into the silk itself.  The resistance of the wives of the senators meant that the senators themselves had to change their minds and to find other ways to deal with the trade imbalance.

Romans had no idea of how silk cloth was produced.  They had to assume that some mysterious Oriental plant or animal was its source much like linen and wool were used to create cloth in Roman society. No one would have imagined that the source of silk was a particular worm/caterpillar that eats mulberry leaves and spins a cocoon by excreting a long thread.  When the cocoons are harvested, soaked in warm water, and then patiently unwound to recover the long silk threads that can be dried, this produces a thread that is very thin and very strong.  These threads are dyed and then woven together on a loom. This process goes back over 5000 years.

The Chinese also built ships that took a water route following the shoreline of India that allowed them to trade goods with coastline cities in East Africa.  They never suspected that Europe could be reached by sea if only they had gone still further South.  The Europeans eventually discovered the tip of Africa in 1488, thanks to the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeo Dias, and this sea route enabled them to trade with the coastal cities of China.  Notice that both Chinese and European ships were restricted to following the coastlines.  No one knew how to manage a ship in the open sea where no land mass was visible.  The invention of the compass and the sextant with its star charts made open sea navigation possible.  Columbus used these instruments.  The trouble was that the sailors on board the Santa Maria in 1492 were petrified to voyage beyond the sight of land!!!  Columbus had to falsify the “distance traveled” that he entered into the ship’s log each day, otherwise, his crew would panic on the huge distance that they had covered beyond the sight of land.

 

Lanzhou

Marco Polo had been in Lanzhou, so that is where we flew.  Then we went to the spacious train station shown below.

In the cafe where we drank our morning coffee, the breakfast menu was as shown below.  The milk shown is soy bean milk.  The Chinese traditionally do not raise cows; hence, cow milk (where it is available) is expensive because it comes all the way from Australia.  21 RMB = $3

As we moved toward Dunhuang by train I noticed hundreds and then thousands of wind turbines.  You can see that the land here is sandy and hot.  In the background, you see mountains–something we never see in coastal cities like Shanghai.

China has also been a leader in renewable energy investment, accounting for 36%, 40% and 36% of the world’s total investment in hydro, wind and solar respectively. It also plans to invest $360 billion more into renewables from 2017-2020. China’s solar industry has rapidly expanded from a small, rural program in the 1990s to the largest in the world. It is both the biggest generator of solar power and the biggest installer of solar panels. The installed capacity of solar panels in China in 2018 amounted to more than a third of the global total, with the country accounting for half the world’s solar additions in that year.  I would never have imagined this had I not traveled the silk road.

As we raced forward in our comfortable train carriage, there were recorded messages every half hour: “No smoking is permitted on this train nor in the lavatories.  If smoke is detected, this will automatically cause the train to slow down or to stop in order to deal with the emergency.”

On the TV monitor, there is a public service video featuring the training of new recruits into the military services.  Young men are shown jumping through rings of fire and using martial arts in hand to hand combat.  At the hotel, there is a public service video featuring firemen and firewomen functioning to put out home or office fires.  Elena tells me that such fires are fairly common and these videos show how ordinary citizens can put out small fire by themselves.  [Click here to see a public apology for starting a fire.]

Zhangye Geopark

The following day, we set off at 7 am on a bus that takes us to the Zhangye Geopark.

This is the closest thing to the Grand Canyon in China.  These pillars of rock were formed due to water and wind erosion taking place over ten million years.  Notice that umbrellas are used to shield the face and body from the hot sun.  Chinese women and men abhor getting tanned by the sun.  Across East Asia, a pale complexion is the beauty ideal—milky, near translucent, free of even the suggestion of a freckle or spot. It has nothing to do with the West. Rather, it picked up after the Industrial Revolution, when skin tone became a visible class marker. To this day, many Chinese women take extreme measures to avoid the sun; they religiously carry UV-blocking umbrellas or wear mirrored visors that slope down over the face.  One of the men in our tour group also used a UV-blocking umbrella and wore skin-colored covering on his arms and legs.

Lunch

Here is our lunch at a local bus stop.  Recognize anyone?

Rainbow Mountains

At 5 pm, a team of hot air balloon specialist inflated their marvel.  Six people were ready to ascend–for taking aerial pics of the region.  The winds, however, were so strong that they threatened to take the balloon up, up, and up.  So, the vents were opened and the hot air released…

Then we had supper and boarded an overnight train.  We rented two single-bed births.  It was 8:30 that we began to roll.  We both were exhausted and went to sleep easily.  Woke up at 7 am the next day and prepared to leave the train.

Visit of Fort and Great Wall of China

Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert occupies a vast arc of land 1,000 miles (1,600 km) long and 300 to 600 miles (500 to 1,000 km) wide that runs along the northern border of China with Mongolia, with an estimated area of 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km).  The oasis at Dunhuang was the last outpost of civilization where water skins could be filled and the hazardous treck through the Gobi Desert could begin.  We had the opportunity to scale sand dunes the size of mountains.   This is the oasis of Yuequan Pavilion at the edge of the Gobi.  The lake of pure water at the center of the top picture (below) is fed by underground springs and  keeps the crescent moon lake filled all year around going back two thousand years.

I’ve seen sand dunes on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.  I camped on the Sand Mountain in Nevada for a week.  Never, however, have I witnessed a sand mountain of this size.  The park rangers keep visitors off the great slope.  You can see the area where there was a recent sand slide.  When this happens, the sand sliding over sand creates a pure musical note (as though the sand was humming).  This is what I experienced in Nevada.  This is what I would have experienced here, if the park rangers had allowed me to hike along the crest of a dune.

Walking (and, more especially, climbing) on this sand is very arduous because feet sink into the sand at each step.  Camels, on the other hand, have large feet with toe webbing that do not sink into the sand.  Camels also have stomachs that are like giant water skins.  A camel can go a week without any fresh water.  A camel can go a month with

The wide, spreading toes keep the camel from sinking into loose and shifting sands, and the webbing between the toes unites them into a single surface to further resist sinking. The thick sole provides a barrier against the hot desert sands, protecting the camel from being burned as it walks.

Video of a camel walking on sand

Video of the four movements whereby a camel prepares you to dismount

Please show me how the Chinese cooks make noodles so quickly

Please show me a snippit from the light and drama show

Please show me the sights of Zhangyexi as our train pulled into the station

Aaron: “Where is the Silk Road to Venice?” Wise Guide: “There!”

Needless to say, I cannot narrate everything.  Hence, if you have any questions or comments, please be so kind as to post them below.