A Journey to Well Known Places

Well, that was fun. I have just spent two days in Jiayuguan. That is the western most end of the great wall or where the wall began. Depending on your perspective. The town is an oasis in a narrow patch of desert between a deep canyon and impassible mountains. Everyone entering old China from the west had to go through here….so they built a big wall and fort to keep the raiders out. I befriended two Chinese ladies on the train in from Dunhaung and it made all the difference. They are both in drama school and had a week off for travel. Fluent Mandrin gets you great service at unbeatable prices. Their English was pretty good too. They took me under their wing; negotiated a room for me at the hotel, set up a driver to see the sights (we all went in together), and ordered a couple great meals at the restaurant. The best part was being a tourist with other Chinese tourists. They were very nice and I had a great time in their company. My camera broke on the train and they even helped me get to a camera shop to get it fixed. Stupid American electronics can’t take a little sand and abuse. It cost $100 to get it fixed, but electronics are more expensive here than they are in the states. Fixing was definitely to best option.

After dinner we called it an early night and got a pretty early start on the day. By 9am we were eating breakfast and our driver had found us at the restaurant (notice the driver found us….cause someone was able the call the driver and communicate where we were) and by 9:30 we were off to the place where it all began. The first watch tower. OK, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, which I didn’t, it was not all that impressive. A big square lump in the desert. Whatever. OH, this is a 2000 year old watch tower. The first watch tower on the first part of the 50000 kilometer wall. Well, that IS neat. The wall looks like it is made of mud, but is hard like cement. It is only 6 feet tall now, but several thousand years ago it was closer to 12. I can see how that would be an effective deterant for an army on horses. We went down into this little cave thing and found some old stuff they had dug up. Alright, more old swords and pots. Cool, but nothing new. As we walked further the room ended in a balcony that extended about 12 feet over the gorge (The wall began right next to a big gorge…more on that later). The floor of this balcony is made of plexiglass so that you can look down and see the vast expanse of air between you and the muddy river/rocks below. It was a little scary, but I did not scream like a girl. The girls did scream like girls. Then we took lots of pictures.

The next stop was the ‘overhanging wall.’ Again cool, but I didn’t really get it. The wall had obvious been recently rebuilt, but we walked along it anyway. The neatest thing about it was being at the top of the lookout tower and seeing the Gobi stretch for miles on end. Flat and empty. In stark contrast was a thin line of green fed by underwater streams that make Jiayuguan and oasis. In the distance I could see smoke stacks smoking like smoke stacks do. The sun was shining, but the sky was grey. My eyes started to burn. There are mountains on this end of the wall. Very scraggly and jagged mountains. Not easy to pass on foot. Impossible on horse back.

Then it was off to lunch. We ate liver (which I hate….I don’t care how you cook it) and some very tasty vegetable dishes. The three of us bought the driver lunch and we went to our third and final destination: the fortress. OK, now this is cool. Every carvan that traversed the Silk Road came through here. The history was staggering. I shot arrows from the walls at straw invaders. I rode a camel in the desert (for about 10 minutes). We took lots of pictures which they eventually burned to CD for me. Then, in the museum, it all came together for me. There was a smale scale replica of the Jiayuguan pass with the gorge on one end, the fortress in the middle, and the overhanging wall at the end. Enlightenment. Yeah, there is no way you are getting around that. You would have to go through the the gates to get into China. No wonder they called it the First Impregnable Pass under Heaven. For those of you that ever played Romance of the Three Kingdoms there is a shrine to Guan Yu in the fortress too. He is the Chinese god of war.

I am in Zhangye now. For the past two nights and tonight I have stayed in real hotel rooms. I left my iPod on the train, but someone picked it up and came running after me. The Chinese are so nice. Tomorrow I am off to see the worlds largest reclining Buddah. Pictures are just going to have to wait. Cheers.

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