The Pretty Good Wall of China

11 July 2009

 

Bush camp after our pause in Dunhuang; we drove out into the Gobi desert, to overnight in the Yadan National Park, at the Jade Gate Pass. Apparently the final scenes of Hero were filmed here—it was a military outpost during the Han  Dynasty, and important to the trade along the Silk Road in Khotanese jade (hence the name). More interestingly, and also entertainingly, there's a chunk of the Han-era Great Wall of China extant here. As the Lonely Planet says, “refreshingly unrestored”. Read: shite condition. Brilliant, though, as it's deserted and once the only other minivan of tourists had left, we drove through a gap and camped ourselves in the shadow of the Wall. Not your typical day at the office.

 

From the clean and modern and thoroughly pleasant Dunhuang, we moseyed on toward the rather crappier city of Golmud, on the road to Tibet. Golmud exists mainly to house workers in the salt pans, mining and oil drilling, with all the resultant attributes one might expect. We've left Gansu province, and are now in Qinghai (ching-hai), gateway to Tibet. The hotel is decent, but I will never live long enough to understand why Chinese beds are closer in nature to, say, plywood, than to what one might expect of where one will be sleeping. Whatever. Frankly, I'd prefer they looked into some hygienic plumbing. You haven't seen a shite toilet until you've been to China. Ghastly. But funny.

 

Had dinner in a Dungan (Chinese Muslim) restaurant, based solely on the fact that they had pictures to point at. David had a massive pile of ribs, more noodles for me (still better than shashlyk). Mostly Szechuan, which means spicy, and not always agreeable to my tummy. But so good...

 

The boys tried to order beers, only for the Chinese guys working there to point to their prayer caps and laugh at them...but the extraordinary range of sweet tea available everywhere in China makes up for it. Dungan are not Uighur (and therefore not currently being oppressed) but ethnic Chinese. I was sort of torn about hopping off to the East with the Beijing Five, to see some urban culture (and avoid the long driving days in the desert out here), but am so pleased that we stayed the course. This China is not like anything we experience at home—the mix of peoples and food and languages is fascinating. The government's party line hammers home how happy the various groups are to be united under the People's Republic; ethnic unrest while we've been here says otherwise. Beijing can wait.