Catherine Travels, June 26-27

6/26
We are in Kashgar.....the name itself means romance, intrigue, spies, diplomatic funny business. And it feels more cosmopolitan than some of our recent stops: English language papers available, more expensive hotels. It is a Uighur city, and the presence of Islam more pronounced, judging by the number of veiled and/or scarved women, and men with lace hats. The orientation is also toward the rest of Eurasia: Pakistan, Kyrgistan are close, and so is Uzbekistan. And these places have a long shared history with Kashgar.

We visited an enormous mosque in the morning, with its peaceful shaded front garden. We walked the old city streets, both the handcraft area and some residential sections. The handcraft area has men turning wooden candlesticks in open workshops, and a young man gluing a stringed instrument in a stop operated to make and sell musical instruments for five generations. We passed a large blacksmith area, with men making shovels, hinges, and door knockers.

The residential area is a warren of lanes and old courtyard homes made of brick. In homes being taken down, we saw lovely tile and decorative plaster work on the inner walls. The lanes were full of children on this summer Saturday, with lots of little boys especially replaying World Cup games. If Jusuf, our guide, is reflective of the local attitude, it is mixed and nuanced on the issue of government efforts to tear down the old city. Jusuf and his mother have moved to a new apartment. It is clean, with modern heating (instead of a coal stove), air conditioning, and they don't have to clean up snow in the winter. Above all, they feel more safe in the event of earthquakes, which happen here. And the old city has a number of underground bomb shelters, built when tension with Russia was high. These increase the risk in an earthquake. But they miss the community life and the cultural continuity of the old city. It ought to be possible to rebuild safely in a style that reflects and supports the local community, you'd think.

At the end of this day Jusuf took us along to the wedding festivities of a relative of his. We picked and ate apricots in their orchard, ate wonderful lamb pilaf and stew. The men and boys danced to drums and a horn, then left to parade through Kashgar in a long line of trucks and motorcycles. We went home to bed before the women and girls arrived from the bride's house.

After a comparatively clear day, a wind blew in from the desert during this evening, bringing sandy dust that reduced visibility to a couple of blocks. It doesn't take much to remind us that, cityscape or not, we're not in Kansas anymore.

6/27
This day was a long one. The bas news was 10 hours on a truly terrible road. We saw accidents, including an injury crash between a donkey cart and an SUV. The journey gave us a more on-the-ground feel for the distances and terrain we have travelled than our comfortable night trains. The good news was the view we got of life along this ancient road. There are vast stretches of empty desert, broken by oasis villages with intense farming and life lived at least partly on the road. Goats, sheep and camels were herded on or near the road, vegetables and fruit and bread sold at stands in every village, and wheat threshed on or near the road (it's harvest time for the wheat, and there is a lot of it here in noodle country). We shared the road with cars, buses, donkey carts, motorcycles, tractors, 3-wheel motorcycle/trucks , all those herded creatures, and lots and lots of people. We also experienced the rural police. We were stopped at least three times and asked to produce our guide and driver's IDs and our passports. Jusuf was asked if we were reporters. No, he said, just an old couple having a vacation. And so we are, but I did quit writing in my notebook when we were near a police stop. I could tell because that's when our driver put on his seat belt.

In the early evening, we arrived in the city of Hotan. We spent 3 hours at the Hotan Sunday Market. It is huge -- blocks and blocks of open-front stores, and tables of goods in front of those, and piles of goods on the ground in front of those. There were folks hawking magical medicines -- honey, oil, fruit from afar, all guaranteed to cure whatever ails you. There were beggars, lying bent or hunched, some with open sores, in the middle of the walkway. Clothes, shoes, hardware, stationery, appliances, silk, carpets, fruit, vegetables, meat (you could tell which was horsemeat or mutton because the horse or sheep's head was propped on the sidewalk in front of the hanging meat), beauty products, cooked food of all kinds. There were so many people we were jammed against each other, and we saw no other European faces at all. We hopped on a 3-wheel motorcycle with a flat platform on the back for riding and travelled to the animal market, which was selling cows, sheep and goats with a slaughter-house attached. This part is a lot more intimately connected to one's food than usual for us. I'm thinking seriously about vegetarianism. The market felt like a truly local experience, with no one hawking tourist trinkets, and a mash of local folks negotiating wildly for bargains.

Catherine Travels, June 26th

Today was mostly a travel day again. We drove from Turpan to Urumchi, through a windy area, blowing up to 60-70 kilometers an hour, if we did the math right with our guide. We racketed along in our van, driven skillfully by Yusuf, but still jerky, and we saw some accidents with the big goods trucks on the way. We passed the larges wind farm in Asia on the way - no wonder.

We had another great Uighur meal for lunch -- lamb pilaf with lamb kabobs. We have loved the meals in this part of the world -- simple, lamb-based comfort food. The city itself has large numbers of Chinese troops, in long convoys along the road and almost everywhere else we travelled in the city. The riots in Urumchi occurred nerly a year ago, in July. It seems likely that the troops are ensuring that the anniversary passes peacefully. We spent two hours in the Urumchi museum.

We saw two exhibits. The first was a set of photos, objects and dioramas for each of the many 'ethnic' groups in this Northwest China area. Uzbek, Uighurs, Tajiks, Hui, Manchu, Kazaks, Kyrgiz, Tatats, Mongolians, Russians, others. The exhibit was intended to demonstrate respect for this diversity. Many of these groups share Turkic language roots, an Indo-European language. Some of the groups use Arabic script, others Chinese characters, regardless of the roots of the words themselves. Other groups share a Mongolian language base.

The unique display in this museum is the collection of mummies and other good from graves around the Zinjiang province. We met the 'famous Loulan beauty', a 4000 year old mummy, dead at 45, with red hair, skinny nose and generally European features. We saw the mummy of the Chinese general whose tomb we saw in Turpan. His tombstone says he died of mental illness, which our guide says was worry over his inability to maintain peace in Turpan at the end of the Tang dynasty. And we saw a mummy from a 4000 year old desert site with carefully arranged poplar posts and boat-shaped coffins, with symbols that some interpret as a worship of fertility. Again, these burials have European features, and remarkably preservd clothing, shoes, even dainty jade jewelry.

A last thought: there were many photos of rock art and carved stone figures from the Altai mountains north of the Gobi desert. Surely we should investigate journeying to these mountains!

We fly tonight to Kashgar, city of romance, intrigue.....

Catherine Travels, June 24th

We are in a completely different country now. We arrived in the very early morning in Turpan, met by our Uighur guide, ALiMu. Our first adventure was riding in a donkey cart around the perimeter of the ruins of the ancient desert city of Gaochang. I felt like Amelia Peabody Emerson. Founded at least in the 2nd century BC, the city had flourishing Nestorian churches, Manichean churches and Buddhist temples. The site is very much destroyed now, from a number of causes: 2000 years of desert weather, of course. But foreign devils have been at work as well. British, German, Americans and others hauled away murals, mosaisc, statues, manuscripts by the ton. ALiMu says if we want to learn about Uighur history, we should go to Harvard, not come here. Much of the material taken to Germany was destroyed in the Allied bombing of World War II. In addition, local people over the years scratched out the faces, especially the eyes, of any human or animal figures, believing that such figures are an affront to Islam and out of a fear that the figures would come out at night and do mischief. And, finally, troops during the Cultural Revolution tore down half the city and planted crops over the rubble. It is a spooky and desolate place, with mounds that only occasionally bring buildings to mind.

We also visited a set o tombs of the upper classes from Gaochang in the Tang Dynasty, 7th and 8th enturies AD. There were simple and graceful murals in two tombs that were open for viewing, with birds and plants and symbolic figures. The third tomb had two mummies, a man in his sixties and a woman in her thirties, who was buried alive. When I say mummies, I mean desicated skeletons with scraps of cloth, dried by the heat and the dry environment. These skeletons were not prepared to be mummies, as in Egypt.

We visited a site called Thousand Buddhist Caves, a beautiful ridge overlooking a small valley. There are some cave paintings; all that we saw are not in good shape. There is a sad collection of framed photos of murals that now live in a museum in Berlin. More foreign devils, local destruction, Cultural Revolution damage at work here. We also visited the ancient city of Jiaohe, a Tang dynasty fortress city with the feel of a Puebloan City of the American Southwest. The homes, government buildings and temples have high walls, with the entrances apparently from the roof. Streets and courtyards are below the surface of the ground. The city was destroyed in wars during the 12th and 13th centuries. And of course, mmore foreign devils, more local destrution, more Cultural Revolution damage.

Our guide is quite clear about the politics of history. 'You can bend it like a plastic toy -- first one way, then another; but it doesn't break the truth underneath.' At every spot, the answer to the question, 'when was this built' is: the government says 2000 years ago (under Chinese control); others think at least 3000 years ago (by Central Asians), so who knows? These Uighur people feel a unity of language, religion, history and culture from the Urals to the eatern edge of the Gobi desert, from Russia to Tibet and India. Chinese is a second language to Uighur for many, and all signs are in both, with the Uighur language using an Arabic script. At bottom, ALiMu expresses enormous pride in the history of a talented and cultured people who have not fared well in recent dynastic struggles but who might have a new chapter with the breakup of the Soviet Union in parts of this Eurasian steppe and desert country

We also visited a sample of the karetz water system, and saw signs of it everywhere surrounding Turpan. More than 2000 years ago, people began digging underground channels from the nearby mountains, tapping the underground water table and leading it by gravity to fields and villages. Today there are nearly 500 systems with channels totaling more than 1500 kilometers. These channels were the lifeblood of oasis communities. They are drying up now due to diminishing mountain glaciers and a falling water table. The karetz system is a massive infrastructure projet, on a scale similar to the Great Wall.

Dinner in Turpan was lamb and noodles, outdoors by an urban lake, watching children feed the ducks and the carp, feeling the evening breeze as the sun goes down on this second lowest place on the planet.

Catherine Travels, June 23rd

Another day, another set of adventures. We spent this day in Dunhuang, junction of the northern and southern routes of the Silk Road around the Taklamakan Desert. The town was fortified with a part of the Great Wall, near the beginning of the Han dynasty about 100 BC. The Chinese defeated the Turkic people of the desert area, controlled this important oasis situated between the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts,and moved in thousands of Han Chinese settlers. Does this sound familiar? We unexpectedly found another contemporary echo. We asked about a large, multi-story housing complex on the outskirts of town. Dunhuang's Muslim population was moved into this complex by the Chinese government, out of their central city neighborhood, from housing our guide described as unsafe. We wonder how the Muslim community feels about the trade-off -- are indoor bathrooms, air-conditioning and new construction a sufficient trade-off for the loss of cultural history and old communities?

The Magao Caves outside Dunhuang are absolutely astonishing. They are a series of grottoes lining a sandstone cliff face. They were dug out, painted with murals and filled with statues, all in service of the Buddha. The caves date from the 4th to the 14th century. They were often financed by rich merchants from the Silk Road, seeking merit. Because of the centrality of this oasis to the Silk Road, Dunhuang is perhaps the real gateway between the East and the West - the place to give thanks for safe passage and to pray for success in the next part of the journey. (Although, other places make the same claim to gateway or passageway, like Jiayuguan).

There are nearly 500 caves still in good condition, with more than 45,000 murals and 2,000 painted stucco figures. The operators of the park (the government) open a different 30 caves each year, to preserve the site from damage. The caves are connected by a set of balconies and ladders and are three stories high in most places. The site is a study in Chinese art history. The facial characteristics of the Buddha and his attendants change through the dynasties, as do the colors and symbols surrounding the figures. Colors, red, black, green, white, are vivid today, though the skin tones in some have darkened due to the paint oxidizing. Our site guide, Betty, was knowledgeable about the art styles of each dynasty. She was especially dismissive of those trashy Qing restorers in the 18th and 19th centuries, who used garish colors, especially bright reds.

We ended our time in Dunhuang with a ramble through the night market. It's a bustling mix of cheap clothes and shoes, local fruits and vegetables, tea, spices and trinkets. We gathered food for our train ride overnight and found some nice local jade. We also found a coffee house (!), serving real, freshly ground coffee and homemade ice cream. It was run by an American ex-pat couple (he with the broadest Oklahoma accent imaginable), who plan a chain of such coffee houses across China.

We left for the 2-hour drive to the train station, across the Gobi. It had rained the night before, already a surprise. Then, mid-way on our trip, the skies opened in a downpour. In a very short time, parts of the road had running water and rivers of moving sandy mud. I'm always a nervous passenger, but I knew we were in trouble for real when both our guide and our driver grabbed their cell phones, talked excitedly into them, and took pictures. I guess our driver, Mr. Feng, has not read the research on cell phones and driving. We slithered and slid our way through the storm, to be greated by a rainbow. As our guide Helen put it, in-the-middle-of-Gobi-desert-a-rainbow -- a miracle.

Catherine Travels, June 22nd

Upon arrival in Jiayuguan, we were met by our new guide, who uses the English name of Helen. We spent our morning exploring the Jiayuguan fortress and climbing an odd bit of the Great Wall.

The fortress and the museum gave us a much clearer picture of the Great Wall, the timing of its construction, and its purposes. There are various Walls and they had various purposes. Prior to lChina's unification in 221 B.C., walls were an effort to protect small kingdoms. The unifying Emperor Qin Shihuangdi undertook to link all these kingdom walls together to build a Great Wall. The newsly unified empire stretched west as well, struggling against the nomadic Hun people of Turkic descent. By the time of the Han dynasty, 206 BC - 220 AD, the military pressed to strengthen the Wall. At the same time, the development of a growing Silk Road commerce led merchants to seek protection of the route from the government. The Wall thus has themes recognizable today: a project to build and broadcast national pride; a new national defense project (expensive and requiring a big investment in generals and men); a jobs project; and an anti-immigration push to assure that Han people control the eastern end of the Silk Road, a growing and rich trade route.

The Wall was considerably strengthened in this part of the world during the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. The empire at this point was much more inward looking, and increasing amounts of trade with the west were going by sea. The comparative importance of the Silk Road was reduced, although it still continued to provide overland transport, as it does today. The Jiayuguan fortress, "The Greatest Pass Under Heaven" was built at this time. It sits midway between the Black Mountains and the Snow Mountains, in a narrow 15-kilometer-wide pass. It is a large and imposing walled compoud, with a sand moat, inner and outer walls, gate towers (beautifully painted three-story pagoda-like structures) and turrets for bowmen and watchmen. A portion of the gate tower function was strict control of wooden passports, examples of which are in the museum. The view toward the west of gray desert sand is evocative of the end-of-empire feel that must have dominated the Ming era soldiers who lived here. (That feeling was only slightly mellowed by the half-dozen camels available for rides outside the gate and the two noisy gas-driven parasails, also available).

We travelled then to a bit of the Wall, called the Hanging Great Wall because of its steep trajectory off a ridge. This bit has been restored and has a Disneyland feel. Bill climbed to the top of the ridge, where an original watchtower rewarded his efforts. He then returned past the life size, outdoor diorama of camels, traders, and two princesses riding along the Silk Road.

We then undertook a five hour drive across the fearsome Gobi Desert - and it was a complete surprise. There are indeed miles of featureless gray and tan sand, the distant mountains hidden behind a haze that is blowing dust. There is, however, a river that runs through the desert, linking oases. Some of these are more than 20 kilometers long, with rich farming areas. There are huge wind farms, and a constant stream of new windmills arriving by truck. There is a new high-speed rail line being built, and natural gas wellheads. The mountains are being mined for iron, gold, and a long list of other resources. This is more Imperial Valley than trackless waste.

We are to spend the night in Dunhuang, and spend tomorrow climbing through caves and grottoes.

Catherine Travels, June 21st

This day was mostly a travel day. We drove back from Xiahe to Lanzhou, stopping for lunch in Linxia, a Muslim town. It is a center of Muslim culture, known in some periods as the Chinese Mecca. It was the capital of a Muslim Republic of East Turkestan in the 1930's. The Hui and Dongziang people live here. The Dongziang people are descendants, according to our guide, of Arab soldiers in Genghis Khan's army, and Mongolian women. Some groups here are also the result of other migrations from the West as a part of the Silk Road cultural exchange. Women sometimes wear scarves, more often lace hats. Men often wear lace hats, and big round glasses with brass fittings.

We stopped to look at a mosque shortly before mid-day prayers. We were immediately surrounded by 40 or more young male students who pressed close and stared. The older teacher with them said they watch television -- it wasn't that we looked strange or exotic to them. Rather it was that they cannot believe that Americans, who hate Muslims and invade Muslim countries, come all the way to see them in their mosque. And, he offered, would we please come back and visit in the future.

We do another overnight on the train tonight in a journey to Jiayuguan, a garrison town at the end of the Great Wall.

Catherine Travels, June 20th

Today was a spiritual day. The town of Xiahe is the home of the Labrang Monastery, a prominent Yellow Hat Buddhist monastery and college. The streets of the small town are full of monks and pilgrims. We saw very few other Europeans. Our guide Liwanhai says that tourism is way down due to the economy, but also due to the riots in the last couple of years in Tibet and Uighur areas.

We visited the monastery, touring several of the temples and colleges. This monastery is famous for producing hand-written copies of sutras on rice paper, and have a huge library of old copies of the sutras. The college of medicine produces many Buddhist medical practitioners, who spend 3 months each year gathering plants in the nearby grasslands. The college of dancing is also famous, and we watched young monks practicing slow, acrobatic line dances to a drum and flue. In a separate plaza we listened to slightly older monks throat singing. The temples are dark and filled with Buddhas and protective gods, smelling strongly of yak butter candles. The yak butter and the incense sticks cover up (mostly) the overwhelming smell of drying yak and sheep patties used for fuel. One temple area had a dozen yak butter statues, made and painted early in the year for a festival, and not replaced until the next lunar year. The statues are as big as 5' by 5' and are brilliantly painted Buddhas and gods and tales of the life of the Buddha.

In the afternoon we walked past the very small rooms used by monks, pilgrims and visiting families. We spun our hopes into the heavens on the prayer wheels as we passed. Linwanhai had arranged a very special audience for us with BanZhiDa ZanYa, a Living Buddha of high rank in the Yellow Hat sect. He blessed our scarves and served us yak butter tea (a little yak butter goes a very long way with me), tsampa (a kind of barley prridge, eaten in this case with fingers) and dried fruit and nuts. Liwanhai explained our family and where we were from, inviting us to ask for a prediction as to our future or anything else. Liwanhai, in that very Chinese fashion, had grilled me earlier about our family. He was fascinated that our son married another man, that we attended the wedding, and that we loved our son-in-law. And so he apparently related all this to the Living Buddha. The L.B. says we are very fortunate in our loving family (true), that Bayliss and Drew's adoption will be a happy one, and that all our grandchildren will be strong and happy. He also said there are a lot of gay couples in the monastery, and that this presents no problem. Sex of any variety is forbidden, but love is welcome. And we on the outside should do what we want. Are you surprised at this flexibility? I guess I was.

The L.B. also said, in response to a question about relations between Tibetans and the Chinese government: "We have been in a relationship for 1400 years, since the Tang dynasty. There have been and will be good times and bad times, but the relationship will survive, like your marriage."

We had dinner for the second time in a restaurant where the Tibetan girls lined up to flirt with Bill and giggle. Must be something about green eyes. Or, they wanted to practice their commercially useful English, which was pretty limited.

As we left Ziahe the next morning we passed small stupas/towers, stuck all around with home-made arrows. They were placed there by Tibetan young people in a ceremony seeking peace.

Catherine Travels, June 20th

Today was a spiritual day. The town of Xiahe is the home of the Labrang Monastery, a prominent Yellow Hat Buddhist monastery and college. The streets of the small town are full of monks and pilgrims. We saw very few other Europeans. Our guide Liwanhai says that tourism is way down due to the economy, but also due to the riots in the last couple of years in Tibet and Uighur areas.

We visited the monastery, touring several of the temples and colleges. This monastery is famous for producing hand-written copies of sutras on rice paper, and have a huge library of old copies of the sutras. The college of medicine produces many Buddhist medical practitioners, who spend 3 months each year gathering plants in the nearby grasslands. The college of dancing is also famous, and we watched young monks practicing slow, acrobatic line dances to a drum and flue. In a separate plaza we listened to slightly older monks throat singing. The temples are dark and filled with Buddhas and protective gods, smelling strongly of yak butter candles. The yak butter and the incense sticks cover up (mostly) the overwhelming smell of drying yak and sheep patties used for fuel. One temple area had a dozen yak butter statues, made and painted early in the year for a festival, and not replaced until the next lunar year. The statues are as big as 5' by 5' and are brilliantly painted Buddhas and gods and tales of the life of the Buddha.

In the afternoon we walked past the very small rooms used by monks, pilgrims and visiting families. We spun our hopes into the heavens on the prayer wheels as we passed. Linwanhai had arranged a very special audience for us with BanZhiDa ZanYa, a Living Buddha of high rank in the Yellow Hat sect. He blessed our scarves and served us yak butter tea (a little yak butter goes a very long way with me), tsampa (a kind of barley prridge, eaten in this case with fingers) and dried fruit and nuts. Liwanhai explained our family and where we were from, inviting us to ask for a prediction as to our future or anything else. Liwanhai, in that very Chinese fashion, had grilled me earlier about our family. He was fascinated that our son married another man, that we attended the wedding, and that we loved our son-in-law. And so he apparently related all this to the Living Buddha. The L.B. says we are very fortunate in our loving family (true), that Bayliss and Drew's adoption will be a happy one, and that all our grandchildren will be strong and happy. He also said there are a lot of gay couples in the monastery, and that this presents no problem. Sex of any variety is forbidden, but love is welcome. And we on the outside should do what we want. Are you surprised at this flexibility? I guess I was.

The L.B. also said, in response to a question about relations between Tibetans and the Chinese government: "We have been in a relationship for 1400 years, since the Tang dynasty. There have been and will be good times and bad times, but the relationship will survive, like your marriage."

We had dinner for the second time in a restaurant where the Tibetan girls lined up to flirt with Bill and giggle. Must be something about green eyes. Or, they wanted to practice their commercially useful English, which was pretty limited.

As we left Ziahe the next morning we passed small stupas/towers, stuck all around with home-made arrows. They were placed there by Tibetan young people in a ceremony seeking peace.

Catherine Travels, June 19th

We were met in Lanzhou at the train station by a new guide, Mr. Liwanhai. He is from a family that includes Tibetan and Han roots. We drove for a bit in the Hue Autonomous Region, where 70% of the population is Muslim. We are due to come back here day after tomorrow to do more exploring. Now we travel on to the Gansu Tibetan Autonomous Region, high onto the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau, to the village of Xiahe, at 9700 feet elevation.

But our main visit along the way was to the Buddhist grottoes of Binglingsi. We reach the grottoes by driving to a huge dam along the Yellow River and taking an hour long ride upriver in a boat along the reservoir/river. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? The boat was tiny and battered, with a covered seating area and an overwhelming smell of gasoline. It was tippy and low in the water. Our guide said we took the boat to avoid a very bad road. I'm not sure I can even contemplate a road the Chinese consider bad. Our boat driver was a capable, unsmiling woman - but more about her later. The trip was a little anxiety-producing, but very pretty. The reservoir is lined with the terraced, farmed areas that are everywhere in China, here made rich by the loess soil that has blown in from Mongolia over millenia.

The Binglingsi caves line an inlet of the Yellow River in an area of jagged rock spires, looking like fingers, or the hoodoos of the American Southwest. More than 1000 caves have paintings and carved stonework, made over a period of 1500 years. The largest Buddha is at least 75 feet high, currently undergoing restoration. Equally impressive is a large sleeping Buddha, now resting in a small temple. Along the pathway are plaques indicating caves that are now under water, since construction of the dam raised the water level. Our guide says people were not unhappy about the dam, despite the damage to the caves, as it has prevented the regular floods that used to savage local homes and fields. The most important of the murals and stonework in the low caves were removed and placed in higher caves. The stonework is more visible than the paintings, since we are not allowed to enter the caves themselves. Above all, the site is a vivid testament to faith over the centuries, a religious and artistic community financed by devout traders from the Silk Road. We met a monk on the trail with a bit of English. He invited us to walk up to the monastery on the site, an hour's walk up the gully past more caves.

Instead we opted for lunch, at a stand with tables and chairs along the path. As the only European folks on site, we were fussed over, especially by an older woman selling trinkets who was the aunt of the cook for our lunch. She is known only as Shun Li's Mama, as she doesn't speak her own name. Her second son, 14 years old and tending sheep on the mountain, fell to his death, She went mad for nearly a decade. She has recovered sufficiently in the last few years to climb down several kilometres every day to the Binglingsi site to sell trinkets and help in her neice's food stand. She and Bill bonded firmly over the negotiations for some Buddhist amulets, and she was disappointed that we did not climb up those kilometres to her house to spend the night.

Our trip back down river was enlivened by a hostage taking - ours. Our unsmiling boat driver stopped the boat in the chop at the widest part of the reservoir. With the wind blowing and the first rain sprinkles of a coming storm, she announced that she wasn't going to take us to the ferry landing where our van and driver waited. Our guide Liwanhai talked calmly, while the boat driver constantly screamed at him. Liwanhai used his cell phone (go figure - we live in a wired age) and the situation was ultimately settled between his boss and hers. Meanwhile we sat for an hour mid-lake, boat driver screaming, with Bill reminding me frequently that my having hysterics would only raise the price of our leaving. Our side appeared to have won, with an ultimatum delivered by her boss to her cell phone. There was no bribe (and no tip for the boat driver). The best explanation for the whole adventure was Liwanhai's -- she is a woman whose heart has been eaten by a wolf.

We drove safely to Xiahe, stopping at the border to the Tibetan Autonomous Region. There we paid half a yuan apiece to use a W.C. that consisted of a hole in a cement floor, through which you could see, 100 feet below, the tributary to the Yellow River. It made me glad we hadn't had to swim to shore from the boat. I promise to try to make this my last toilet story.

Catherine Travels, June 18th

Today felt more like some immersion in a real China, not a round of tourist sites. We did a 'city tour' of Xi'an - walked the old Ming dynasty city wall, climbed the city bell and drum towers, visited the Big Wild Goose pagoda, and wandered through the city's old and large mosque. We also spent a long time in the city's excellent provincial museum.

Some observations: there is still a lot of smoking here, but less than 10 years ago and the larger restaurants (or maybe just those aimed at tourists) have non-smoking sections. There is a lot of hawking and spitting as well - it makes me think there must be some sort of cultural link to Nevada.

The most distinctive part of the day was the tone of the historical information, both from our guide Sunny's stories and histories, and the English labels in the museum. There is great importance placed on a solid line of control over the bulk of this land mass, especially linked to the Han Chinese ethnic group. Those other people are 'ethnic minorities', quaint and even respected, but definitely not in charge. It may be partly due to the awkwardness of translation, but the sense of exceptionalism is as grating here as it is in America.

The theme continues as the museum emphasizes Chinese firsts: the oldest 'ape-man' in Asia at 1.15 million years (Homo erectus, perhaps?). And more recently, the first paper, the first gunpowder, the writing style that not just Chinese but Japanese descened from. These two themes - cultural integrity and being the best, were repeated over and over, in versions of, 'This glazed pottery is best example of refined and glorious cultural tradition through history.'

And it is true that the museum shows a complex and technologically sophisticated community life 8000 years ago. As well, there is a continuity to practices like burying terracotta figures, although the dynasty after the First Emperor buried his soldiers, buried statues and figures that were smaller and fewer in number, but just as vivid and evocative.

A good story from today's visit to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. The name comes from a visit by an out-of-town monk, possibly from India. He was of the Hinayana branch of Buddhism, and a meat eater. The local monks are from the Mahayana branch, and vegetarian. The visiting monk was desparate for meat, so he prayed to the Buddha. At that point, a wild goose feel right out of the sky at his feet. The visiting monk was so overwhelmed at the power of his holy site that he converted to the Mahayana branch, and dedicated himself to building this lovely pagoda.

We're back onto an overnight train after our two days in Xi'an, onward to Lanzhou.

Catherine Travels, June 17th

We travelled on our overnight train to Xi'an, opulently by Chinese standards - not only 'soft sleeper' (with a pad on the shelf), but we paid for 2 extra tickets so we could have a 4-person compartment to ourselves. This meant we had room for our luggage and to almost turn around. We still, of course, had to use the communal squat toilet. We slept well and enjoyed this way to travel - despite our very Western ideas of privacy and space.

Our guide in Xi'an, Sunny, met us as we stepped off the rail care and took us directly to the terracotta warriors. Like the Great Wall, I thought I was prepared for the spectacle. But the site is overwhelming: trenches sufficient to hold 8000 life-sized warriors, including infantry, cavalry, kneeling and standing archers, charioteers, officers, generals, and each face distinctive. And, if course, the lovely, fat-rumped horses. Only 2-3000 of the soldiers have been reassembled, after they were smashed and burned in the ultimately unsuccessful peasants' revolt after the death of the Emperor who had this asontishing protective force for the after-life buried near his mausoleum. Sort of a King Tut with a military twist.

The site is now a well-done museum, with large buildings over the three pits and active archaeology ongoing. Some trenches lay open, with the terracotta rubble visible; others await opening. The soldiers were originally painted in vivid colors, but this has all but weathered away over the tijme since they were buried in 207 B.C.

It is hot here, not so humid as Beijing but difficult in the sun. Our Guide, Sunny, carries a parasol, saying 'Chinese girls don't like to turn dark.' I just wear a goofy hat.

We ended our day with a feast of dumplings, a Xi'an specialty, like potstickers. No wonder the Tang emperors who had Xi'an as their capital had an ideal of beauty that exactly suits my own fondness for dumplings: round face, round belly, round rump. There were dumplings with meat, including duck in a duck-shaped dumpling; sweet walnut paste; red bean paste; vegies including a green dumpling with celery; all yummy.

Dinner was follows with a music and dance concert in the Tang dynasty style. Much of the music was written by Emperor Xuanzong, mid-eigth century. He was a musician and poet. His songs were arranged for dance by his favorite concubine, Yang. These two are a favorite romantic story and symbol told locally. The emperor's ministers believed she was distracting the emperor and taking too much of his time, so they kidnapped her. When she disappeared, the emperor was told she committed suicide. Others believed that she fled to Japan. That is possibly the same thing, since the Japanese are the traditional enemy, mentioned in many of the stories we are told. The Tang empire was also known as a time of great freedom for women, no bound feet for these dancing, polo-playing women.

Is it surprising for characters at a time distance of 1400 years to be so vivid and to have such a direct connection with the current culture? I guess not - they are Heloise and Abelard or Lysistrata.

Catherine Travels June 16th

We hiked along the Juyonguan section of the Great Wall today. Until I saw it, I didn't understand how massive, how steep and in what wild country the wall exists. Here it runs along the ridges of a steep, mountainous area north of Beijing. Since it seems that the 'barbarians' still moved back and forth across a changing border numerous times, the whole Great Wall experience might be sobering to Arizona.

This section of the Wall has a huge stone stela at one section with a saying from Mao: 'A man will become a man when he comes to the Great Wall.' It's about time, Bill Camp. Our guide, Ming, was proud that Mao had taken Richard Nixon to the Wall and uttered this saying. It is hard not to turn that into a political commentary, isn't it? Guard posts are built into the wall and occur frequently for as far as the eye can see. It's a stone construction somewhat reminiscent of Incan stonework. Bill, who climbed further than I did, looked worn from his climb for the rest of the day. Our fatigue looked all the more related to age when we look at the number of girls in flip-flops and sandals, hopping up the steep climb. Ming says they have to look flashy, it's their job.

We visited the Summer Palace in the afternoon. Although it dates back on the site to the 12 century's artistic and prolific Quing dynasty, its current architecture and design owes much to the Dragon Lady, who rebuilt it after it was burned by the French in 1860, and again after destruction by Japan and Russia in the early 20th century. She did nothing by halves, that woman.

Most remarkable on the site is a one kilometer corridor, a sort of covered wooden walkway along the lake. It is painted, on the ceiling and the pillars, with hundres of portraits, the usual cranes and bats and flowers, and scenes from Chinese stories and tales. We found our money king swordsman from the opera portrayed here.

The park around the Summer Palace was jammed with picnicking and paddle-boating families, children climbing rocks, and everyone enjoying the outdoors. It is easy to see why Mao's opening of places like this to the people, instead of a small cadre of royalty headed by one small woman, carried everywhere because of her bound feet, had such resonance. Crowds in the park were especially heavy today as it is a holiday. The holiday commemorates the suicide of the Qing dynasty poet, Quyuan, probably 18th century, who wrote of poverty and struggle. He despaired when the emperor made no moves to make things better. People commemorate in part by making balls of sticky rice and 'longevity herb', wrapped in bamboo leaf and cooked, throwing them in the river and eating them as well.

As we leave Beijing tonight for the wild west, we have enjoyed the city's vibrancy, the long time horizon of its monuments, and the food. Bill has been stunned by the thousands of 20-story and more apartment/condo buildings, built up everywhere and under construction everywhere. It represents a mammoth investment in housing, and an acknowledgement that the population of this city has doubled to more than 17 million in the last 10 years alone. Why is it we can't house our people? However, the ever-present haze, both natural and pollution-caused, would be difficult to live with over time. And the traffic is terrifying, too many cars in a landscape built for bicycles and feet, no parking, no drivers education, few traffic rules. We're glad to head to the train station.

Catherine Travels June 15th

June 15

Bill and I spent a pretty jammed first full day - the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, a rickshaw tour of a hutong community (a neighborhood of wooden one-story houses in the 'old style'), and a Peking Opera medlay performance (intended for tourists).

Our guide Ming was a lucky find early in the day - good English, knowledgeable, flexible. He seemed a little sad to me, describing how difficult it is for regular people to compete in the new Chinese economy, how hard everyone has to work to survive. But it may simply be that Chinese fatalism that I interpret as sadness.

The Forbidden City is enormous, looking a little down at the heels these days, and so jammed with people it was hard to feel any connection with the place. Ming is very taken with the "Dragon Lady", power behind the throne from roughly 1860 - 1910, aunt of the last emperor, Puyi. Parts of the film The Last Emperor, about Puyi's fall from emperor to gardener, were filmed on site. If Ming is an accurate reflection of the culture that led to building this city, every element of every room has significance. It is sort of feng shui on steriods. Carved bats are a sign of long life, as are chrysanthemums; the number nine is lucky so doors have 9 studs across and 9 down; and raised thresholds will keep out demons. These thresholds were breached in many places so Puyi could ride his bicycle throughout the compound. So perhaps therein lies the success of Sun Yat Sen's revolution in 1912.

Our visit to the Temple of Heaven was, for me, more engaging. The Temple site has, since the 1949 Revolution, become a much-used park, where people come to play and picnic. There is a large area where many people were ballroom dancing, alone or in pairs, to an informal sound system. Old men played mah jong and checkers, and rowdy family groups played a card game involving slapping of cards and much laughter. The Temple is beautiful, newly restored a few years ago with vibrant blues, greens and yellows in a three-tiered round temple built in the early 15th century. The Temple was built for emperors to conduct Daoist sacrifices to ensure a good harvest. The ceremonies themselves, said the museum on site, were conducted from 2600 B.C. into the 20th century, wherever the site of the capoital city was. This is probably how emperors stayed in power - convincing this nation of farmers that they could influence a good harvest. And, of course, each of those emperors needed to maintain the thresholds in the temples to keep out the evil spirits.

Our visit to the hutong was a treat - narrow lanes between one-story houses with gray tile roofs. The lanes are generally too narrow for cars, so a rickshaw or bicycle is the way to travel. Each hutong in the city is a real community - comparatively quiet in this noisy city, and very safe. Our local guide Rose said there are few locks on the doors and things are safe ("...but I wouldn't leave a new bicycle unattended.") We visited the Wang family, who have lived in their home here for 100 years. The family has passed on the craft of painting tiny landscapes inside small glass bottles throughout that time. Their home, like the others in the hutong, is roughly 15 feet by 40 feet, has running watter and a small kitchen, but they use a community bathroom. The community is a real one - old men sitting on the stoop shirtless drinking tea, children chasing balls, a barber cutting hair in the tiny pocket park next to others playing mah jong and checkers. This does not feel like Disneyland, and roots us more firmly into the life of one group of working people.

And finally, a little sample of Peking Opera - gorgeous costumes and masks. The orchestra provides themes and repeated signatures, like melodrama. The small segments we saw included the evil horse thief, the trickster monkey god (a dazzling swordsman), the pious daughter. The music is difficult for Western ears, but the melodrama fun and the old painted wooden theater lovely. It's a lot like the old theatres in Western mining towns.

We ended our day being swindled by a motorized rickshaw driver. We tried and tried to flag down a taxi to return from the opera, to no avail. When the rickshaw driver stopped, he claimed no English but hustled us into the rig. And then the thunder and lightning began (honestly - couldn't make this up). He stopped about a kilometer short of our hotel, aggressively charged us six times the fee we paid to a taxi driver to go to the theater and turned us over to another, real taxi. Ah well, ask the price before you climb into the man's vehicle. I actually think my mother taught me that in my teens. But I will long remember riding in the open rickshaw, surrounded by bicycles and rickshaws with no lights and no helmets, feeling the rain begin to grow into a real storm, and zipping through traffic with no respect for lanes, with a fervent belief by every driver in the power of the horn to clear the way. I put my faith in the Buddha.

Catherine Travels, June 12-14

Bill and I are bound for China, travelling along the Silk Road. Simply beginning this trip has not been as easy as I imagined it would be. I hope there are lessons learned and that our troubles aren't just the way travel happens these days.

Our original airline tickets did not include my full name - Candace Catherine - just my middle name. When I called Expedia in April to add the full name, they said it would cost $200 to change. Mistake #1: I lost my temper and told them no; probably used words like extortion.

And so, I waited until 72 hours before we were scheduled to leave, as the tickets would then be released to the airlines and I could call them directly. Because 3 airlines were involved (another gift from Expedia), they couldn't change my name on the ticket. Air Canada was the only airline that tried, along with our tour company, Journeys. United and China Air both explained at some length the tricks that terrorists use and/or the scutiny that TSA provides to be sure they can't change names willy-nilly.

Next Step: I had a major meltdown. I was convinced that we would not be able to board the plane, and that our journey of a lifetime was disappearing. Mistake #2: I was so out of control that it seemed likely that if we did fly, we would not be speaking to each other. I was barely able to restrain myself from considering purchase of a new set of tickets for $4800. I would have had to get a paper route along with a job at McDonalds.

At the end of the day we headed to San Francisco, where our first flight originated, to sleep over before our 6 a.m. departure. Of course, we spent the first half of the drive nattering at each other, words like obsessive compulsive disorder were thrown around a little loosely, in my opinion. But that early flight, if not Mistake #3, at least created a challenge. United counters don't open until 4:30, even in San Francisco, so that by the time our documents were checked, our baggage accepted, and security cleared, we had to run for the plane. The good news was that time pressure, or luck, or possibly good sense, led the document-checking woman to not question my identity. Maybe it's just being old: my son-in-law Drew said it was going to be very hard to say no to an old woman with her itinerary in one hand and her day pack in the other, especially if she teared up a bit. Turned out I didn't have to.

And Mistake #4: Bill left his brand new I-Pad in the lobby of our hotel; it had disappeared within a half hour. Hard not to be suspicious of the hotel staff, isn't it, since this all happened at 4 a.m. We were bailed out of this mistake as we often are, by son Ben who cancelled all the sensitive accounts on the device. But, so much for rapid, easy blogging. It will be internet cafes for me, I guess.

No problem for the final air leg of the trip, in Vancouver to Beijing via China Air. The woman who checked our documents was cheerful and efficient and raised no questions. There isn't much to say about flights over the Pacific except that they are very, very, very, very, very long -- but no crying babies, no sneezing and coughing, in our immediate area. So life is likely good.

The final Mistake, in the What On Earth Was I Thinking: I tried to log on to load this first blog. Tried and Tried. Had no trouble getting to my e-mail through the web. And then put two and two together: I told you all I'd use Blogspot, a Google product. Remember that Google thing with China? Ah well. For now, Bayliss will load this onto the Blog Spot.

Starting to Blog:

To begin with, when did blog become a verb? I'm testing this post, and will begin blogging about our travels soon. Bill and I leave for a 2 1/2 week journey along the Silk Road in China. There are stories to come.