Journeys on the Silk Road (11 page)

Four frigid months in the desert yielded far more than Stein had hoped for, nearly triple the volume of his entire 1901 expedition. At Abdal, he watched his caravan of camels and ponies loaded with Miran’s finest murals and other antiquities set out on the two-month journey to Kashgar. Stein had temporarily consigned most of his treasures into Macartney’s safekeeping at Chini Bagh. Meanwhile, Macartney updated Stein on his rivals. The French, whom Stein had so feared he would find at Loulan, were far away to the north. So were the Germans. “This sounds hopeful for the next goal,” he confided to Allen.

That goal was Dunhuang and it lay beyond Turkestan on the edge of Gansu province within China itself, 380 miles across the Lop Desert. China was unknown terrain to Stein and aside from Chiang, his men knew nothing of the country either. But they feared the worst. They were far more uneasy at the prospect of entering China than the desert waste they still had to cross to get there. Turkestan was “God’s own land” to them. It was their home soil; they spoke its language and were part of its culture. Stein’s Indian men had come to enjoy the easygoing, hospitable way of life in the Turkestan oases. Of China, they had heard only alarming rumors of strange customs.

Stein bid farewell to his Abdal guides, Old Mullah and Tokhta Akhun, whose scrap of paper had led to such spectacular finds. Stein admired how the hardy pair, like their fellow Lopliks, seemed impervious to the extreme climate in which they lived—the icy gales in winter, the mosquitoes and dust storms in summer. Such resilience had no doubt contributed to the long lifespan of so many of Abdal’s inhabitants. Tokhta Akhun had an elderly mother to care for. Even Old Mullah—himself long past middle age—still had his elderly parents, which was why, to Stein’s regret, Old Mullah could not accompany him along the route he had rediscovered. Instead, Stein’s guides on his final leg to Dunhuang would be the voices from the past, including the pilgrim monk Xuanzang and Marco Polo. The Venetian traveler had described the route by which he crossed and estimated it took twenty-eight days. It was still reckoned to do so.

Having spent so long at Miran, as it yielded such rich rewards, once again Stein needed to hurry. But this time the rush was prompted by the seasons rather than the advance of his rivals. His chosen path was northeast following the old caravan route. Stein knew the route was passable for only a few weeks more. Soon the pure chunks of ice that could be hacked from the frozen salt springs would thaw. Spring would render the heat unbearable and the water undrinkable. With his winter diggings over and the laborers paid off, Stein was looking forward to the crossing since it afforded a rest from the burden of overseeing so many men and excavations. It is a mark of how difficult the winter dig had been—and of Stein’s stamina—that he would approach a 350-mile trek across a frozen desert as a respite.

He set out for Dunhuang on a morning in late February. Relying on Marco Polo’s estimate, he left with a month’s supplies for his thirteen men, eleven ponies, eight camels, and nearly forty donkeys. The extra donkeys he had hired to carry provisions would be dispatched back to their owners at intervals along the way when no longer needed. But within a couple of days of departing, three died. Soon six donkeys were dead. Stein feared the loss of more would make it hard to transport the supplies. The fates of men and beast were intertwined in the desert. As one after another died, Stein suspected foul play—that the donkey drivers were deliberately underfeeding their charges so their owners could get compensation. He put the entire donkey train under the command of one of his own men, Ibrahim Beg, and he promised the donkey drivers extra money for each animal that survived the journey. The strategy worked.

The first week passed in exhausting marches of up to twenty-six miles a day along the edge of dried-up salt marshes, clay terraces, and gravel slopes devoid of vegetation. They were “a drearier sight than any dunes,” Stein told Allen.

Stein was cheered by Chiang’s good humor and the pair chatted together, Stein in his halting Chinese. “My unmusical ear fails to remember or distinguish the varying tones of the identical syllable & I fear it will take long before others will be as clever as [Chiang] to catch the meaning of my conversation . . . Often we have talked of Marco Polo who had described this old route so truthfully,” he wrote.

As they camped one night, Stein pulled from his bags Marco Polo’s account of the route and read it to Chiang. It was hardly cheerful reading:

When travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have perished. Sometimes the stray travellers will hear, as it were, the tramp and hum of a great cavalcade of people away from the real line of road, and taking this to be their own company will follow the sound; and when day breaks they find that a cheat has been put on them and that they are in an ill plight. Even in the daytime one hears those spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums. Hence in making this journey ’tis common for travellers to keep close together.

The supernatural account evoked awe in Chiang. If the desert could cast such a spell over the otherwise skeptical Chiang, a scholarly, erudite man, its effect was felt even more keenly among the more superstitious members of Stein’s party. Little wonder they were getting restive. So all were relieved when midway through their journey they spotted five toghrak trees. It signaled they had arrived at the place where they would rest for a day—the only one on the entire crossing. The windswept trees, bravely clinging to life in the desert, were rare enough in this wasteland to give their name to the site, Besh-toghrak, meaning simply five toghrak trees. Saddles were repaired and the camels and ponies were watered at two nearby wells and treated for sore backs. Stein planned to leave eight of the weakest donkeys no longer needed at this lonely spot. A young Abdal donkey man was left to care for them. The man was given a twenty-eight day supply of rations and a box of matches. Until the caravan collected him on the way back, he would “have to make the best of his solitude—or the visits of goblins,” Stein commented dryly.

A fierce cold wind was blowing a few days later when, through the dust-filled haze, the party caught sight of an abandoned fort. They made their way toward it in a thin line to shield against the headwinds. Six times the height of the tallest man among them, the fort was entered via an archway carved into walls fifteen feet thick. Centuries ago, this would have seemed an impregnable stronghold for a ruler’s army. Now, nothing hinted at human habitation, save for the debris of a recent caravan that had attempted the perilous crossing.

Stein climbed a staircase hewn perhaps 2,000 years ago into a corner of the massive clay fortress. Thirty feet up, he held his ground as he was buffeted by the gale. He reached for his binoculars and surveyed the forbidding expanse: beyond the beds of reeds near the fort, tamarisk scrub and bare gravel stretched to the barren foothills of a distant mountain range. He turned into the wind and focused his gaze on four distant mounds that stood out against the hazy grey horizon: watchtowers. His excitement rose. These were more evidence of a long-forgotten military frontier. He had spotted traces of a ruined wall and other watchtowers in recent days. As he stood on the immense clay walls, he imagined an ancient military chief surveying the line of watchtowers under his command, eager for signals—fire by night, smoke by day—that passed along them. Beacons that once signaled the approach, or retreat, of armed enemies. Could this fort and the watchtowers be part of that forgotten frontier? In the empty isolation of the desert, such answers seemed unknowable. And yet he would soon find an answer.

Stein descended the fort’s staircase and rejoined his party. This was not the time to explore further, no matter how much curiosity the watchtowers provoked. The food and water were almost gone. The animals were hungry and his men were irritable and exhausted. They had not seen another soul since leaving Abdal nearly three weeks ago. They had crossed quickly, in a week less than Marco Polo estimated. But all now needed rest. They must get to Dunhuang as quickly as possible.

A distant line of bare trees and cultivated fields on the edge of Dunhuang were heartening sights for Aurel Stein and his caravan on March 12, 1907. While a persistent wind howled its numbing welcome as they approached the town, at least the weary men and beasts were not enduring its blasts in the desert. Warmth and shelter would soon be at hand. Not that Stein wanted to linger in Dunhuang; he was eager to return to the ruined wall, fort, and the string of watchtowers he had seen as he crossed from Abdal.

Dunhuang was the Silk Road’s gateway between China and Central Asia, which was why he planned to use it as a base for six months of archaeological work and exploration in the surrounding desert and mountains. He planned a short halt, just long enough for his men and animals to rest and for him to visit the painted meditation grottoes—the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas—about fifteen miles to the southeast. He had longed to see these remote, sacred caves, and he was determined to realize this dream. But his real work lay elsewhere. Or so he thought.

His approach to his first oasis within China was unsettling after the hospitality he had enjoyed in Turkestan and where he felt at home. He knew its ways, its language and its daily rhythms, punctuated by the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. But now he was on foreign ground. In Turkestan, local headmen invariably rode out to meet his party as he approached an oasis. So too did the rapacious Hindu money-lenders, no doubt eager for business. But this time there was not so much as a single merchant to acknowledge his arrival. As always, Stein had attempted to smooth the path, sending word of his approach, his intended business and requesting accommodation. But unusually, no response had come. Was he being deliberately neglected? Was this how things were done on Chinese soil? What did it mean? Most immediately, it meant no quarters had been prepared for him or his party.

First impressions of Dunhuang, the once-vibrant oasis on the edge of the vast Gobi Desert, were hardly encouraging. Few people were outside on this bitterly cold and dust-filled day as he passed down the narrow main street. The few locals who could be found directed him to the caravanserai, the main stopping place for travelers needing accommodation, but it was so filthy and cramped he looked elsewhere for a more suitable camp. About a half a mile from the walled town’s southern gate he found a large orchard with a dilapidated house. It was inhabited by a widow, her mother and several children, who agreed to house them in their unoccupied rooms.

Other differences from Turkestan soon became apparent. Stein was accustomed to—and approved of—the way Muslim women promptly removed themselves from the company of strangers. But purdah was not practiced in Dunhuang. Instead, Chinese women with bound feet teetered around as his dusty, travel-weary party settled in the unused rooms built around a courtyard. Stein erected his tent in the orchard, preferring its peace and relative comfort to the cavernous hall he had been offered as quarters.

Fuel, fodder, and food were his next concerns. But how to pay for them? Once again he was reminded that things were done differently in China, even in the far-flung western province of Gansu. As expected, no one would accept the coins of neighboring Turkestan, and the only silver bullion he had was in the form of horseshoes. Finding a blacksmith who could cut some silver into small change didn’t occur to him the first day. Meanwhile, the daily market had closed and it took hours for supplies to arrive. The mood of his men darkened, frustrated by the delays in finding shelter and then food. Already apprehensive of venturing onto foreign soil, it seemed their worst fears of China’s strange customs had been realized. All except Chiang, who instantly made friends with the widow’s children, were on unfamiliar turf. Frustrating as his arrival in Dunhuang was, Stein later saw its absurdity, writing: “It amused me to think what our experiences would have been, had our caravan suddenly pitched camp in Hyde Park, and expected to raise supplies promptly in the neighbourhood without producing coin of the realm!” He quickly grew alert to the tricks of the money-exchange trade—silver pieces loaded with lead, and the way merchants used different scales depending on whether the customer was buying, selling or exchanging silver.

His men could at last rest the next day, fed and sheltered. Wrapped in their furs, they dozed in front of their fires. But, typically, Stein was not about to rest. He sent his last piece of yellow Liberty brocade to the local
yamen
as a gift for the magistrate. By midday he had swapped his travel-stained furs for his best European clothes—black coat, pith helmet, and patent leather boots—to pay his official visit. There the reason for the absence of a welcome became apparent. A new magistrate, Wang Ta-lao-ye, had himself only just arrived in Dunhuang—so recently that a fire had not been lit nor furniture installed in the bare reception hall. Stein felt the day’s chill in his spiffy but all-too-thin clothes. The new magistrate had only just found his predecessor’s documents about the impending arrival of this important visitor, and he was suitably impressed, even over-awed, by what he discovered in the papers. Whether through bureaucratic incompetence or clever mistranslation, Stein’s travel document had elevated him to Prime Minister of Education of Great Britain.