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Buddha-hopping across Gansu

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

From one end of the very elongated Gansu province to the other, it’s all been about Buddha caves for the past few days. Since Sunday we’ve been to three different ancient Buddhist complexes, each of which offer different types of experiences but ultimately the same outcome: leaving me in awe of the lengths these ancient craftsmen went to to glorify the religion.

We started at Maiji Shan, joining a few hundred Chinese tourists and one foreigner (the only one we saw in our six days in Eastern Gansu) at the site. What makes Maiji Shan extraordinary is that all the caves are built, higher and higher, into a near vertical cliff – all the way up to about 50m by my estimation. Most of the caves themselves are locked and only viewable through grates (which makes viewing difficult and photography impossible), but two groups of three enormous statues carved into the cliff more than make up for it and provide my definitive memory from the site. As you go up and up the modern staircases, so that you’re ultimately looking down on these enormous statues, you can’t help but be amazed at how this was achieved in the fourth century, and what drove the craftsmen to creating caves so high up that they couldn’t be enjoyed from the ground. In all, it was a memorable experience.

We visited a less famous site the following day, known as the Water Curtain Caves. We were extremely disappointed to see that the principle (and really, only) attraction there – a 31m high painted Buddha on a cliff face – was completely covered in scaffolding, so we could barely see it. Luckily we managed to sneak behind the scaffolding and look up at the gigantic depiction, a pretty humbling experience.

After an overnight train ride that took us far further west than we’ve ever been in China, we arrived in Dunhuang to see the most famous of all Buddhist caves in China. You’re not allowed to take cameras in, and you only get to see a rotating series of 10 of the caves (there are several hundred in all), but the artwork inside was quite spectacular, the most impressive of the four sites we’ve seen in Gansu by some distance. Overall perhaps the Yungang Caves that we saw last year were more awe-inspiring, but I thought Dunhuang was still worth the hype. Besides the glorious sculpture work and vivid painting, we also saw what is now – following the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban – the world’s second-largest ancient Buddha statue at 36m high.

The other most interesting aspect of the past few days has been seeing rural China for, really, the first time. Old men in Mao suits, farmers in the fields by the sides of the road, traditional Chinese architecture still thriving in the numerous villages we’ve passed on buses – it all provides a nice contrast to the modern megacities of Beijing and Guangzhou that have defined so much of our China experience so far.

With only a few days left in Gansu, we’re going to see the fortress at the end of the Great Wall of China tomorrow and then try to see another Tibetan-style monastery. Meanwhile, photos are here.

Into the wilderness of Gansu

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

At least the Chinese police are nice to you when you stumble into a forbidden zone and they have to evict you from their prefecture. They bought us lunch and everything.

But perhaps I should back up a bit first.

After a busy week of work in Guangzhou, we had a week-and-a-half off and decided to head for Gansu province, a rarely visited but seemingly attraction-rich destination in Central-West China. Half the reason we chose Gansu in the first place was because the southeast part of the province is a Tibetan area, and we figured by coming here we would get to experience Tibetan culture and religion without the hassles of the permits/restrictions that govern travelling in Tibet proper. Well, how wrong that turned out to be.

After seeing the pretty interesting Bing Ling Si caves on our first full day in Gansu, we stayed the night in the Muslim town of Linxia (with some really unusual mosques that are designed in entirely Chinese temple style, with the minarets looking strangely like pagodas). When we were thrown off a bus that was heading to Xianhe and the Labrang Monastery before it left Linxia, we knew something was wrong and that perhaps that city was closed to foreigners, but, undeterred, we took a different bus to Hezuo, which we boarded without incident. Only 20 minutes after we got off, though, we found ourselves surrounded by six policemen with SWAT gear on, being asked all sorts of questions about what we were doing here. It turns out that even though Tibet proper was reopened several weeks ago after being closed in March for the 50th anniversary of the Chinese invasion, the prefecture we were now in was still entirely closed to foreigners. Lesson of the day: look this stuff up before you set out. Luckily we had snuck a look at a Tibetan temple as soon as we got off the bus, so we at least had something to show for it.

After treating us to a surprisingly good local noodle dish, the head of foreign affairs drove us 80km back the way we came and put us on a bus headed back to the provincial capital Lanzhou.

And so ended our brief experience of Tibetan culture in Gansu. [Though there’s another monastery (less famous but still authenticly Tibetan) in another part of Gansu that seems to be open to foreigners, so next week we’ll try to see if we can visit it, or at least score another free lunch…]

After returning to Lanzhou last night, we headed east today and had a really nice afternoon in Tianshui, visiting a 15th century Chinese temple and enjoying watching the Chinese go about their activities in a picturesque area outside the temple: old men playing board games, photogenic fruit venders wearing straw hats, an orchestra playing music to a small audience – the kind of stuff that’s somehow so pleasing in its simplicity. Like India, everytime you are really annoyed with China it has a way of pulling you back in and endearing itself to you, and it’s most often just the simple things like this, and not the major sights, that do it.  

Tomorrow we’re going to visit Majji Shan, which is one of the four major Buddhist cave/temple complexes in the entire country, and by Tuesday we’ll be at the other end of Gansu at the most famous such place in China: the Dunhuang Caves.

Back on the road again

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Or at least the flightpath.

After a bit of a whirlwind trip home to Sydney for just over a week, we're now at the airport ready to take off again. I accidentally (I swear) managed to get myself employed ... [Continue reading this entry]

Southeast Asia in a Nutshell

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Angkor ThomAfter four trips and 11 months of travel in Southeast Asia over the past six years, we’ve pretty much exhausted the region. There are a couple of places we wanted to go ... [Continue reading this entry]

Peninsular Malaysia: Giant Flowers and Old Ports

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

We arrived on the Malay Peninsula last Friday night with a week to spare and a few different choices of places to visit. After much discussion we headed first for the Cameron Highlands, a tea-planting hill station north of ... [Continue reading this entry]