We pulled out of town in the early morning. The streets were quiet, but I did once again see the town's lone beggar, a Muslim fellow who'd popped up all over the place the day before. While I'd been surprised to see him, I wasn't surprised at his solitary status, as both Muslim and Tibetan cultures are quite proud, and rarely take to begging.
In the lowlands again, I noted the crops had been plowed around the graves of ancestors, ancestors who'd once worked these same plots themselves. Down further into Linxia, along a broad boulevard that paralleled the Hongshui River, which we folowed out to where it fed Liujiaxia reservoir. A high speed boat like a pirogue on steroids jetted us into a narrow canyon carved out by the Yellow River. The river's curves began to be framed by yardangs: tall, imposing fortresses of rock commonly seen as a backdrop in the films of John Ford. That they rose here from the water was even more cinematic, particularly up the narrow canyon that had hidden for centuries the Buddhist caves of Bingling.
Having been ravaged by waves of invaders over that time, many of the 1500 year old caves were flooded with the coming of the reservoir in 1969. It is claimed that the treasures from the flooded caves had been moved to the existing sites. I found this hard to believe, as the dam had been constructed at the height of the Cultural Revolution, a time not particularly sympathetic to history or any other non-revolutionary idea. And I was prevented from climbing to the higher caves to confirm this by a security guard who thought it clever to charge foreign visitors $50 US for the privilege of doing so. Unfortunately our guide, the one person who might have gotten us through, was away, occupied with sorting out a lunch order that was made far too complicated (and in the end, we all got the same bowl of noodles anyway). Still, I enjoyed strolling past the Buddha caves down at river level, particularly the massive, three-story seated Maitreya, which held a prominent presence up and down the canyon.
We'd later meet the Yellow River again in Lanzhou. The river is infamous for the quantity of its silt, which has constantly reshaped its course over the centuries, drowning millions in floods in the process. (Chiang Kai Shek too did his part, destroying a dyke in 1938 to stop the invading Japanese, which drowned 800,000 Chinese peasants.) The bank atop which we walked was silted to the height of a two-meter berm, pitted and pock-marked and quite uneven. Despite this, it functioned like a park, with kids running around, and old men flying kites. One kite had gotten entangled in the line of a ropeway, though not enough to impede the trams that drifted laconically across the river and back. LYL and I opted instead for the old Zhongshan bridge, built in 1907 by German engineers based in Shanghai, and the first bridge to cross the Yellow River along its entire 5,464 km length. I honored them with a bit of engineering of my own; skipping stones across the water in an act of flood prevention, a piecemeal attempt at returning some of the silt to the riverbed.
Then it was time for the overnight train. I'd only ridden two during my six week trip in 1997, before settling on the more cozy overnight buses. But this would be the first time I'd travel in soft sleeper class. The melee to board was certainly gentler and less intense than on my last visit. And the compartments weren't too different than similar trains in Europe, though a bit smaller and certainly hotter. The fan spun lazily and futilely, though the white noise it created was just enough to ensure sleep, albeit one frequently broken. Luckily, we were given the morning off to catch up on the missed sleep. Wishful sleeping, for the hotel "bed" was probably the hardest surface I've ever slept on. And I've camped on concrete.
The overcast weather of the day cheated me out of my longed for views of the Jiayuguan section of the Great Wall, which marks that monument's extreme western end. The snow-capped Qilian Mountains were barely in sight to the south, though the jagged Mazong to the north looked more imposing than this fortress, which hadn't withstood the barbarian invasions anyway. But it did prove an impressive display of might, though one rapidly being overwhelmed by tourist kitsch, with all the drums and kung fu displays. (Yet a peanut seller had a voice that overpowered them all.) There were a few too many tourist groups for my liking, with their tacky clothes and selfie sticks waving like halberds. Most annoying was the piped in music. Photographs of the fort imply the end of the earth, and for centuries, poets have represented the place as a metaphor for loneliness. Why is it so hard for the modern world to allow us a moment to perceive some of this for ourselves? Why has it become so difficult to find a little quiet in the world?
Luckily the tour groups don't do the climb up the overhanging wall. Here I could finally get off alone, to climb and muse and gaze out at the solitude of the desert. (But for the booming of the artillery maneuvers going on further out, complete with tanks and mortars and towering plumes of exploding dust. Far more intimidating than any old wall.)
I wonder how the modern day will be represented in 1800 years time. Will it be as vibrant as the paintings in the Wei period (220-65) tombs in nearby Xincheng? These were one of the most impressive sites for me in the entire trip, each painting done in the space of a single brick. They presented somewhat as comic strips, detailing daily life of the time, a large majority occupied with the preparation of food. (Some things in China never change.) These bricks stayed with me long after I left the subterranean tombs, particularly when I lay back across the unforgiving surface of my bed back in the hotel.
On the turntable: Keiko Matsui, "Moyo"
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