DTNS Weekend Feature - Gansu, China with Amateur Traveler

0:01Hello again, and welcome to another Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition Feed Drop. Last time I did this, it was Bodie Grim. with one of his Kilowatt podcast episodes about car tech. And a lot of you really liked that. I'm venturing a little farther afield to expose you to a different one based on a listener's suggestion. So those of you who listen to DTNS Live, the weekly live show we do, have heard Chris Christensen, the amateur traveler, do little tech and travel tips for us. And one of you asked if maybe we could hear an entire episode of Chris Christensen's Amateur Traveler, because a lot of you didn't realize that he actually has a whole other podcast just like the stuff that he does in tech and travel, but it's not just about tech.

0:48So I asked Chris to give me one of his episodes. We are going to travel the Silk Road in Gansu, China with Chris today. This is mostly just about his trip through China, there is a nice little bit towards the end about some practical tips that will include things like connectivity and more technological stuff. But let me know what you think of this. I think Chris is a great podcaster. He's been doing this for a long time, and you can tell, and he very much knows travel. So please enjoy traveling the Silk Road in Gansu, China, with Chris Christensen, the Amateur Traveler. amateur traveler episode 955 today amateur traveler talks about colorful hills and desolate deserts buddhist caves and high-speed trains hand-pulled noodles and the original great wall of china as we go to the gansu province of china and the silk road this is chris christensen from Amateur Traveler, let's talk about Gansu.

1:52This is another solo episode of Amateur Traveler, and it's also the second part of a two-part series on my recent trip to China. I was there with the Chinese Tourism Board on a two-week press trip with four other journalists and the Chinese Director of Tourism from the LA office, some of whom you'll hear on this show. I'm not going to cover everything I covered in the first episode. So you don't have to listen to the first episode to get value out of this episode, especially if you're listening far in the future. But there'll be some things I covered in the first episode, like cell phone coverage and internet that I won't cover here again, lest I repeat myself.

2:33So listen to that episode if you're interested. So I was there on a two week trip. And the original goal of this press trip was to do this part of the story, is to do the Silk Road from Lanzhou to Dunhuang in the Ganshu province of China. All the parts we covered in last week's episode were added on when people learned that they had journalists coming. And if you look on a map, the Ganshu province of China has a really long skinny shape between those two cities. And it's because it's the Hosi Corridor. And that is a historic corridor that fits in between the Tibetan Plateau to the south and the Gobi Desert to the north.

3:22And it was the Silk Road in China. It was the way you got trade out to the west. And it's also where influences from the West, like Buddhism, would come into China. And it was a very historically significant area. If you take all the provinces of China and you exclude the autonomous regions like Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang out to the West, then there are 22 provinces that Beijing controls. And it is the seventh largest of those. So it's not the largest province, but it has the second largest number of UNESCO sites. And that's because of the long history in this region. David Lang, who is one of my traveling companions, originally from Hong Kong, had this to say.

4:11Well, the subway, of course, we all learn about that as a Chinese woman in Hong Kong. We learned that when we were very little, but we just learned the names and the brief history. So this trip, I found it very amazing. We visited a lot of places where I just heard of the name before, but this time I seen it with myself and saw the exhibitions. I was told by our guide, the history and all that. So it's really breathtaking, very informative. And when we talk about what history we learned about the Silk Road, one of the historic things that you need to know in this is that this area of China goes back more than 2 ,000 years.

4:49During the Han Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty is roughly 200 BC to 200 AD, the Emperor of China, and this is Emperor Wu of China, had a problem with his neighbors. This particular part of what is now China was not ruled by the Han Chinese, but was ruled by the Xiongnu. And Tsiongnu, we don't know a lot about them, but they were, we believe, a coalition of nomad peoples. Our tour guide, Peter, who was our tour guide for the entire Gansu portion of this trip, would call them the Hun. And there is a connection potentially between the Tsiongnu and the Hun people in the West. We don't know for sure if it's the same people.

5:37It's not definitive. but I'm going to call them Xiangnu, but Peter would have called them the Huns. So Emperor Wu sends out a general, a 19-year-old cavalry prodigy, Huo Chubing, to capture this region and to establish four different cities along this route. And he had three goals. If I may quote Mulan, one was to defeat the Hun, and then two was to get horses to help fight against these nomad peoples. so better horses from Central Asia and allies from Central Asia, and then to protect the Silk Road, to basically establish China's control over this portion of the world. So all of the places that we're seeing here past Lanzhou are captured by the Chinese, by that general, more than 2 ,000 years ago.

6:30So we've got some old history here. And the four cities that the Chinese built at that time are still around. They are Wu Wei, Zhang Ye, Zhu Chuang, and Dunhuang. And my apologies again for my Mandarin pronunciation. We didn't visit all of these on this trip, but it's certainly something there are things to see all along this corridor. So we started in Lanzhou. It's an interesting area to fly into. You're flying over what I would call brown, or as we say in California, golden hills, before you get to Lanzhou. And through these brown hills would be a spider web of greenery that was one field wide fields going up these little tiny valleys, almost like veins is what they looked like.

7:19When you get to Lanzhou, it flattens out and turns into miles and miles of green fields, although all small fields. All the fields that I saw in this part of China didn't look like they were the size fields you'd want if you were using a tractor. They all still looked like people using traditional farming methods. In the middle of these fields, every once in a while you'd see a one square mile area of high-rise apartments for a new city that had been put in. The airport in Lanzhou is wonderful. It is probably twice or three times the size that it needs to be right now. They recently put in a new airport.

7:57Modern, clean, efficient, and really sized for the future. Lanzhou is right on the Yellow River. And by yellow, we really mean brown. Lanzhou, in the summertime, that river is quite full of silt and mud. And so it's a brown river. And it wasn't crossed by any permanent bridge until the 1800s when German engineers using steel from Germany and from the U.S. because at that time there was not steel production in China built a bridge around the river. And so they still celebrate that and use that to this day. Before that, and you can do this in Lanzhou if you want to, you can cross the river on a ferry where the ferry is a small raft that is held up by inflated sheepskins.

8:44This is a tourist opportunity where you can go and cross the river and float down the river and then they would bring you back to your starting point on speedboat, which they did not have in the mid-1800s when this bridge was created. Lanzhou is also known for its hand-pulled beef noodle soup. And so we had a chance both to try the hand-pulled beef noodle soup, and also we went to a place that was the Museum of Noodles there, where we had a chance to make our own hand-pulled noodles. And we had someone who demonstrated how quickly he could make hand-pulled noodles that were all the same thickness and just the right length, and then we had a chance to try it.

9:27Ours did not turn out as well, I will have to say. It's clear that it takes some practice to get there. There were three of the things that we saw along the shore of the Yellow River. One was a statue dedicated to the Mother River because this is really key to the start of the Chinese civilization 7 ,000 years ago. And then the second was a water wheel. It's the last of the surviving water wheels that was used to pump water out of the Yellow River and into irrigation and into drinking water in the city. Interesting to see. It's a recreation. And the third one is a statue of a Buddhist monk. And this is the monk Xuanzang who went to the west in the year 629.

10:14At this point, Buddhism has been in China through the Silk Road from roughly 60 AD. with the first temple being founded in China in the year 68. But there were problems with different translations of the Buddhist text disagreeing, and so this monk went to go to get the source. He went to India. And the interesting thing about this is it tells you how significant the Silk Road is because you'd think if one is going from China to India, you'd just go straight. But there's some great big mountains in the way, the Himalayas. And so his route, I'll put a link to a map in the show notes for this episode, went to the west.

10:55So Lanzhou out to Dunhuang and then out to Tashkent and Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan, looping down through Kabul in what is now Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and then almost all the way across India to eastern India to Nalanda. He studied there for a while and then came back with hundreds of Buddhist manuscripts so that they had the correct doctrine. But this whole trip took 17 years. And so it's just interesting to see how the Silk Road is tied to Buddhism and how even the connection to India is going through this elaborate route to the West. That is how key this Silk Road is, even in the 600s.

11:47And it's also one of the reasons why in Gansu you'll find quite a few Buddhist caves, caves with Buddhas or with Buddhist art in them, including some famous ones that we'll visit later in the trip. But while you're in Lanzhou, one must see, I think, is the museum there. This is the Gansu Provincial Museum, and it's a good basis for understanding some of the history as you go along in this particular trip. You can get an English-speaking tour guide at the museum, and a lot of the information in the museum is available in English. You can see a statue of that general we talked about who went out to the west to capture this area of the Silk Road.

12:31You can see recreations of some of the Buddhist artwork that is going to be found in some of the caves in Gansu, including the ones I'm going to talk about later, and learn more about the Silk Road and where it went and the significance of it. We also went to two markets that I quite enjoyed in Lanzhou. We went to a day market and a night market, both of which were quite enjoyable. the day market that we went to is the tauhai market in the middle of the aning district which is central and north of the river the lanjo is a long skinny city because it goes along the river between the hills and you could buy anything in this market they had fresh meat they had fresh produce they had baked goods they had teas and all sorts of things and spices just even as a photographer.

13:23Just a cool place to go. There are four different night markets in the city. I think the one we went to is on Tongue Road. That's at least how my photo is geotagged for that. But you can certainly ask at the concierge of your hotel for the nearest night market. A great variety of foods available there as well as a whole other section on clothing and other goods. When I say hotel concierge, that reminds me that we stayed in the Langeau Olympic Sports Rosie Hoissy Hotel, which was a lovely modern hotel to the west of town. The one thing that a lot of these hotels had that I forgot to mention last time is there would be little robots in the lobby where if you ordered something from DoorDash or some similar vendor, they would come and put your order in a little robot.

14:13And I guess they would put in the room number and then the robot would come and deliver whatever your delivery was, which is just pretty cool. Similarly cool at the airport, all of the different luggage carts had an LCD screen on it, which had both ads, but also the flight schedule for arriving flights, which I thought was pretty cool. The other thing I didn't mention is if you go to a tea house in Lanzhou and then to the west of here, you're likely to get eight treasure tea. And eight treasure tea is a very sweet tea, but it has a lot of stuff in it. You put in rosebud flowers, chrysanthemum flowers, dried longan, which is similar to lychee, goji berries, red dates, ginseng, green tea, rock sugar.

15:01and then you drink it with a little bowl on top of the tea so that you're filtering out all of these things that are floating in the tea. And I guess you can also eat the contents of the tea as you're going, although we usually just drank it, and they'll come by periodically and pour more water in. Very sweet tea, very tasty though. And then from there, we took the high-speed train. We're no longer in an area where we have to take buses, and so we took the high-speed train to our second destination. in terms of the high-speed train you can only book it about two weeks in advance or less and it's not that expensive it's a great way to get around it's comfortable although one of the train rides we had there was a very quick turnaround in one of the stations and the conductor was literally pushing people off of the train and pulling people onto the train to try and keep the train on time because a lot of people were getting off of that station a lot of people were getting on, but a great option for getting around China in general, and especially for this particular itinerary.

16:05Our second destination was Zhangye. The site that we went to see in the area was the Mati Temple Grottos. And so these are temples that have been carved into the rock here, this soft sandstone rock where caves have been made holding different Buddhas and Buddha images. The oldest site here probably dates back to the 5th or 6th century, so the 400s or the 500s. And then there's newer temples that are more from the Ming dynasty, so like the 1400s. But the oldest site, portions of the rock face have collapsed in an earthquake. But you can still go inside these caves, and even though the original Buddhas were gone and they They were replaced about 100 years ago in the Qing dynasty.

16:54In the back of the cave, you could see these old images dating much further back than that of various Buddhas. They weren't always in great repair compared to the ones we'll see later in this trip. But a very beautiful sight, a very interesting sight as you're looking at these caves carved into the rock in multiple different stories in this. You can go up inside some of the old caves in very narrow, dark passageways, but you're going to get a view out of the cave more so than a view of things in the cave because most of those caves are empty at this time. And that was really the one thing that we saw in Zhangye.

17:37And then we headed on next day again via the high-speed rail to Dunhuang. Now, I do want to mention there are two other cities of these four cities that were built along the Silk Road that we skipped on this trick. The first one was Wu Wei that we'd already passed by this point. And probably the most famous relic that comes from there is the bronze galloping horse, which you would have seen by this point in the museum in Lanzhou. Very small bronze horse, very well crafted, though. So not only did we skip Wu Wei, but the high-speed rail doesn't actually go there right now. So you'd have to take a slower train from Longzhou to Zhangye.

18:18You actually stop in Xinying, which is the capital of the nearby province of Qinghai, the province that is predominantly composed of the plateau of Tibet. So when they built the high-speed rail, they wanted to connect the capitals first. And sometime from now, Wu Wei will be connected as well. We skipped Wu Wei, and then we also skipped, and I probably would have loved to get there, Jiayu Guan, which is the end of the Great Wall from the Ming Dynasty. So if you go there, you can see the western end of the Great Wall built in the 1400s. And the reason for that is that in the Ming Dynasty, Dunhuang, which we're about to go to, was no longer included in the dynasty.

19:07They had contracted their borders, and we'll hear a little more about that later. We ate at a traditional lamb restaurant in Dunhuang and then went to the night market there, which is a permanent night market. And it's a very pretty downtown. Most of the downtown is very new because, again, the city had been abandoned in the Ming dynasty and only reestablished in the Qing about 100 years ago. The Night Market Street in that area have a lot of trees and lights in the trees. And it's interesting because it's an oasis town. As you're taking the train heading into Dunhuang, before you get there, there is nothing.

19:47It is flat. It is sand and little tiny pebbles and just flat as anything except for some wind power farms that you'll see in the area. So you're really at an oasis of green in the middle of a desert. And our next stop was one of my highlights, but also one of the highlights for Michael Snell, travel photographer and traveling companion. And this is what Michael says. Silk Road, a lot of what interested me was the geology. We went to the Danksy Rainbow Mountain region, which I'd seen a lot on social media. Instagram is full of pictures of the Rainbow Mountain. It was nice to see that it actually was as colorful as many of the photos.

20:33You sometimes wonder when you see things on Instagram if they are as they appear. But this didn't let me down at all. It was worth seeing. And then toward the end of the trip, we went to the Yandang geological area, which was also very interesting in a different way. More desolate, spread out, kind of like a Chinese monument valley in a way. I've been seeing other parts of the Silk Road on previous trips, so it was kind of nice to connect the dots and see some of what was in between those previous outings. So talking about that first thing that Michael's referring to, that Jiangye Danxia Geopark, so that's a UNESCO Geopark, and you've probably heard of it as the Rainbow Mountains.

21:16And it is quite spectacular and stunning to think of how this formed geologically. So picture that there was a desert or a seabed at some point and that there was a lot of red iron-rich soil that was laid down. But then on top of that, some yellow soil that doesn't have the iron. But then on top of that, more red soil. And then on top of that, more yellow soil. And at times you can see at least 20 different layers where this soil was laid down in various time periods. and then the whole thing uplifted so that it's at a 45 degree angle. So you're looking at mountains or hills that have stripes running at a 45 degree angle up them in yellows and reds and some shades of green and tan and gray.

22:07And they're quite spectacular. When we did the VIP tour, there's two different tours you can do for this geopark. if you're there on your own. You can do the regular tour where you get to go to a viewing platform kind of at the edge of the area. The regular tour is about$12 and the VIP tour is$50, but I highly recommend it. It lets you go more into the area and so you're just there with a smaller group of people. We also had a guide, but that guide did not speak English, so we didn't get anything out of her narration. And it makes three stops. The first two are viewing platforms for this Rainbow Mountains kind of landscape, this colorful striped landscape.

22:49And as Michael said, as brightly colored as you see on Instagram, more brightly colored after a rain, we are told. And we were there just shortly after rain. I'm not sure that it affected the colors that we were seeing, but very, very beautiful area. And you stop at two different viewing areas where you can see these rainbow mountains and you can climb up to various levels to see them. And then on the VIP tour, you then also head into an area that I would say is almost more like a little Bryce Canyon with more hoodoo-like structures. This is in gray rock, not colorful rock. And of course, as with any structure like this, as people see it, they're thinking that it reminds them of something.

23:36So this rock looks like the Lion King and this rock looks like a camel. But I had to laugh because some of the things that they were seeing weren't necessarily what I would see. So one of the rocks reminded people of an old turtle asking about longevity. And another one is labeled the Drunken Poetic Genius. Although, as we recall, that it was a drunken poet asking a turtle about longevity, which wasn't entirely accurate there. But, you know, all of these structures here that your imagination is able to decide what they look like. And you have this area pretty much to yourself. It's really just the people in the VIP tour that even get to see this region.

24:19Although I'm told if you didn't do the VIP tour, there's another park, not a UNESCO Geopark nearby that has similar sorts of structures. So they're all carved by erosion here. If you want an even more special tour than we had, we saw some people touring by helicopter and then some other people touring by ultralight. So that would be kind of special. I don't know for sure that I would do that one, but I would think about it. Our first stop the next day was the Mogao Grottos, and that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Here's one by traveling companion and travel writer Michael Solander had to say about them.

24:59In terms of our final portion of the trip, when we were in Denghao, there were so many highlights. It's really hard to pick just one. But certainly the Beguile Caves come to mind in terms of just the sheer number of the caves and the incredible artwork that is as fresh today as the day when it was painted. Some of them go back to the 4th century. Again, the experience was really enhanced by two films that we saw prior that gave a lot of history and context. One was an IMAX film and one was You Are There, depiction. and then we had a great guide and it was just a super experience. To expand on what Michael is saying, this is a group of caves all carved into the rock, none of them naturally occurring, but at least 735 different caves, 60 of which are open to the public.

25:55On your tour, you will get eight of them. And these caves were carved from the 400s to the 1400s over a 1 ,000-year period. And there is an English-speaking tour available, so we had an English-speaking guide for that. And you'll hear a few words from her in a minute. We actually finally saw some Westerners. This is the first time on our trip and one of the only times in this itinerary where there were other people who were not just from China, including meeting Vincenzo from Milan, who was traveling solo in this entire region, spoke no Mandarin, was using translation apps to get by and using chat GPT for menus because he used chat GPT to give him a description of what that dish was, not just a word-by-word translation, which the translation apps would give them.

26:44And there was a couple from Germany. He is actually taller than me. It's the first time in two weeks that I had to look up to someone. And now I found that I'm staring at the Westerners. And Michael mentioned the two movies that you see ahead of time. The first movie you see talks about the history, talks about the Silk Road, and it talks about the connection to Buddhism as it comes in through the Silk Road and the starting the carving of these caves. And you're all seeing this reenact that, of course, translation was available through headphones in English. So that was great, although it was a little delayed.

27:18So we were always seeing what we were hearing. But it was great in terms of establishing the history of what you were looking at. And then the second experience was an IMAX experience, and this was taking you inside various caves. It might be ones that you would see. It might be different ones, or it might be well-known ones, and was pointing out some of the symbology. It would point out that this is the future Buddha, and this is the past Buddha, or it would point out that here are Buddha's two companions, the young companion and the older companion, who are often depicted in Buddhist statues or would talk about the cosmology or would point out the Apsaras were flying celestial beings.

28:04There would be places where there are small Buddhas that are drawn as if there were a thousand different Buddhas. And some of them may be using stencils because they're identical figures. Identical figures, except for maybe the background color and the background color would have the four different colors that would represent the four different elements in Buddhism cosmology. The same four colors you would see in prayer flags. You can see how some of the older ones, the figures of Buddha are more Indian looking and some of the newer ones, they're more Chinese looking. And you would get all of that with a virtual tour, which is great because it was actually better lit than the caves themselves.

28:44And also in the caves themselves, you are not allowed to take any pictures. And so that is disappointing as a photographer. It's better to be an audio podcaster because I get to describe it where the photographers didn't get any pictures of it. But there is a museum you can visit before or afterwards which has recreations of some of the caves. All the caves are numbered now. They weren't numbered originally. and so you can see that this particular cave that's recreated is cave 731 or whatever. I have some pictures of those. You can find all of my pictures will be linked in the show notes for this particular episode.

29:24And if you're seeing pictures of the depictions of the caves and the Mugo caverns, those would be recreations. But they're very accurate recreations, and it was nice to be able to have that record at least of what we were seeing. But the first thing that you talk about when you get there, unfortunately, is cultural appropriation. The old joke goes, why is it that the Great Pyramid is the only one of the original seven wonders of the world that is still standing? And the answer, of course, is it's too big to fit in the British Museum. There was inside the Mughal Grottos a library cave that was found in 1900.

30:06And that cave had a lot of scrolls that were original scrolls from the 400s to the 1400s. And many of those scrolls are now in the British Museum or in a museum in Paris. And our guide told us the story of two particular archaeologists, adventurers, explorers, the British archaeologist Arl Stein and the French archaeologist and sinologist Paul Pelliot in their interaction with the Taoist monk who discovered the library cave. 100 years ago, this was the Taoist temple. Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu. He lived here. His job was to take care of this Taoist temple. This area was fully preserved and abandoned.

30:57All sand came down and covered some entrances of the caves. So he went there to clean the sand. One day, he found something different on the paintings. So he found the library cave. That was in 1900. He read a report to the Dunhuang governor, but they didn't pay attention. OK, seven years later, in 1907, Auro Stein came from Turpan to Dunhuang, following the Great War of the Han Dynasty. According to the records, Auro Stein stayed here in a tent. Originally, here was some farmland. He heard about that there is a library cave they wanted to see. Thousands of those pieces of manuscripts were taken by Auro Stein.

31:35The story from the British Museum, they say Aurestan paid money to buy those manuscripts from a Taoist monk, Wang Yuanlu. But he knew this value. He was an uneducated person. He just knew this is an old thing. That's it. So he gave very little money to get a thousand manuscripts. Same thing by Paul Pilyeu. But Paul Pilyeu could speak Chinese. He made a very good relation with Taoist monk, Wang Yuanlu. And Wang Yuanlu let him go inside of the library cave. Paul Pilio was shocked. He slowly opened each score of the manuscripts. He selected the best quality ones. Those manuscripts are preserved in Musi Guime in Paris.

32:16So where's the library cave? Library cave is down here. Behind the trees, you will see that there are three stories of a pavilion. So this was built by Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu. But the library cave is not like a library. It's just like storage. So why put all those manuscripts in different periods in the same cave? Some are from the 7th century, some are from the 10th century, some are from the 4th or 5th century. Why you put together? People believe that because when Mongolian people started to conquer many lands to fight with the dynasty Xixia, before the Mongols came to this region, this area was occupied by the Western Xia dynasty Xixia.

32:56People probably worried about the Mongols to destroy those valuable manuscripts. So they connected all those manuscripts, maybe from different temples, maybe from different places, hiding in these remote caves here. But remember, in this site, the first cave, according to record, was built in 366 AD. But where is the first cave nowadays? We don't know. because there is no number this is the first cable or something like that. Fourth century. Lasting to 14th century, that means 1 ,000 years. Why stop at the 14th century? Because Jiayu-Guan was built east of Dunhuang, 400 kilometers away. So that actually became the border of the Ming dynasty.

33:41So that means they put Dunhuang outside of Ming territory. So then the area was abandoned. The second reason, because Chinese shipping has developed very fast. started at the Ming Dynasty to transport the Chinese goods by boat to Taiwan, to Hanoi, to Vietnam, to Malacca Street, to Sri Lanka. So then Silk Road almost stopped. The Sea Road was coming. So all of this basically preserved in part because this area was abandoned in the Ming Dynasty, in part because of the rise of shipping. But throughout these 735 caves, there are 2 ,400 statues, Many of them repaired or repainted 100 years ago when the Chang dynasty came back here.

34:26And there are 45 ,000 square meters of paintings. So that's a lot. One interesting thing is that in the individual caves, and we went into Cave 29, which is from the Tong dynasty and Cave 23. Cave 329, they were paintings in the lower portion of the cave of the donors who paid the money to have this cave painted. And that was often the case is these caves were a form of devotion for someone. Some rich person who wanted to be remembered is depicted or a group of rich people are depicted in the cave along with Buddhas and acolytes and celestial beings and those sort of things. Cave 332 had a reclining Buddha and they had the past, present, and future Buddhas.

35:25All of the statues here, so there are three groups of statues. Who are they? So this one is the past Buddha and the present Buddha and the future Buddha. So one Buddha with two Bodhisattvas. But all of their colors were repainted late. But the main structures in their bodies are original. Can you see the folds? Look at the folds, the details. So all of the folds on their robes are very fluid. So they were from Tang Dynasty. An interesting thing about the donors in that cave that are depicted is that they appear to be Mongolian. Everybody gets to see Cave 17, which is the library cave, and Cave 16, which is one of the larger caves, has a large Buddha in it.

36:14We saw cave 296 and 61, 62, and 63, which are family caves from the Tao family that controlled this area for 190 years. And so a very powerful family that is depicted in those caves. And then cave 96, everyone gets to see, and that is the giant Buddha. And it's a very, very tall Buddha in a very, very short cave. I mean, short from how far they carved it in. So when you walk into the entrance and you want to see the head of the Buddha, you're looking almost straight up. After lunch, we went to a bookstore, a very beautiful bookstore. Books only available in Mandarin, so I did not buy anything.

36:57We did, though, happen to run into a family originally from China that were traveling all around the world because they had lived in Santa Clara, my hometown, and apparently had done pretty well in Silicon Valley. And then we were supposed to go to another UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is the Singing Sand Dunes and the Crescent Lake, where we were supposed to have a one-hour camel ride on those two hump camels that are popular in the region. That, unfortunately, was ended by a sandstorm, which caused the whole area to close. It wasn't the sort of thing that you wanted to say, hey, there's a sandstorm going by.

37:37Let's go out to the sand dunes. But right outside of town, you can see them from the streets are what look like hills, but they are hills of sand. And that is called the Singing Sand Dunes. And if you look at the pictures of the Crescent Lake area and the Singing Sand Dunes, it's quite a picturesque spot. And particularly Michael, the photographer, was very sad to not get a chance to go out there. But it just didn't fit into our very busy schedule the next day. And then that night, we attended something that I would very much recommend, but very unusual, the dance drama Music and Dance of Dunhuang.

38:14So this is a multimedia presentation with live actors where you, in part, follow through the story. There were some things in English and Chinese written, but there was no spoken dialogue. but you were hearing about the musical instruments and the music that would be depicted in those scrolls that were found in the library cave. And you start in a big room where there's a rainstorm and there are live actors around you, and you follow them into another room where there are demons that are jumping out at you, and follow them then into a theater where there is a presentation very much like Cirque du Soleil where there are jugglers and there are people flying overhead.

39:08And it is quite an amazing spectacle, I would have to say, and worth seeing. And they put this on multiple times a day so that there is something for people to do in the evening when all of the main sites have closed. At this point, we only had one full day left plus travel. And that was a full day and included some very interesting sites. We first drove about three and a half hours from Dunhuang off into the desert, into that very desolate landscape that I was talking about earlier. That's just flat and nondescript and kind of gray colored. Until we got to Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark. This is UNESCO Geopark.

39:51it's the landscape that Michael Snell mentioned earlier that was kind of like Monument Valley. So you've got this very flat sand and pebbles that is this gray color. And then sticking out from this, you have sandstone structures where most of this sandstone that's sticking up has been weathered away. And obviously there are different shapes as there are with all of these things. So this one looks like the Sphinx and that one looks like a lion. But I thought probably the most interesting one was what they call the Armada. And the Armada was a particular spot where you could see that there were parallel ridges of these sandstone structures, probably no more than 50 feet tall on average.

40:40But they were almost as if a giant had taken his hand and scratched through this sandstone to get down to this sand. So they were these long grooves where the sandstone was gone and the desert sand had been revealed. So quite a striking landscape, quite barren. If you've seen the latest Mulan movie, the live action one, I think they shoot some scenes both here and then also at the Rainbow Mountain site. So they are spectacular enough that they've been used in movies and I suspect they will be used in more. And the way you explore this site is you get on a tour bus and the tour bus will go to various stops in a loop and it'll stop for five minutes at this site and 15 minutes at that site.

41:34and then give you a chance to get off and take your pictures, take your selfies, and then you'll get back on the same bus. And so they're going to wait for everybody to go. They might get a little impatient if you're not back in a bit. And then there are a number of different excursions that you can do while you're there. For instance, like a Jeep excursion, a TV excursion, another open-air bus that will drive into the center of this, a dune buggy. So you'd have to pay more for those. But actually, it looks like they could be fun to get more into the center of these structures. Some of them I thought looked like stone yurts.

42:12They were these rounded structures that were made out of stone. And it was a yellow-colored sandstone. But a very interesting site. And then our last site for sightseeing on this trip was halfway back then again to Dunhuang, where we'd actually stop for a rest stop on the way out. And that is Yumen Pass, which literally means the Jade Gate. And this is a site that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Silk Roads, the route network of Chang 'an Tianxian Corridor. Long name, but a UNESCO site because of its historic significance. And here you'll find the remains of the original Han Great Wall of China.

43:03So this doesn't look anything like the Great Wall of China you've seen pictures of. Because this is made out of pressed earth and straw. And so it's really kind of an adobe great wall. But it was built here along this Huxi Corridor to protect the caravans. Caravans would be riding south of it. And the nomad peoples would be north of it was the idea. And then there would be gates, towers, and forts periodically along this wall to control this area. and especially to protect the caravans from bandits and from these nomad peoples. And there are still some of these forts and towers left in various states of disrepair.

43:47But considering that they're 2 ,000 years old, it's really pretty amazing to see this. And one of the reasons why you can see this particular remains of the original Han Great Wall is that, and remember we said the Ming Dynasty contracted. There were some problems with water shortages in Dunhuang, and so they contracted, and the end of the Ming Great Wall, as we mentioned, was one of those other three cities that was built in this Huxi Corridor. And so because they didn't build over the Han Great Wall with the Ming Great Wall, you can still see the remains of it here at the Yumen Pass. You get on a tour bus again and go out first to the Great Wall where there's just a little bit of it left and it's not all that high.

44:34You can hike up a little ways to get a view at the remains of one of the guard towers. The wall was taller than me, maybe 10 feet, I would guess. Then they'll take you over to a larger castle, which was also a granary based on some of the archaeology there that was a good-sized building that looks out on this pass and on the river here. This is the Shule River. And then they come back to a third site, which is a small castle, the Fangpan Castle. All of this with this view of this valley. This is a little oasis area. So this is a very green area with wetlands where you have driven through just desolate areas to get here.

45:18And it's interesting just because it's so significant historically and because it's so old. It's very cool to see the Great Wall and to just even realize that there were two different Great Walls and that this is the remains of the first one. That kind of wraps up the sightseeing that we did on the trip. I covered a lot of the logistics in terms of internet and cell phones and bathrooms and hotels on the first one. So I'm not going to cover that. Again, if you're interested in an updated version of what it's like to go to China in 2025, go back to the episode on Beijing and Ghana, which I just did last week.

45:57If you want to do tours in this area, I'll put links in the show notes to China tours that I found that include the Silk Road on Tour Radar. Tour Radar is a site that I've been using that is a great aggregator of multi-day trips. And then also Director Wu from the Los Angeles China Tourism Board recommended a particular vendor for tours to contact if you're looking for doing something more independently or if you're looking for some of their organized tours. And that is Chinatour.com. And again, I haven't used them personally, but Director Wu recommended them. And after traveling with him for 10 days, I certainly trust him and his opinion on things.

46:41Thanks again to the China Tourism Board for sponsoring this trip. It was a long trip, but it was a great trip and included a lot of things. And I would go back to this area. I'd love to take my wife back to this area and show her some of the things that I saw and then see some more of, especially some of the old things like the other Buddhist grottos or the end of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall that I didn't get a chance to see on this trip. As we get to some of our wrap-up questions, I am standing in the prettiest spot in all of Gansu, or at least in the Silk Road Hsi Corridor part. Where am I standing and what am I looking at?

47:22It's kind of a tie for natural sites. It's got to be the Rainbow Mountain, the Dancia Landform Geological Park. But for art, it would have to be the Mogo Caves. They were pretty amazing. I mean, 700 different caves with this ancient Buddhist art was pretty stunning. One thing that makes me laugh and say only in the Silk Road in Gansu, it is an area that can give you whiplash in terms of what time period your brain is in. because you have both these long ancient traditions, things like eight treasures, tea and old markets and little tiny fields of people who are still plowing with animals. And then you're on a high speed train and you're in a hotel with robots.

48:12So from moment to moment, you may not know what century you're in. Although also the other thing that made me laugh was the drunken poet asking a questions about longevity or something like that. And if I had to summarize the region in just three words, what three words would I use? Well, obviously Silk Road Treasures would be my three words. And I'll give the last words for this particular episode to my traveling companion, Michael Solander. Overall, I can't endorse China enough as a first-time visitor. People are warm and friendly. The access to so many cultural treasures and just wonders of the world almost leaves me speechless.

48:57Thanks as always to the patrons of the show who help support Amateur Traveler financially. A special thanks to the newest patron, Michelle, the Traveling Realtor. Thanks, Michelle, for your support. If you're interested in learning more about how you can become a patron of the show, go to patreon.com slash amateur traveler. New on the amateur traveler blog since the last episode went out is a blog post about the Cumbrus and Toltec Scenic Mountain Railroad. And that's in New Mexico, America's most authentic steam railroad. And then five expert tips to get road trip ready. Hopefully there'll be some other blog posts too, but I am leaving on Friday for the Peruvian Amazon for my next adventure.

49:44I heard from Milap, who happened to be in town in the San Jose area of California and asked if we could get together for coffee. And I would love to get together for coffee with listeners of the show, as long as you let me have a Diet Coke or a cup of tea instead. But unfortunately, we were not able to meet because I was in China. But if you're in the area, do let me know. Former guest on the show and patron of the show, Jeff Ulfs, wrote about the show we did on Samoa. I love Samoa and Samoans. I have many Samoans living in my city. It is said that Samoans are the Irish of the Pacific, passionate about their religion and very friendly.

50:19I climbed the very steep way to Robert Louis Stevenson's grave. I had to laugh. The high school track and field team ran up the trail to the summit and back before I even hit the halfway mark up. Fa 'a Samoa, the Samoan way. Jeff. Thanks, Jeff. Always great to hear from you. If you'd like to continue on with this Silk Road adventure, join me next May with the Amateur Traveler trip when we go to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and we visit some of those cities that came up in this show like Samarkand. Go to AmateurTraveler.com slash trips or just drop me an email. And with that, we're going to end this episode of Amateur Traveler.

50:59If you have any questions, send an email to Chris2X at gmail.com or better yet. leave a comment on this episode at amateurtraveler.com and thanks so much for listening

51:15I got to see one more cathedral I got to sit in one more cafe I know that I should be heading home but maybe not, maybe not today

51:35Thank you.