GANSU PROVINCE

Lanzhou
Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, has long been a strategically important link on the Silk Road, and has been used for centuries as a garrison town and supply post. A railway line linking the northwest more firmly to China proper was constructed through Lanzhou in the early 1950s, and the city quickly became an important industrial centre. One unfortunate side-effect of this is that Lanzhou has become arguably the most heavily polluted city in China, admittedly in the face of stiff competition. The city , built in a valley on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, now has a population of over two million people.

There is little to see in the way of formal tourist attractions. On the north bank of the river is BAITA SHAN (white pagoda mountain) which can be climbed to the small temple on top. A panoramic view of the city and its blanket of chemicals awaits those who bother.

The PROVINCIAL MUSEUM is on Xijin Lu, opposite the Friendship Hotel.

However, as in many other cities, probably the most interesting thing to do in Lanzhou is walk round the streets and people-watch. There are also some interesting free markets here and there. The main excursion from Lanzhou is to BINGLINGSI up the Yellow River where there are spectacular Buddhist statues, dating from the Tang and Song dynasties, carved into the rock cliffs facing the river. To get there, you have to hire a boat, which can be expensive, but the carvings are magnificent.



How to get there and where to stay Lanzhou is accessible by air from Peking, and is a major rail junction. Railway lines go northwest towards Xinjiang, southeast towards Xi' an and northeast along the Yellow River towards Baotou and Huhehot in Inner Mongolia. Most people stay in the Friendship Hotel (Yonyi Binguan), a typical Soviet-style structure on Xijin Lu to the west of the downtown area. (Take a NO.1 bus or No.3 trolley from the railway station. The hotel is on the right. )

Dunhuang
Near this desert town in Gansu Province is a Buddhist shrine which has become the centre of the most bitter debate in central Asian archaeology, a debate similar to that which surrounds the Elgin marbles, originally from the Parthenon but now in the British Museum. Dunhuang was the last stop for caravans heading out of China on the Silk Road linking China with central Asia and, at the other extreme, Europe. Fifteen miles (24 kilometres) to the southeast of the town of Dunhuang is the CAVE OF A THOUSAND BUDDHAS, a shrine at which travellers would either pray, or give thanks, for a safe journey, depending on the direction in which they were going. Like other oases and townships along the Silk Road, Dunhuang flourished as a centre of Buddhist culture in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., and several hundred caves and grottoes were cut out of the sandstone cliffs and elaborately decorated with Buddhist statues and murals.

These priceless works of art alone give Dunhuang a place in history, but what really makes it stand out was the hoard of Buddhist paintings, documents, books and manuscripts found in one of the caves in 1900. The hidden library was found by accident by a Taoist monk named Wang Yuan, in a small room that had apparently been bricked up in the eleventh century to prevent the contents falling into the hands of invading barbarians. There they had lain for 800 years, protected by the bricks and by the dry desert air which prevented the delicate paper from disintegrating.



When he passed through Dunhuang in 1907, the famous British/ Hungarian explorer Sir Aurel Stein happened to hear a rumous about this hoard and decided to try to find it. After a long wait, he finally found the monk Wang Yuan and gradually gained his trust to the point where Wang allowed him to inspect the contents of the secret library.

In his book, On Ancient Central Asian Tracks, Sir Aurel described how the priest opened the rough door leading to 'the rock-carved recess where the great trove lay hidden':

The sight disclosed in the dim light of the priest's little oil lamp made

my eyes open wide. Heaped up in layers, but without any order, there appeared a solid mass of manuscript bundles rising to ten feet from the floor and filling, as subsequent measurement showed, close on 500 cubic feet.

Stein eagerly began examining this archaeological gold mine, consisting largely of Buddhist texts in Chinese, Tibetan and many other central Asian languages, some known, some unknown. There were also paintings on silk and linen, and what may be the earliest printed book still in existence, printed in the year 868. An incredible haul. Stein convinced the monk to part with a large section of the library in return for a donation, amounting to 130, towards the restoration of some of the grottoes. For that sum, he carried away 24 packing cases of manuscripts and five others filled with paintings, embroideries and other art relics, all of which he deposited in the British Museum.

A French explorer who passed by Dunhuang the following year also bought a quantity of the manuscripts from the monk but, soon after, news of the discovery filtered back to the imperial court in Peking which ordered that the remainder of the library be transported to the capital. Stein, who was of course anxious to defend himself against the charge of theft, said that the priest had told him later that the manuscripts had been taken away in carts 'packed, in a very perfunctory manner. A good deal of pilfering occurred while the carts were still waiting at the Dunhuang Yamen [government office], for whole bundles of fine Buddhist roles were, in 1914, brought to me there for sale.' Stein said that, on his return in 1914, the priest expressed regret at not having accepted Stein's original offer for the whole collection en bloc.

Stein's removal of this huge hoard of manuscripts has earned him the hatred of many Chinese people who see him as a symbol of all the foreigners who humiliated and plundered China in the waning years of the Manchu dynasty. But there is the question of what would have happened to the library if Stein had left it where it was. A large part of it would probably have been looted by local Chinese and sold off or destroyed. According to Peter Hopkirk in his interesting book, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, it took the world's greatest experts in the British Museum seven years, using techniques akin to brain surgery, to restore some of the Buddhist paintings. Some say the manuscripts should now be returned to China. Others say the manuscripts are likely to be better preserved in the British Museum than in their country of origin, and are available there for study by a far greater number of scholars than they would be if they were returned. The debate continues.

There are just under 500 caves and grottoes in the Dunhuang complex, but only 40 of them are open to visitors. Photographs of the murals inside are sometimes forbidden and sometimes allowed after the payment of huge sums of money. Cave No.17 is the place where the manuscripts were found, while No.462, known as the Mizong Cave, has erotic Buddhist art murals on its walls. The latter is closed to all except the most privileged visitors, but give it a try.

Dunhuang may be famous and its history fascinating, but many visitors find it a disappointment. For a start, it can be expensive to get to, and the three-hour drive from the train station is very uncomfortable. Once there, most of the caves are out-of-bounds and the ones that are open are dark inside, in some cases making it virtually impossible to see any of the murals and statues clearly.

Getting to the caves can be difficult. There is sometimes a local bus leaving from the traffic circle at 8.00 a.m. You can rent bicycles from the hotel, but the ride would be murder in the heat of summer. You can also rent a taxi or a jeep from the hotel. All foreigners are supposed to leave the cave area at lunchtime and return to the guesthouse, primarily, it would seem, to allow the local hawk-eyed custodians a chance to have an afternoon nap. However, there is a noodle shop at the caves where you may be able to get something to eat if you insist on staying.

Close by the town is an area of sand dunes, and a beautiful lake (although one person who swam in it said the bottom is covered with broken glass). How to get there and where to stay
An important preliminary fact: Dunhuang is 'closed' to tourists from November to 1 April.

An airport has been built near Dunhuang, and scheduled flights now link the town with Lanzhou twice a week. The traditional way of getting there, however, is by road from Liuyuan, the closest stop on the Urumqi-Lanzhou railway line, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) to the north. There are two local buses a day from Liuyuan to Dunhuang, one at about 7.30 a.m. the other at about noon, from the local bus station (along the main street and on the left). For the return trip to Liuyuan, you should buy your ticket in advance at the bus station. Alternatively, it costs about 75 yuan to rent a jeep to take you to Dunhuang town. There is a small, dirty hotel in Liuyuan if you decide to stay overnight. Another possibility is to take the bus to Dunhuang from Jiuquan (passing through Jiayuguan) which takes about 11 hours (for details of where to get the bus in Jiayuguan, see the next entry).

The main hotel in Dunhuang is the Dunhuang Guesthouse (left out of the bus station, then right) where a bed costs six yuan.

Jiayuguan For centuries, this town marked the northwest extremity of China and the beginning of the central Asian unknown. The Great Wall once extended beyond Jiayuguan, but the present fortress was built in 1372 during the Ming dynasty, and has from then on been considered to be the end of the wall. In their book, The Gobi Desert, two intrepid missionaries who lived in this barren area of northwest China for many years in the 1930s, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, gave a fascinating description of Jiayuguan as it was in those now far-off pre-Communist days. The book has been long out of print, and is worth quoting at length.

The two nuns described the three main gates to the fortress, one of which faces east towards the oasis of Jiuquan (spring of wine) about ten miles (16 kilometres) to the east.

Every day, soldiers were galloping through the gate and over the plain to fetch supplies of pleasant food for the Governor and his ladies. Their horses clattered through the little crooked street but the old residents, sitting at their counters, exchanged not a word with the youthful riders. News of matters outside their own gates meant

nothing to them, nor had they any requirements which were not met by their own meagre supplies. Even the opium from the poppy patch by the side of the stream was sufficient for their dope.

The most important door was on the farther side of the fortress, and it might be called Travellers Gate, though some spoke of it as the Gate of Sighs. It was a deep archway tunnelled into the thickness of the wall where footsteps echoed and re-echoed. Every traveller toward the northwest passed through this gate, and it opened out on that great and always mysterious waste called the Desert of Gobi.

The long archway was covered with writing and anyone with sufficient knowledge to appreciate Chinese penmanship could see at once that these were the work of men of scholarship who had fallen on an hour of the deepest distress. Who were the writers of this Anthology of Grief? Some were heavy-hearted exiles, others were disgraced officials, and some were criminals no longer tolerated within China's borders. Torn from all they loved on earth and banished with dishonoured name to the dreary regions outside, they stood awhile within the tomb-like vault, to add their moan to the pitiful dirge of the Gate of Sights.

Travellers setting out would throw a stone at a part of the fortress wall to test their luck. If it rebounded, it was believed the traveller would return safely. If it did not¡­

How to get there and where to stay Jiayuguan is situated on the main railway line from Lanzhou to Urumqi, about 500 miles (800 kilornetres) from Lanzhou. The city has grown considerably in the past 30 years, but there is little to see except for the old fort. There is only one hotel, in which rooms can be rented for five yuan a day. A bus for the fort leaves from in front of the hotel every day at 9.30 a.m. and returns at 11.30 a.m. There is a bus to Jiuquan from a bus stop just north of the traffic circle next to the hotel. For the bus to Dunhuang, walk east from the hotel, then north to a major intersection of several roads. The Dunhuang bus terminus is on the left.