Somewhere West of Chang’an
The Chinese Silk Road
When I picked up the novel Tun Huang recently, I had not realized that the setting would be so familiar. That I picked it up at just this moment I can only ascribe to coincidence, or to some perception the conscious mind is blind to. The story of Tun Huang takes place at an apocalyptic moment for the Chinese Silk Road, the conquest by the Western Xie of the fortified towns of the He Xi corridor.
As it happens, I had been studying. this region intently. In March I chanced upon an old documentary, The Silk Road, and binge-watched it. It’s remarkable. Produced in 1980, it came about during a slight thaw in China-Japan relations, and was a Sino-Japanese project focused on the Western Regions. It was the first time in decades that foreigners had been able to visit western China and make a comprehensive report. Watching it now is a kind of double archaeology: we see not only the ancient sites, but also the early efforts the Chinese government was making to modernize the region.
The result is odd and beautiful, a mashup of beautiful landscapes, oasis villages, ruined fortresses and watchtowers, and - very often - the exemplary agricultural achievements brought about by the wise and benevolent leadership of the People’s Republic of China. But it’s all in the game…the documentary it’s so well done, so carefully thought out, that I often had the uncanny feeling that I was there with them, or had been there in some way, although I have never set foot in the region.
Academics will tell you that the Silk road was not a road, but more of a network, ill-defined and ever-changing. This is true in Central Asia. But the first thousand miles in China were pretty well-defined:
Hsi-Hseng, the protagonist of Tun Huang, began his travels in the ancient capital of Chang’an (now Xi’an) in the spring of 1026. The monk Xuanzang had started his walk to India from the same city four hundred years before.
Both Hsi-Hseng and Xuanzong then traveled to Liangzhou on the Yellow River, and then entered the He Xi Corridor at Wuwei.
Moving up the corridor there is the trading town of Zhangye, founded by the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) in 111 BC. A thousand or so years later Kubla Khan was born here, and Marco Polo spent a year in residence a few years after.
At Jiayuj Pass, near Jiuqan, we reach the first terminus, the end of the better-known Ming (1368-1644) Great Wall, and the point of no return for exiles of that era.
The British missionary Mildred Cable wrote: Known to men of a former generation as Kweimenkwan (Gate of the Demons)…. The most important door was on the farther side of the fortress, and it might be called Traveller's Gate, though some spoke of it as the Gate of Sighs. It was a deep archway tunnelled in the thickness of the wall.... Every traveller toward the north-west 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 writings...the work of men of scholarship, who had fallen on an hour of deep distress. Who were then 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.
And then, at the western end of the Corridor, there is Dunhuang (or Tun Huang as romanized in Inoue’s novel), the most remote in both distance and time, as its strategic importance peaked during the Han era.
As every schoolchild knows, this was the path taken by the Han Emperor Wu in his campaign to pacify the Western Regions during his hundred-year war with the Xiognu. Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan, and Dunhuang became key strongpoints as China pushed the wall west and secured the corridor for trade and taxation.
It took Xuanzang almost six months months to get this far, moving up the corridor between the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau and the southern edge of the Gobi desert. Now he stood on the threshold of the Taklamakan desert.
The first thousand miles are the easiest
At that time, there were two paths out into the great Empty. You could turn northwest, as Xuanzang did, and go through the Jade Gate, where the Great Wall ended. Or, for several centuries, you could turn south and go through the Yangguan (‘South Gate’ or ‘Sun Gate’). Whichever path you took, you were leaving everything you knew behind.
Wang Wei wrote:
The morning rain of Weicheng dampens the light dust,
The guest house is green with the colour of fresh willows.
Let's finish another cup of wine, my dear sir,
Out west past the Yangguan, old friends there'll be none.
Ruined fort at Yangguan
Beyond
Beyond Dunhuang, there was nothing much for a thousand miles, and then, at the western edge of the Taklamakan desert, the trading centers of ancient Asia.
The first step was to work your way around the Taklamakan, either north via Turfan, or south through Loulan, which could be hard to find because they moved it at least once (probably due to changes the course of the river that supplied its water).
Niya was quite substantial, and although the city was suddenly abandoned perhaps 1,500 years ago, the dry desert air has preserved a great deal. It doesn’t look like much, but that there is anything left to look at at all is a kind of a miracle:
A modern photograph of Niya (Wikipedia)
In 1995 a Sino-Japanese research team visited the site. Writing in the Washington Post, expedition member Li Xiguang reported that
Our expedition was the only sign of life for miles, yet we could see remains of more than 70 wooden structures. It must have been a prosperous city. We found houses with courtyards harboring dead fruit trees and shriveled grape vines. There were stables, graves, reservoirs and even a bridge over the bone-dry bed of the Niya River, which watered the city during a happier climate. We found irrigation canals that once diverted the river to water crops. In the middle of the ghost town was a 20-foot-high Buddhist shrine made of sun-dried mud bricks…
Niya was a small, landlocked yet cosmopolitan city-state where ancient Chinese peoples and cultures blended with those of India, Persia and Macedonia… According to scholars, Niya's population included soldiers of Macedonia's Alexander the Great, known to have spread Hellenistic culture throughout much of the ancient world and to have reached the Pamir Mountains just west of Niya during the 4th century B.C. One of Alexander's expeditionary forces disappeared in the region, legend says.
So one wonders if there are not some Greek bones under the shifting sands of the Talkamakan as well.
The northern and southern roads converge on Kashgar, the last stop in modern China. From there trade went west to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Merv. They all prospered for centuries., but were pillaged by Genghis Khan during his destruction of Khwarezmia in the early 1200’s. Timur wrecked them all again, but he then made Samarkand his capital, and was buried there.
Merv never recovered, but the rest still stand. They are just normal cities and towns now, though - no longer the crossroads of the world.
“Bokhara, first light” (1938) a plate from Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches
So when did we leave China? The end of China has always been somewhat indeterminate. A Chinese traveler might feel they were crossing the threshold at the Yellow River in Langzhou, entering He Xi corridor at Wuwei, at the Gate of Sighs, at Dunhuang, or at the Jade Gate or the Sun Gate.
One could even argue that the frontier really starts back in Xi’an, the site of the ancient capital. Today most most Chinese live far to the east and south, in Beijing, Shanghai, and especially the Pearl River Delta:
From a population perspective, one could argue that we have already left China proper before we even reach the He Xi Corridor. Then each passing town and landmark marks a new boundary. Like the sun, the frontier recedes, no matter how fast we chase it, out to the wastes of the Taklamakan.
No one knows what is buried in those sands. Some lost places have been located and studied, like Loulan and Niya, or the ruins of the Hecang fortress, deliberately hidden among the dunes 40 miles from Dunhuang. There is even archaeological evidence that the Han wall at one time ran beyond Dunhuang, possibly as far as the now-extinct salt water lake, Lop Nur. This is hard to investigate as that is now a nuclear test area. Like America, China puts its biggest secrets out in the western wastes.
In both countries, .the further west you go, the closer you come to new mysteries, dangers, and, right next to the forbidden zones, a kind of manic freedom. It is something we have thought about for as long as there have been Americans.
Route 130, somewhere west of Laramie. Source: Google Maps, photo taken August 2019
In the collective mind - Chinese or American - the road to the west is always there. Most never try the journey, and many who go regret it. But the road and its ghosts remain, beckoning.
Links
The Silk Road documentary w/ English narration - Youtube (link)
“The Silk Road: The Route That Changed the World” - New York Times (link)
Anna Sherman, “A Poetic Journey Through Western China” (link)
The western gates
“Tun Huang” - Eisengeiste Coda (link)
A Walk in the Country’: essay on Xuanzang - Eisengeiste (link)
‘The Lost Kingdom of Niya’ - Washington Post (link)
‘Somewhere West of Laramie’ (link)