Saturday morning we schlepped our packs back over to the station for the next train ride. We had all bought lots of provisions from the supermarket in the shiny modern shopping mall under the main plaza in Xi'an, and I lunched in style on French bread and Danish camembert. I thought the camembert quite reasonable at $3 for 4 oz, but Robyn was horrified -- in Australia it would only cost about $1 (U.S.). The evening would be enlivened with beer, rum and macadamia nut liqueur.
To compensate for the length of the trip and the lack of air-conditioning we traveled in soft sleeper -- four bunks to a compartment, with a door. Not only were the bunks softer, with bigger quilts, there was padding on the walls to lean against when using the bunks as seats. Neither the ceiling fan nor my souvenir from the market in Xi'an helped much with the heat. I had organized an all-female compartment, which allowed me to strip down and use my silk sleep sack as a sarong. This worked fine until the woman conductor entered without knocking to refill the vacuum flasks.
(Note -- Intrepid says that a tin mug is indispensable for train travel in China. Intrepid is right. I made soup in it, cooked noodles in it, drank tea, rum and liqueur out of it, and used it to hold hot water for soaking my arthritic hands.)
After 29 hours on the train, with washing facilities consisting of two small hand basins with running cold water, we arrived in Jiayuguan with visions of hot baths and clean clothes. The hotel bathrooms were the kind where the bathroom takes a shower with you (no shower curtains and a drain in the floor) -- no problem. No hot water -- a real problem. We cleaned up with varying degrees of thoroughness with water that felt like snow melt before heading out for email and dinner. Hot water was promised for 7:30 - 9:00 evening and morning. Our group know-it-all (research scientist turned chef) informed us that it was provided exactly as promised -- 7:29: no hot water, 7:30: hot water. The hotels in Beijing and Xi'an were budget, but fine. The hotel in Jiayuguan was distinctly grotty, with minuscule, smelly towels. The pillows were stuffed with some kind of grain and were as hard as a rock, but while hopeless for reading in bed turned out to work quite well as pillows. Since the best hotel in town was not a whole lot more expensive, it seemed an unnecessary economy.
Ten years ago Jiayuguan was a large village, now it's a not very interesting town with an iron and steel factory and a nascent tourist industry. Pollution from the factory seems unlikely to help the tourist industry, which is based on a much restored/renovated fort and a stretch of wall, advertised as the "End of the Great Wall". This was actually where imperial power ended during the Ming dynasty, and those in extreme disfavor were sent into exile through the gates of the fort. (As one of the New Zealanders pointed out, nearly as bad as being sent to Australia.) The Gobi desert to the north certainly looked grim enough -- flat and stony all the way to the horizon. In the other direction the snow-capped peaks of the Qilian Shan floated like a mirage just out of camera range. The fort itself was quite photogenic, especially against the deep blue sky of early morning -- we went before the haze and the tour groups spoiled the view. I perfected another survival technique while climbing the stairs on the "Overhanging Great Wall" -- taking photographs while holding my umbrella, currently doing duty as a sunshade.
The reason for the grotty hotel in Jiayuguan became clear the day we left -- the bus station was right across the street. My first trip on a public bus in Asia was pretty tame - no-one riding on the roof, no livestock and no-one standing in the aisle. We did have a totally in-charge woman conductor with a very loud voice who bossed all the passengers, including our tour leader.
We only made it a couple of stops from the bus station before taking on extra passengers who sat on their bags or on little stools that the conductor produced -- one young couple boarded with a rice cooker and a big bundle -- looking like they were moving house.
After about an hour the gear box gave out. Several westerners got off the bus and stood around in the sun while the locals stayed put. Ten minutes later the driver had the bus working again. Gradually grey rocks gave way to yellow sand, and brown hills to pink. After four hours a group of 16 windmills heralded a fair-sized town -- Anxi. The windmills stood tall and white, their three sails turning gently. After Anxi it was another two hours through unrelieved desert to Dunhuang -- cramped and increasingly hot. I watched the desert pass and realized how easy it would be to die out there.
As the desert gave way to green (corn and cotton) on the outskirts of Dunhuang, we started to revive from the stupor of the bus ride. The hotel -- A/C, bath and shower, soft pillows -- completed the cure. In Dunhuang we encountered the first of a string of "John's Information Cafe's", serving western food such as omelets, pizza, hamburgers, fries and coffee (the imitation was not always exact). The younger members of the group became semi-permanent fixtures, drinking beer until the early hours.
But other food was available. In the large night market I selected an iron pot, heated to boiling point and filled with three kinds of noodles, seaweed, assorted veggies and lamb meatballs -- for six yuan. Across from John's Cafe Robyn and I found a small cafe that sold "northern noodle soup" -- noodles, julienne potatoes, cabbage, ginger and thin pieces of meat for eight yuan -- delicious.
Our first night in Dunhuang coincided with the "First Annual China Dunhuang International Cultural Tourist Festival." This involved the introduction of a great many dignitaries (including two Japanese) and several speeches -- in both Chinese and English -- followed by a number of elaborate dance routines and a couple of singers. Unfortunately we were seated right by the loud speakers and spent a lot of the time with our fingers in our ears. On the plus side, we got the spectacle for free as our attendance reduced the cost of admission to the Mogao Buddhist caves the next morning.
The caves must have been a wonderful sight before the front of the cliff was covered with a conglomerate facade and walkways -- one or two frescoes can still be seen on the outside. Most of the caves are locked, but the few that we saw were spectacular, covered with paintings and filled with statues. A number have hundreds of small Buddha portraits covering the ceiling, and I later bought a bracelet of beads with similar Buddha portraits. Two of the caves contain enormous seated Buddhas carved out of the cliff face -- since the Taliban's desecration in Afghanistan one is now the third largest in the world. Photographs were not allowed, but plenty of postcards were for sale.
Dunhuang's other claims to tourist fame are the "Singing Sands" and "Crescent Lake." We didn't hear the sands sing, and it's difficult to tell whether the lake, which is now fenced off, is actually a crescent. The entrepreneurs out at the dunes offer camel rides, sleds and paragliding.
We got up very early so that we could ride camels out to the dunes to see the sunrise. It turns out that the camels don't go all the way up the dunes - you have to make it up the last couple of hundred feet under your own power, using a wooden stairway laid on the face of the dune. It was worth the effort though. With virtually no light pollution the stars were magnificent in a black sky. Then the dunes gradually showed themselves as the light increased. The sunrise itself was somewhat spoiled by the arrival of a Japanese tour group who shattered the silence we had been maintaining.
Very touristy -- the camels wore numbers on their saddle cloths, and the men leading them made sure that you got back on the right one. It felt much less precarious than riding an elephant, but was also more uncomfortable. The camels had poles on either side to hold the stirrups and a metal hoop in front of the rider. It felt as if I was sitting on the poles not the padding.
Just down the main street from our hotel was a store front advertising foot massage - irresistible. I'm not sure whether it offers other kinds of massage as well: my masseuse was wearing black leather leggings and arm bands and a very short black skirt. There were a number of rooms divided by partitions with swinging doors, containing two arm chairs with antimacassars fronted by two foot stools. Under the first foot stool was a porcelain sink sunk into the floor. The masseuse lined the sink with plastic and put in a sachet of herbs and boiling water. I soaked my feet for 10 minutes in silky smooth water.
The foot massage actually started at thigh level and progressed downwards. It was quite vigorous! Every time I winced she stopped and looked distressed. I had to signal to her to continue. She worked pressure points on the inside and outside of my calves, and the front and sides of my ankles. She snapped my toes, and kneaded the soles of my feet. She really worked over my left foot, which is in worse shape than the right. It was a painful 30 minutes (50 yuan), but my feet definitely felt better the next day.
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