Backpacks and Bra Straps (18 page)

Turpan happens to be a world famous grape-growing valley, so we were taken to a lovely spot for lunch that felt like an oasis amidst the desolate surroundings. The small restaurant was open and breezy, shaded by a thick covering of green vines heavy with ripe grapes. Stepping out of our flip-flops and sandals, we climbed onto a cushioned bed and sat cross-legged around the short table. As was the custom in China, the table was draped with a colourful plastic sheet that held plates, a jar full of chopsticks, napkins, and two hot thermoses of green tea. Though the restaurant was situated in the middle of what seemed to be a parking lot of some sort, it was refreshing to sit in the shade, even if it did feel a bit like picnicking in a garage.

Ammon couldn’t have timed our visit here better, as it was early September, the peak of the growing season, when all the fruits were perfectly ripened and fresh. We overindulged in sweet, juicy cantaloupe, green grapes, giant watermelon, delicious naan bread, and my current favourite, a typical Central Asian dish called
lagman.
It was like the Asian version of spaghetti – something I’d dearly missed from home – but with an amazingly spicy meat and vegetable sauce. Bree and Mom had a hard time eating food that was too hot or spicy, so they stuck with the fruit and naan bread.

In the hotel where we had been staying in Turpan, we’d been enjoying huge pink-and-white-swirl ice cream cones that only cost six cents. They were absolutely scrumptious, and we still had no self-discipline when it came to eating ice cream, even after they’d made us ill (according to Ammon, at least – but that was something we obviously didn’t want to believe).

We were actually staying in our hotel illegally; it was only supposed to accommodate locals. Tourists were expected to stay in specifically segregated areas designed to cater to visitors, but we, of course, were in search of a more authentic route. The owner had refused to put us up at first, but he’d finally relented and allowed us to stay and enjoy the same services available to the locals. For example, we could go to a nearby restaurant and stuff ourselves for less than a dollar. The night before, we’d found a small hole-in-the-wall joint serving lagman dished out from a giant metal pot. Half a dozen boiled goat heads, just like the ones we’d seen at the Kashgar market, were lying on top, like cherries on a sundae. The locals might’ve paid extra to have a head included, but the owner scooped around them to load up our plates, and it was delicious.

Biting into a juicy piece of cantaloupe, Ammon said, “After lunch, we’re heading for a museum about wells.”

“Well, well, well,” Bree said as I shot him one of my very best ‘Seriously Ammon?’ looks.

“Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but our trip has not suddenly gotten very boring. However–”

Bree interrupted him. “How did you know that that was exactly what I was thinking?” Her voice had a surprised tone to it, like she thought he could read minds.

Ammon didn’t appreciate her interruption, but he soldiered on. “The irrigation system is called
karez,
which means ‘well’ in Uyghur. Karezes are unique to this part of China, which is full of wells and underground reservoirs. I don’t think they have them anywhere else in the world. We’ll see lots of cool stuff like that.” Noting our still definitely-less-than-impressed faces, he conceded our point, saying, “Okay, so maybe it does sound a bit boring. But honestly, it’s not. I promise.”

Grape-drying structures with tons of little windows lined both sides of the road leading to the karez museum, where the first exhibit explained the process in detail. Vines covered with browned, sun-dried raisins begged to be picked, but Ammon herded us along quickly to the diagrams of the wells and told us more about what a karez was and how they functioned.

“They dug straight down to the water level and then carved out paths underneath from one shaft to the next, making an underground tunnel and a natural downhill river. There are a hundred and sixty-three thousand, sixty-eight shafts in total.”

“That sounds pretty incredible, all right. But isn’t that, like, a lot of digging? Why doesn’t anybody actually know about this? Isn’t that almost as impressive as building the Great Wall of China? I mean, that’s an awful lot of shafts,” I said.

“Yeah, and each one is anywhere from ten to ninety metres deep (32–295 ft). Plus, they had to connect all of those tunnels underground, so they ended up with five thousand kilometres (3,106 mi) of canals above and below ground. So yes, it is ‘a lot of digging’, as you put it.”

“It was also a very dangerous job, I might add, because it’s pretty easy to get crushed in collapses and stuff, like what happens to mine workers sometimes,” Ammon said. “The guys who dug and maintained the wells were specially trained and didn’t usually live all that long. Society treated them like superstars, giving them high pay, women, whatever they wanted so they would continue doing it and keep the settlements alive. Without that water, nobody would be able to live in this area.”

“And they did it all with just basic hand tools, don’t forget,” Mom said. “No hydraulic jackhammers for them…”

Down one of the shafts, we walked along a twelve-hundred-year-old canal that was ten metres below the surface (32 ft). We could feel the moist, cool air long before we saw the water. A wooden fence prevented us from getting closer, but you could still look down the dark, circular tunnel through a section of observation glass on the floor. Watching the constant flow of shallow, clear water as it breezed past beneath our feet awoke a maddening thirst within me.

“You’d never guess there was this much water down here, would you? It’s ingenious. There’s no better way to conserve water in such a hot, harsh environment,” Ammon said.

“So, what if someone fell in?” Bree was curious.

“That would be one very long water slide,” Mom said.

“The best part is that this system has been going on for two thousand years already. So imagine that the mummy we saw today may have drunk from this well and used the water to irrigate her family’s farm. Now just try and tell me that’s boring.”

Our last and final stop of the day was at the remnants of the city of Jiaohe. Built on a natural fortress up on a plateau a couple of thousand years ago, the remnants had been standing abandoned for eight hundred years. According to Tang dynasty records, its population was over seven thousand at its highest point.

“Nobody’s ever even heard about these guys.” Bree’s tone made it clear that it was therefore completely uninteresting. Part of me kind of agreed with her. Why should I care? But oddly enough, the more I heard about this ancient culture, the more interest I had in it. I’d felt much the same about the Great Wall of China, with a million questions buzzing around my head. Unlike Gaochang, which had enjoyed prosperity and growth under Mongolian rule, Jiaohe had suffered at the hands of the Mongolians when they did not submit.

“I know you’re thinking that, ‘Gosh, Genghis Khan was some kind of evil dude’, but he actually did a lot more good than he gets credit for,” Ammon defended the ancient leader. “His conquests ultimately made trading easier than it had ever been across Asia and Europe, and he also created the first international postal system. Oh, and he put a stop to torture, too. When he captured a city, he granted his new subjects cultural, linguistic, and religious freedoms, sometimes even more than they’d had under their previous systems of government. He even gave tax reductions to priests, a luxury many other conquered peoples never got – like the Christian crusaders of the same period, for example. As long as the vanquished people paid taxes, they were largely left alone to continue living relatively normal, happy lives.”

If he offered such privileges, then where did Genghis’ reputation for supreme wrath and using the sharp side of a sword to kill so many come from? Why wouldn’t they have just laid down their arms and accepted his rule? I struggled with the conflict he had created, the ruin and the devastation, balanced against what Ammon was saying about the opportunity and life he offered. Would Jiaohe still be here if they had just surrendered to the Mongols?

In Mongolia I’d envisioned myself as a conqueror riding on horseback across those vast lands all the way to Turkey. Though we’d done it on trains and buses, we’d travelled much the same path, and my life and Genghis’ were crossing again here. Being able to trace the steps of that great warrior is so exhilarating. It’s a bit hard to believe that this is where Mom’s crazy ride has led us.

This part of the world was not particularly beautiful, but its history was positively riveting. The Jiaohe ruins were in better condition than the ones we toured in Gaochang, but they still left much to the imagination. The lifeless surface was like a blank chalkboard waiting to be coloured in, ready for the greatest of creations. This whole area was a peek hole into the past, reached by stepping over thousand-year-old footprints. I wondered if Genghis had laid eyes on this once thriving city and spilled the inhabitants’ blood on the very ground where I was standing.

What would he have seen? I started to draw trees and horses and leather armour and wagons in my mind. Children must have been running around tending to goats and carrying sticks. How many thousands of civilizations, tribes, and cultures had vanished before they could ever be documented?

I thought of the mummy we’d seen earlier and of her children’s children, who’d no doubt come to a bitter end; they’d been run down, traumatized, and overruled by the great and ruthless Mongolian horde. The roar of hooves, the clinking of swords, the whoosh of arrows flying overhead, and the screams of the slaughtered would have filled the air. With nowhere to hide, the stench of fear would’ve been inescapable. Could she ever have imagined the life her descendants lived then or now?

We’d seen so many war memorials and destroyed cities on this leg of the trip. The omnipresence of death and war throughout history made me think of the future in terms of what it might hold that I couldn’t even imagine.

Ammon read us a last passage out loud: “Jiaohe was finally abandoned when it was destroyed during an invasion by the Mongols led by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century.” With that, he shut the book, and I felt a heavy sense of closure from the blend of the conclusion of his speech and of our day, and the shocking reality that an ancient city had ended much the same way. Just like that – Poof! As in gone forever.

City of Sands
23

“D
id you see that?” Bree shouted, slowing down to talk to me as we pedalled along Dunhuang’s quiet highway on rented bicycles. “Did you see that gross kid poopin’ in the flower pot?”

I shuddered. “Don’t go there, Bree. Please?”

“What? Didn’t you see him? He was like, full out, cheeks spread–”

“Yes. I did. Now stop. I don’t want to think about it anymore than I have to. So disgusting.” Even though I’d seen kids and adults alike relieving themselves anywhere from alleyways to grassy medians on major highways on this trip, I still couldn’t get my head around why a child would have the urge to climb up onto a tire-sized flower pot (a feat in itself) to take a poop, and then kindly direct his butt into traffic for all to see.

“As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re back in the Chinese part of China,” Ammon said as he slowed to bike next to us, four abreast down the wide pavement.

“I just can’t grasp how someone could lay a huge log and turn their back on it with no shame at all.” Bree slowly shook her head as she pedalled away.

Having travelled further south on another overnight sleeper bus, fourteen hours southeast from Turpan, we’d arrived in Gansu province the night before and re-entered the China I remembered. And for some reason, the interesting toilet practices came along with the Chinese culture. In Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, we’d rented cheap hotel rooms with toilets shared only between our two rooms. Now that we were in a Chinese hotel that accommodated locals, we would be sharing the facilities with them and, once again, have to get used to their bathroom customs.

“I can totally understand broken toilets, but why do the Chinese fail to flush even when they can?” Ammon had asked that morning when he’d inspected the hotel’s facilities. I thought it was certainly a fair question. My mind would scream, “Why? Why? Why?” when I saw yet another perfectly functioning squat toilet with a giant mound spilling out onto the tiled floor. I’d shake my head and carefully step past the danger zone to reach the flusher, hoping the water would pull the whole thing down.

“Maybe they’re so afraid of their own poop that they don’t know what else to do but run away as fast as they can?” Bree suggested.

“I don’t get it. But the next time I get a broken toilet, I’m not going to dink around anymore spending half the day trying to flush it ‘cause I’m too embarrassed to leave the stall.” I almost couldn’t believe I was hearing myself say that, but in the end, I guess it is what it is. It wasn’t my fault that so many of them wouldn’t flush, and it wasn’t like anybody around here cared anyway. “So yes, I admit that I have left some traces in my wake.”

“I think we all have,” Mom said, always the realist. “But the good thing about being back in China is that now we get to use those few words of Mandarin we learned.”

“And take off our clothes,” I added.

“Geez, I hope not.” Ammon quickly picked up speed before he could be drawn into yet another female-based conversation.

It felt great to be on bicycles with the wind in our hair. The people living here had pale, soft skin with slightly narrower eyes. The clothing was the more familiar attire of dress pants and shirts, and we could once again wear whatever we pleased. Our few words of Chinese did come in handy, but we still relied mainly on hand signals and charades to interact with the locals to get information about lodging, food, the Internet, and transportation.

“There will be lots of high mountain passes on the drive through Tibet before we get to Nepal,” Ammon took control of the conversation as soon as we’d caught up to him again.

“They say gingko is the best natural cure for altitude sickness.” Mom served as our doctor/practitioner on the road, and she’d clearly done her research about how to counter the physical effects we might suffer in this part of the world. “I don’t want any of that prescribed stuff, even though it’s super cheap here and you can get it over the counter at any one of the many pharmacies.” We parked our bikes outside the next one we saw to pick some up.

Mom had jotted the word ‘gingko’ down in Chinese script exactly as she’d seen it written on various Internet sites, but when she pulled her trusty gingko sign out in the pharmacy, they looked at it like it was written by an alien. We resorted to pronouncing and writing it in English, but the pharmacist’s reaction was still much the same.

“Gingko. For hiking,” Mom said, lifting her knees high in the air to mimic hiking. “Sickness. Altitude. For no sick,” she said, waving a hand to explain. “We want pill. Eating. Sick. Illness. For altitude.” Her charades were drawing the attention of the rest of the staff, who were now all in on the game and doing their best to help us. I was glad it was such a small shop.

“Mom, they’re not going to understand if you just keep saying it slower,” I said.

Turning to me she said, “Of course they will. Just you watch.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes as she continued to explain in English and use larger-than-life hand signals. She just couldn’t seem to grasp that, no matter how many synonyms for ‘small’, ‘little’, or ‘not big’ you came up with, it wouldn’t make any difference to someone who didn’t understand the language. It also didn’t much matter how slowly, loudly, or clearly you said it. Mom said ‘gingko’ in every accent she could muster and then finally resorted to using strategies she’d learned by playing Pictionary – a game she almost never won. She drew a stick figure walking up a mountain with a backpack. The higher the stickman moved up the mountain (which looked very much like a Dr. Seuss caricature), the dizzier he became, which she indicated by drawing circles and squiggles above his head. But somehow, we miraculously walked out with a small bag of pills half an hour later. How on earth she made them understand that, I’ll never know…

Mom had a proud smile plastered across her face. “See. I told you they’d get it. You just have to keep trying, and eventually it will work out.”

“I dunno,” I said, frowning at her new medication. “With the charades you were doing, they probably couldn’t decide if you were trying to get crazy or to cure craziness.” I was still just hoping they hadn’t given us Ritalin or some type of lobotomy in pill form.

There was plenty to see in Dunhuang, but we were particularly looking forward to sand-boarding and riding ATVs and camels on the dunes just outside of town. We’d chosen to rent the hotel’s bikes for one yuan (30 cents) per hour to go the six kilometres instead of paying fifteen yuan (US$4.50) each way for a taxi. I was glad to have the bikes, because Ammon would’ve made us walk on most other occasions. The wide, tree-lined road led directly to the soft sands piled high in the distance, and golden threads of sand occasionally swept across the black pavement as we got closer. I was surprised that the sands were relatively contained and hadn’t completely erased the road. From this distance, the dunes appeared untouched, but as we got nearer, they were transformed into giant festering ant hills with big tourist buses waiting out front.

“Holy crap,” Ammon muttered as we slowed to a halt at the giant fence. “They’ve actually sectioned off a huge portion of the sand dunes so they can charge people to get in.” I was surprised he didn’t turn around and leave right then and there.

“What an amazing contrast to Turpan, where there was absolutely nobody around and almost everything we saw was free,” Mom said.

We got off our bikes and were nearly run down by a swarm of people wearing red hats and being led by a young female tour guide blaring into a megaphone and holding up a red flag. The place was crawling with people, most of whom were domestic seniors – the Chinese version of GGTs (AKA Grandma Glayde Tours), which we named after our dad’s mom, who is well-travelled and who often participated in seniors’ group tours and cruises. Tour guides were screaming over each other’s megaphones while trying to keep all the flags and hats that were the same colour together. I couldn’t help but think of the chaos that would ensue if one blue-hat tour crossed paths with another blue-hat tour.

Just beyond the gates, we could see tourists riding on paragliders, sand boards, ATVs, dozens of trams, and camels that were tied nose-to-tail in an unsightly parade. Part of the magic of sand dunes is watching as the sand covers your tracks and become instantly flawless again as soon as you’ve passed, but what we found here was more like an overturned sand box.

“Entry fees to the sites around here are pretty much the highest in the country, and from what I can see, you get precious little for your money. I’ve gotten mixed reports about Dunhuang and its attractions, and I’m inclined to agree with the more negative ones now.” Ammon decided almost immediately. “Preservation is one thing, but fencing off a piece of landscape, throwing in a ticket booth, and charging people to enjoy them not only ruins their inherent natural beauty, but their very authenticity.”

Briefly inspecting the sign outside the ticket booth, he said, “It says here that it costs eighty yuan (US$13) just to get in to the dunes. Then you can rent the camels for sixty yuan (US$10), and the ATVs or the paragliding equipment for a hundred and twenty yuan (US$20). This is a complete tourist trap.”

“Is it really that bad? I really, really, really wanted to go on an ATV,” Bree insisted.

“It helps put it a bit more into perspective when you consider that our entire Turpan adventure the other day to the gravesite, two ancient ruins, an all-day private taxi, and visiting the depression was about twenty-six bucks each, including food. Riding an ATV in circles for ten minutes here costs over thirty dollars. I say screw it. I’m just not going to pay that much for this.”

“And we’ve already explored more beautiful sand dunes than these anyway,” Mom added, “though not on an ATV, I guess. Sorry, Bree.”

I felt somewhat let down after cycling all this way, partly because I’d really looked forward to experiencing sand-boarding. We’d even made a detour to come out to Dunhuang and had planned to stay a few days. But as I stared through the gates, I could see where Ammon was coming from. It didn’t look much like I had imagined it would. Though I was disappointed, I had to accept the fact that sometimes the destination itself isn’t the adventure but, rather, the surprises that happen along the way.

We were walking our bikes back out through the commotion when we spotted the three backpackers we’d met the night before. They were keeping their distance over by the curb and shaking their heads. One guy was of Asian descent, but his expensive hiking boots and the backpack with a big red and white maple leaf flag sewn on it were a dead giveaway. Our fellow Canadians were pretty easy to spot. Kat from Vancouver and Lewis from Ottawa had been on the road for an impressive ten and eight months respectively.

The one who didn’t have a Canadian patch was American. He introduced himself as Jonas, a new friend to the Canadian couple we’d actually met on the fourteen-hour sleeper bus from Turpan. Jonas was working as an English teacher and spoke Chinese, a good kind of friend to meet while on the road.

That morning, a devastated Kat had rushed up to tell us, “My passport. It’s gone. I can’t find it anywhere. The last time I saw it was with you guys, at that bus stop. Have you seen it anywhere? Did I put it back in my money pouch? I was sure I did.”