The Silk Road Part II – The Desert’s Art Gallery, Alexander’s Legacy and the Fragrant Concubine

The Silk Road, May 2008

And so on to Dunhuang and the Mogao caves. Dunhuang lies at the edge of the formidable Taklamakan desert, second largest sand desert in the world after the Sahara. Travelers – monks, merchants and warriors, about to cross it needed somewhere to pray for safe crossing, travelers who had crossed it successfully wanted somewhere to give thanks for having survived. And so along the sandstone cliffs of the Ji river over a period of a thousand years from the 4^th to the 14^th century AD, spanning the dynasties of the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Yuan, or Mongol, 735 caves were carved out at Mogao. (There are 5 sites in all but the other 4 have only 77 caves altogether.)

Caves cut out of the rock at Dunhuang

Artists were hired to paint their interiors with often wildly colorful scenes from the Jataka Tales (the life of the Buddha), Buddhist mythology and illustrations of the Buddhist sutras (scriptures), as well as scenes of court life with musicians, dancers, and courtiers. Statues of clay and wood were sculpted of Buddha, Boddhisattvas, kings and demons and installed, or sometimes carved out of the walls. Dunhuang supported a community of monks and over time it became a center for meditation, burial, worship and for the storage of documents and artifacts. Documents in Chinese, Tangut Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Syriac, Sanskrit and Brahmi have been found, as well as metals, bone and stone vessels, bricks, coins, pottery, silk and textiles, figurines and stenciled stupas. (There are no photographs of the caves, cameras are forbidden.) The caves are also a UNESCO World Heritage Site http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/440

The Silk Road - Part 1, Deceit and Glamor, Warriors of Qin and The Big Goose Pagoda

May 2008
So, once again far removed from Ibn Battuta’s footsteps, I find myself in Hong Kong. I was last here 30 years ago, which even as I write seems to be quite impossible – how can this be? The city has changed enormously – for one thing, half of the harbor has disappeared and is now filled with glamorously tall skyscrapers. The energy of the place reminds me of New York even if the view of Hong Kong Island is more San Francisco with its steep hills and twisty stairways. I stayed on Kowloon side in a small boutique hotel called The Luxe Manor www.theluxemanor.com   which was both charming and quirky. I am here because due to the Olympics in Beijing, Hong Kong this year is the starting point for the northern Silk Road trip I am leading, over the Turugart Pass.
View of Hong Kong's skyscrapers built on what was the harbor.