tang dynasty times

NHK (Part 9) South Into India 天竺へ

On the Road again...After following in Alexander the Great's footsteps straight across the Pamirs, the NHK team next headed south. South into India.

So far, the team had been traveling along the two great east-west running roads-- known collectively, of course, as the Silk Road-- these roads that once connected the Roman empire with the Chinese empire. Yet, we are reminded again and again that in fact there were all kinds of roads. And for videos 15 and 16 of the NHK series, the team traveled on the ancient roads that led south over the mountains.

Using the Karakoram Highway, the team passed through Hunza with its beautiful valleys full of apricot trees, and then briefly joined the well-traveled Grand Trunk Road that has for hundreds of years connected Afghanistan with India. The Grand Trunk Road-- it reminds me of another book by Hopkirk I have been wanting to read for years called, Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling's Great Game. The book traces the steps of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, which took place mainly along the Grand Trunk Road, or the GTR as it is lovingly called in South Asia.

What is it about these ancient caravan roads? Is it just me or does everyone get excited and ready to pick up and hop on a plane just thinking about them? These grand pathways that have served to connect peoples, ideas, religions and every manner of goods on earth-- they somehow beckon to us...

"Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims -and potters - all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood. And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred miles - such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world." (Kim)

The Sino-Japanese team had by this stage lost their "Sino" partners and from here they head on alone-- over the mountains. For the most part they are following in the steps of the great monk (again) Xuanzang. Up into Kashmir (which was once a vibrant Buddhist center of great scholarship) and then further up, up into the clouds of Ladakh.

They are traveling along the the dazzling-high Beacon Highway. Up past the alpine tree-line of Kashmir, then through the snowy Zoji La Pass, they enter the moonscape of Ladakh. Cold, dry and treeless, it is unbelievably beautiful. And cultures are dispersed by altitude so that if you are about at the same altitude in these mountains, no matter how far removed, you will find the same groups of people. And, it is the Tibetans who are up at the top.

The air is so thin. But I remember Tibetans saying how much they hated descending into the Indian plains. Too much oxygen was stifling, they said

Up to Leh and then on to the place that I cannot get out of my mind: Alchi. The murals at Alchi were so beautiful that I feel as if I could easily devote the entire rest of my life just thinking about them. I very much wish to return here-- to travel there with Adonis, but he says, no, "The air is too thin up there for a little boy."  

From Ladakh, the team next travels into the deep south of India- again in the steps of the the 7th century monk, Xuanzang-- to the Buddhist Holy Land-- to Lumbini, Kusinigara, Sarnath, Bodhgaya, and of course to the legendary ancient Buddhist University of Nalanda. (For more beautiful photographs and commentary about Nalanda, see Shunya's post here). We are now back in the places where Bernstein traveled. **

And speaking of Bernstein, I no longer read much travel literature. You would think I should have become a true armchair traveler since I am no longer really able to really satisfy my wanderlust. But, I just do not seem to enjoy much of the travel literature out there. It is always so much about the traveler and less about the places themselves. This is seems to be particularly so of books about India. The Western traveler is inevitably it seems pushed to his or her limits and starts complaining-- and this usually leads to self-psychoanalysis. This was my problem with Bernstein.

I am, however, re-reading Vikram Seth's From Heaven Lake. Seth, an Indian who has spent much of his adult life in London and California is also a poet. He is also happens to be the author of my very favorite book about India (as India is every bit the main character at Lata): A Suitable Boy. I've read the novel 3 times and am next thinking of listening to it on audio (since my first-ever audiobook experience was not too horrible!)

Compared to a Suitable Boy, From Heaven Lake is so simple and sparce-- and yet it so beautifully written you just can hardly put it down. Seth, studying Chinese at Nanjing University, wants to head home to Delhi via Lhasa. This is back in the 1980s so the journey itself is impossible. But aren't all journeys impossible? Traveling along the silk road just like the NHK team, instead of going south over the Karakoram, he heads south over the Kunlun Range-- a far more daunting endeavor. The great Qinghai plateau, I believe is the source of most of Asia's greatest rivers-- the Yellow River, the Yangzi River, the Mekong River. What about the great rivers of India?

Seth is a charming and generous traveler-- something I have heard about Colin Thubron.  (Everything I wanted to say about From Heaven Lake, this lady already said quite well on her blog-- so here it is) In a nutshell, From Heaven Lake is great travel writing. The only time we ever spend any real time in the author's head is when he discusses the differences between India and China. It is a brief interlude, but it is not un-welcome. 

India and China-- these are set to be the two great powerhouses and how they view each other may start being of real interest. You see all kinds of Westerners writing opinion pieces about "India overtaking China"-- but one wonders how the Chinese view the Indians-- and vice versa. They have fought that one war-- which to my mind is the single time they ever fough each other. Seth says much about the accomplishments of China (and this is back before there was any real economic accomplishments to speak of).

To sum up his opinion, he says, both countries have overwhelming populations that could destroy them from within.  Yet, he thinks the Communist Party has made great strides in curbing that population with its authoratarian tactics. Basically his opinion boils down to probably what any of our opinions would be: if he was born in the Middle Class or above, then of course he values his freedom-- and would choose an Indian-style democracy (because of course India is a true democracy in which we have seen the people actually overthrowing unpopular governments).

However, he says, if he had been born in the bottom third of his country where people live in unbeliavable poverty, well, he says in that case he would rather be Chinese, because few people actually starve (again this is 1980s China-- the same time when the NHK team passed over those same desert tracks and dizzingly-high mountain roads,)

I have been meaning to post this article about India's first fluent Mandarin-speaking foreign Beijing correspondant's new book Smoke and Mirrors. I link a cite with no advertisements but you can access the original article via the Asia Times website-- the comments also show that there are books to be written on the subject of India/China comparisons-- Khourosh, are you listening? Seth ends his book with these words (which still hold true today):

If India and China were amicable toward each other, almost half the world would be at peace. Yet friendship rests on understanding, and the two countries, despite their continguity, have had almost no contact in the course of history. Few travellers have made the journey over the Himalayas, and not many have made the voyage by sea; trade, while it existed, has always been constrained by geography. In Tibet and South East Asia we find a fusion of the two great culture zones, but the heartlands of the two great culture zones have been almost untouched by each other. The only important exception to this is the spread of Buddhism.

As someone mentioned in the comments-- Dalyrmple's City of Djins is also a very excellent read-- highly recommended.

The most dramatic footage of this particular NHK video was of India's famous Kumbh Mela, which occurs 4 times every 12 years at 4 locations. The one at Allahabad is the most famous and the NHK team (with their usual impeccable timing) was on the scene. In Seth's A Suitable Boy, there was an incredibly vivid scene of an actual event that took place during the Mela in the 50's when several hundreds of people were trampeled to death in the crowds (the 1954 Kumbh Mela Stampede). 

Another coincidence-- but Shunya just uploaded some of his videos of the festival from 2001 when he was there. The videos are extremely well-done and watching them could be even better than actually being there! The bridge, the river, the banners, and marigolds, the music, the lights--  a window onto what is a "giant human spectacle, an intense, absurd, spontaneous commedia dell'arte that offers to anyone who cares a great mind-expanding experience.." Both videos are beautifully shot and highly recommended viewing.

**

Finally-- back to China. Jonathan Spence remains one of my all-time favorite historians. I was so looking forward to the Reith lectures (BBC Radio 4) but have surprisingly found them to be a real sleeper-- until the 3rd one. Well, I found even the third one to be a sleeper-- except it has produced some interesting dialog and the questions by Holbrooke and Kissinger, not only do they "miss the point," but in fact they showed a really very surprising lack of understanding:

Holbrooke, for example, started the Q&A session with, "Do you agree that xenophobia is a fundamental trait in China? And if so, in what way is it different from other the other nationalisms of other countries?"

That is some question, isn't it? Spence handled it really well, first off by mentioning that are many nations in the world where we find much violence resulting from xenophobia. I actually found the phrasing of the question itself rather xenophobic-- but that's me, I guess.

Finally, the last lecture,  Lecture 4: The Body Beautiful, I found to be extremely well-done. If you only listen to 1 this should be it.

NHK (Part 8) Toward the Valley of the Heavenly Horses (And the infamous Sogdian-Turk who Toppled the Empire)

 How could a 400 pound commoner of Turkish-Persian descent rise up to become one of the most powerful men in Tang China? Well, first off, they say no one could dance the Sogdian whirl like him!

It was the story that would shake the empire-- and like a row of dominoes, kingdoms would fall one after another...

How this came about is one of the most re-told of all Tang dynasty tales. It was during the second-half of the Emperor Xuanzong’s reign (r. 712-756) that all the trouble started. Xuanzong’s court which saw the very apogee of the “Golden Tang” was a time of great refinement and luxury not unlike that of Emperor Huizong’s several centuries later. While Xuanzong started off his rule as an exemplary Confucian leader, he would later fall utterly under the spell of his beautiful concubine, Yang Guifei, Toward the end he was spending more and more time with her-- “playing polo, participating in concerts with her Pear Garden Orchestra, commissioning paintings and collecting antiques”-- then in ruling the empire (which was afterall his main job!)

 Lady Yang’s presence at court was enormous, and truly she was the femme fatale and great arbiter of taste of her day. Under her influence “the plump look” was in a great vogue, as well as a hairstyle known as “just fallen off the horse look”-- the hairstyle having come about one day when Lady Yang’s elaborate coiffure had become disheveled after tumbling from her horse. Looking particularly alluring, she caused yet another small sensation at Court as all the other court ladies tried to emulate her hairstyle without having to go through all the trouble of falling off their horses.

With her “hundred charms,” she was said to be as intelligent as she was beautiful, and her extravagant tastes for wine, lychee fruits, beautiful bird feathers, cosmetics, aromatics, and clothes were legendary.

She also had exotic taste in men, for she was to fall completelyunder the spell of a powerful general of famously foreign descent known as An Lushan (or, Rokhshan, “the bright”).

It’s hard to imagine a more sure recipe for imperial disaster.

An’s father was probably a Sogdian whose clan had been ages ago incorporated into the Eastern Turkish Empire which had then been incorporated briefly into the Chinese Empire during the early Tang. His mother was said to be a Turkish aristocrat. During the early years of the great Tang expansion, foreign men were welcomed into the Chinese army, and An quickly found himself rising into the upper levels of the military when, as a brilliant general, he was “discovered” by the Emperor’s favorite.

Lady Yang heaped all kinds of riches and rewards on him, and not surprisingly some speculate that they were lovers. The Emperor increasingly handed over power to An until he came to possess control of three of the ten regional military garrison posts thereby making him the most powerful man in the empire.

In 755, An marched on the capital, and capturing it, proclaimed himself Emperor. His life in danger, the Tang Emperor, meanwhile, had escaped along with his Lady Yang and those troops loyal to him. Headed for sanctuary in Sichuan, his generals, furious at the situation demanded the Lady Yang (whom they felt had caused all the trouble) be handed over for instant strangulation which is precisely what happened-- right there on the Long Road to Shu.

How do it come to that? Well, the seeds of the rebellion had been sown already far to the West.

**

In Part 7, I described the NHK teams travels into the heart of music-- to the famed oasis city of Kucha on the Northern Route of the Silk Road. Well, there is even a more-northerly route. The Northern Route splits into two routes at Hami-- one following the southern edge of the Tianshan Mountains and the other following the northern edge. This area north of the Heavenly Mountains is the land of the Khazak and other nomadic peoples. And while big skies and gorgeous open grasslands dominate the photography, it is important to keep in mind that this seemingly insignificant northern region was to play a huge role in Chinese history-- for it was this road that led to the coveted heavenly horses of Ferghana (See NHK Part 1).

Along for the ride of this segment of the trip is famous Japanese author, Shiba Ryotaro. Having studied Manchurian in University, he has a great interest in nomadic people; particularly those who dwelled on the fringes of the great Empires of China. Shiba talks about the romance of "eternally unchanging nomadic life." A statement which while certainly "problematic," still contains within it the essential fact that for 3000 years, an uneasy balance of power continued, whereby with the steppe people posing a constant threat, China wavered between using trade and war to deal with them.

And, horses-- secured along this northern road-- were absolutely essential to this.

This area-- not far from valley of the legendary heavenly horses-- was the site of one of the most significant battles in Chinese history.

**

This morning, I was re-listening to Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time show on the Battle of Thermopylae. (I think this is without a doubt one of his best shows).

Braggs tells us, "There are certain events in history which are often thought of as crucial," and goes on to explore the way in which historians from Herodotus onward have considered the Battle of Thermopylae as the "defining clash between East and West."

While I realize that there are probably a million reasons why a million historians would tell me differently, I cannot help but feel that it was really the Battle of Talas that served as the defining clash between East and West (West meaning the Arab empire, which was the great Western superpower of the late Tang).

I've already written about both the reasons behind the Battle of Talas as well as the effects of the stunning defeat of the Chinese here. For our purposes here, it was, in effect the last nail in the coffin of the Tang dynasty.

Indeed, it was only 4 years later that An Lushan would lead his stunning coup d'etat. Known as the An Lushan’s Rebellion (755-764), it only lasted nine years. After An was assassinated in 757, the Tang Dynasty was restored, but its greatness would never again match what it had been before the rebellion that rocked the dynasty.

 For not only did the rebellion and political shakeup devastate the military strength and cultural vibrancy of the Tang, but the foreign-led rebellion led to an increasingly strong suspicion and crackdown on all things foreign-- from merchants to monks. Compared with the stability and extroversion which characterized the early to mid-Tang, the later Tang was increasingly chaotic with much of the political power held in the hands of the Palace Eunuchs. Warlordism became rampant, not to be outdone by the growing menace of Steppe peoples.

A huge power vacuum was created along the cities and kingdoms of the Silk Road I have been writing about-- from Dunhuang and Gaochang to Kucha and Khotan, it was during the immediate aftermath of the An Lushan Rebellion-- when the Tang moved its army out of the Western outposts and back to the capital, that the Turkic Uighurs moved in.

Interestingly, rather than pushing the Indo-European speaking peoples out, they probably mixed in and incorporated those peoples into their dynasty. Before turning to Islam, they incorporated many aspects of Sogdian culture into their own, including converting to Manichaeism in a way similar to the way Persian culture was actively incorporated into the Abassid dynasty of Baghdad. 

It was also the time of my dream-- when the Tibetan army, too, rode East to attack the Chinese capital in the wake of the Rebellion. It was truly the end of the glorious Tang.

Recently,Kate Merkel-Hess was writing at China Beat about the 5 top historical events that don't get the attention they deserve. Topping the list at No. 1 was the An Lushan Rebellion. She explains:

Led by the rogue general, An Lushan, the civil war that riled the Tang Dynasty from 755 to 763 caused death by violence and famine of over ten million people. But the An Lushan Rebellion is not on this list because of its high death toll. The rebellion also destabilized the Tang political regime and the aristocratic clans who supported it, reshaping a system that relied heavily on pedigree for advancement. Histories of China’s imperial exam system often note that it existed (in some form, though off-and-on) beginning in the Han. But until the An Lushan Rebellion, hereditary position mattered more than merit.

The rebellion was-- without a doubt, a defining point in history. Or, in the words of Melvyn Bragg, it was "crucial."

For, just as Kate Merkel-Hess writes, the overthrow of the Tang was to be followed by another nearly a half century of political fragmentation, in a time now known as the Period of Five Dynasties (907-960), named after the five royal houses which came to hold power in the north around the capital. In the south and west, power was divided roughly among ten autonomous kingdoms, centered around the old Tang military regions.

In this state of political chaos, to be able to rise up within the military and wrest power away from all other kings and warlords was one thing, but keeping power long enough to reunite the empire, thereby creating a new and stable dynasty was quite another matter indeed. The First Song Emperor Taizu was successfully able to do this by deliberately subordinating the overwhelming power of the military to that of the central government.

How did he do that?

Well, he-- brilliantly-- invested that political power into the hands of a new class of non-military and non-aristocratic (and therefore non-threatening) scholar-officials who were called upon to run the empire. These scholar-officials, the shi, known in the West as “mandarins,” became the new elite, and it was their scholar’s brush which would dominant at Court for nearly a thousand years to come.

As I said before...

You may say, "Well, I am not much impressed by meritocracies." Well, what was so revolutionary about all this was not just that the system was based on merit (though this was stunningly unique in and of itself as Europe wouldn't see anything similar until well into modern times), but rather that education and individual artistic cultivation came to be given the highest priority-- above political power, money or commerce. To be educated and artistically cultivated were characteristics that money could not buy. And this focus on education was something that came straight from the top.

And, keeping their dramatic rise to power in mind, it should come as no surprise to learn that a new elite art created by this very same scholar’s brush would also come to reign supreme; for not only was the brush the same, but precisely all the materials used by the shi to draft their official documents-- that is, brush, ink, inkstone, and paper or silk-- were those very same utencils used to create the fine arts of the Song Dynasty: calligraphy and landscape painting.

Lady Yang, of course, lives on in Japan.

But what of the Road to Shu?

NHK (Part 7) A Journey into Music

From Turfan (NHK Part 6), the team headed due west. Traveling in two large mini-buses, they traveled straight across the Lop Desert and before long were traveling the mountain road the clings to the southern rim of the Tianshan mountains. 天山　The Heavenly Mountains. Passing through the rough terrain of the Iron Gate, the team was following at this point very closely in the footsteps of the great monk, Xuanzang.

Like the Tang dynasty monk, the NHK team was also heading west toward Kucha.

I have already written about the legendary dances of Kucha. Indeed, their praises have hardly been sung enough:

Of all the glorious Buddhist Kingdoms located around the Taklamakan Desert--from Khotan to Dunhuang-- Kucha was the largest. And Kucha was famous-- very famous-- for its dances, music and instruments.

Located on the Northern Route, not far from present-day Aksu, it was a place where Theravada Buddhism reigned. The King was particularly devout and it was said the city was full of temples, monks and music. The palace was made of gold, as the kingdom was wealthy from its rich mineral deposits of gold, copper and iron. Another highly cosmopolitan Silk Road garrison city-state, a dozen languages could be heard in the marketplaces, including Chinese, Tibetan, Persian and Kuchean (which was itself an Indo-Euopean language).

Susan Whitfield in her wondrous, Life Along the Silkroad, desribes Kuchean dance as being "not unlike Indian dance, with its emphasis on hip movements, changes of gesture and expressive eyes, but it also adapted dance forms taken from other places, such as the famous Sogdian 'whirling dance,' performed by both men and women."

"Music, song and dance," says Whitfield, "were Silk Road commodities, bought and sold like silver and jade. Itinerent dance troops from India, Burma, Cambodia and Sogdiana performed at both the royal court and the public marketplace in every silk road town." We have Tang period pottery of "Western" dancers and musicians on camelback. These statutes still fascinate and are proudly preserved in museum collectons in many places from Shanghai and Tokyo to Paris. 

The dances of the Silk Road were taken up by the Tang Court and there they were performed with native and other foreign elements to be transformed into the music and dance that today is known as ancient Tang music. And, what is perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire story, this music and these dances were then "borrowed"-- in what is often referred to as the "great borrowing of continental culture"-- by the ancient Japanese of the Nara period.

The NHK Team planned to travel to Kucha and see if the city still lived up to its musical reputation. At first, I thought, "that doesn't even make sense!" For the same race of people doesn't even inhabit the city anymore. The Kucha we know from Tang histories were Indo-European in both language and race. Perhaps they were Persians? Perhaps they were people from even further West as their art seems to hint. In any event the Turkish Uighurs of today didn't move into the region until well into the 9th century.

And yet, we are shown dance after glorious dance!  There are harvest dances and lullabies; a harvest festival is filmed with various traditional instruments such as the dop, dotar, asatar-- we are talking about drums, hammered dulcimers and stringed instruments of various types. Music dominates every scene. There are so many to describe, but I personally was transfixed by a traditional love song sung by an elderly, toothless woman who accompanied herself on the long-necked dutar lute.   

A woman as beautiful as the moon
Your waist, like a willow
A woman as beautiful as the moon
You await your lover

Your heart burning
You are like the brilliant shimmering moon
Shining in the great wide night sky

She crooned beautifully the passionate lyrics. Apparently the song was popular 200 years ago!

A modern troupe of Uighur dancers was working to reconstruct the ancient Buddhist dances and music of the Tang dynasty. They were extremely popular in Kucha during the NHK visit. While the music is-- to my ears-- Central Asian, the dances clearly derive from Southern India-- with the expressive eyes, moving hips, and symbolic hand gestures you see in India; in the tradition of that country's great dance dramas, the dances recounted  Buddhist or Chinese legends which their audiences knew well.

India, of course, had peaceful relations with Central Asia for a 1000 years. And, while not on "The Silk Road"-- there were, of course, various "silk road" routes that traveled straight south over the Karakoram into India and Pakistan. Great Kingdoms dominated a great stretech of land in roughly the area we call India from the time of Ashoka onward, and religion (Buddhism), philosophy and art flowed straight north-- northwest to Bamiyan and northeast to the Oases "Pearls of the Taklamakan."

The NHK team sought to interview the dancers and musicians about the ancient instruments. They showed photographs of the ancient instruments-- priceless treasures-- stored in the Shosoin. While none of them could identify any of the instruments by the pictures, when the NHK team played a recording of the famous Shosoin 5 string biwa (or lute), they all burst into smiles.

Decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay, the instrument is adorned with Central Asian themes (like a man on a camel). Deriving from an ancient Persian instrument, the five-string biwa was extremely popular at the Tang Court. And, to call it rare would be an under-statement as it is the sole remaining 5-string biwa in existence!

I was amazed that they would even dare play it-- but, I remembered what violinists say about their strads that if the violins are not played, they cease to be able to make beautiful sounds. The Uighur musicians looked delighted and proclaimed that their own music is based on a stringed instrument with a very similar sound.

Considering that the music and dance of the ancient people of Kucha, after becoming "all the rage" at the Tang Court of the 8th century, then went on to cross the ocean where they have been preseved forever after in the court music of Japan boggles the mind. In that sense, I suppose it is not surprising that vestiges of that great musical tradition continue to live on in Kucha today.

**

There exists a great arch of exquisite Buddhist cave art across the stretch of Asia. The tradition has its origins and Ajanta and reaches all the way across the Taklamakan Desert-- deep into the heart of China. And like the music of Kucha, the mural painting techniques crossed the ocean as well, and we can see temple murals in Nara (Horyuji etc.) which are derived from this very tradition. For this reason-- among others-- the Japanese have long been fascinated with the Silk Road, in particular the sites in Western China that I have been writing so much about.

Not far from Kucha is what is considered to be the most beautiful cave art of Western China, the Caves at Kizil. I have already written about the discovery and "removal" to Germany of many of the treasures of the cave here. The NHK team, however, went on to visit the Music Cave-- which is perhaps Kizil's greatest claim to fame! Unfortunately, I cannot find any images online, but one of the most interesting aspects of the caves, above and beyond the beauty of the painting and the early date of their creation (3rd-4th century!), is the Music Cave.

Officially known as Cave 38, the walls and ceiling of the cave are devoted to scenes of music. The NHK team is incredulous for every single instrument they find has its exact counterpart in the gagaku "elegant music" tradition preserved at the Japanese Court. The narrator names all the instruments:

The transverse flute 横笛; sometimes known as the dragon flute 竜笛 is said to signify the sound of dragons rising into the heavens

The hichiriki 篳篥-- sometimes called a Japanese oboe; it is the most important instrument in the orchestra

The sho mouth organ 笙

Several of the drums; both the 4 and 5 string biwa (!) and a genkan, which is like a banjo (pictured left).

The NHK team is-- of course-- delighted to spot the 5 string biwa-- as Japan preserves the world's sole remaining instrument. Seeing that the caves date from the 3rd-4th century, the instrument was already ancient by the time it was adopted for Japanese Court Music in the late 8th century. The narrator exclaims, "No matter where one's eyes rest, we find a musical instrument that is so familiar to us. Each and every instrument we see on these walls has their counterpart in the Japanese gagaku orchestra."

Finally, one more note about the Music Cave.  According to this article, Amazingly, "it was found out that looking closely into the gestures and position of the musicians' hands on the instrument, all stopped at the same meter!"

Finally, an article by an Indian scholar of Central Asian art here and a video of a gagaku performance held last year at the famous Kasuga Grand Shrine in Nara. My Gagaku handbook says that Kasuga Shrine, which itself dates from the 8th century, has Japan's most numerous theater venues-- including a beautiful "floating stage" perched above the shrine garden pond. Shown in the video is the Apple Garden stage located just in front of the main shrine building. The event is the yearly Opening Ceremony of Dance and Music 舞楽始式-- which is basicaly the first classical performance of the year.

 

NHK (Part 6) Land of Fire

  "Turfan: One of the town's earliest names, Huozhou ('Land of Fire') was derived from the intense summer temperatures, over 40 degrees C (or 104 F) between June and August. Yet another appellation, 'Storehouse of Wind' refers to the blustering winds that often whip through the town for several hours in the afternoons.

The winters here are also extreme, -10 degrees to -15 degrees C (14 degrees to 5 degrees F). Turpan is principally an agricultural oasis, famed for its grape products-- seedless white raisins and wines (mostly sweet). It is located in a depression, some 80 meters (260 feet) below sea level, and the climate is extremely dry. Nearby Moon Lake, at 154 meters (505 feet) below sea level is the second lowest point in the world after the Dead Sea." Odyssey Guide to Silk Road.

You really have to look at the map, but from Khotan (NHK Part 5), the NHK team actually turned back East and traveled over the entire length of the road through which they had already traveled after passing the Jade Gate (NHK Part 1). They were, of course, at last headed for the Northern Route of the Silk Road-- to Turfan, which is the main Oasis Town on the Northern Road.

**

For the past two and a half years, I have been working on a documentary video translation project called The Great China (Yes, I did recommend that they think about changing the title!) The job has been a true pleasure as the videos themselves are beautifully filmed-- and the Japanese narration superb (which makes for a problem when trying to render the poetic Japanese into more standard documentary-style English).

JAL was the one to contract the English translations as they use them as part of their in-flight entertainment-- especially on flights in and out of China (Though I saw the one I did on Tibet flying into LA last summer). The video on the ruins found near Turfan, for some reason, particularly stands out in my mind. This is from my video narration translation:

The Tian Shan Mountain Range dominates the central part of China’s Uighur Autonomous Region. Pockets of snow-melt from these mountains produced moisture-rich areas in the desert. And, in these spots, great oasis states grew up, which were then linked together by the East-West trade routes of the ancient Silk Road. Little is known about the kingdoms and states that flourished 2,000 years ago along the fringes of the desert, as their long history has lain shrouded in the sands of the desert. To learn more, we travel the Northern Route of the Silk Road to the city of Turfan.

Turfan, we find out, is an ancient city with streets shaded by grape trellises and populated by Muslim Uighurs. The Uighurs, whose ancestors were Turkish nomads migrated to this area of the desert in the middle of 9th century. At that time, Turfan already had a history of over 1,000 years. There were two flourishing city-states out here in this part of the desert. The Great China documentary first travels to Jiaohe-- which was the first of the two kingdoms to perish.

Located to the west of the city are the ruins of Jiaohe City. This ancient city was established on the cliffs, which are some 30 meters high. Jiaohe City was the capital city of the State of Cheshi, a state formed by a Persian people during the early Han dynasty, over 2,000 years ago. 

The ancient city located on this bluff functioned as a fortress in times of war, as the state of Cheshi had long been threatened by the Xiongnu, a nomadic tribe of the Steppe.

The NHK video actually shows what was a town literally sculpted out of the rocks. Flying over the area in a helicopter, the NHK team films a great bluff located between two rivers. 1600 meters in length and 300 meters across, the bluff has very steep cliff walls, which act as a natural fortress. 7000 people were said to live within the natural walls of the city, which was carefully planned in Chinese fashion along a north-south axis (with the palace and temples in the north, the official buildings in the center and the commoners in the south).

A veritable city of sculpture, this type of city-building is rare in the world. The ruins of people’s homes give a glimpse of what life was like. For example, these holes in the wall were for shelves to place things, and this place where the walls have turned brown was where the kitchen was located. There also remains the ruins of a well that was dug deep underground. 

In the NHK video we are led around the ruins by Chinese-Japanese interpretor, novelist and researcher Chun Shun Shin. He shows us the temple ruins that he supposes Xuanzong preached in and then sadly informs us that by the time Xuanzong passed through these parts again 15 years later on his return from India, the Kingdoms were already long gone. From The Great China (my trans):

Cheshi was not only under the constant attack of the horse-riding nomads of the Steppe, but they also were being squeezed in by the Chinese, who were expanding their empire West. Finally when the Han-controlled Kingdom of Gaochang was established nearby during the 5th century, the State of Cheshi was incorporated into the Kingdom of Gaochang.

The ruins of Gaochang, which are located to the east of the city of Turfan, are some 5 kilometers in circumference. The largest ruins of the Silk Road, they show us something of the kingdom’s great prosperity. Although the Kingdom was ruled by a Han king, it was a state of many different peoples, including Persians, and the country had two official languages: Chinese and Persian.

The King of Gaochang was a devout Buddhist.

In 629, the King welcomed a young monk from China, the famous Xuanzang, who was on his way to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures for study. The King gave him a friendly reception, and it was said that some 300 monks gathered to hear a lecture he gave in the city.

This was the place where as I wrote about before (Pearls of the Taklamakan)

So intent was the devout Buddhist King of the Kingdom of Gaochang to keep the pilgrim there that the King tried to hold him there hostage. Rather than from any ill-will, the King quite simply could not bear to let such a stimulating conversationalist and brilliant debater leave his realm.

You can hardly blame him, actually.

From here it was only a few hours walk to the Flaming Mountains and the legendary caves at Bezeklik. Shun takes us into the caves and shows us how little remains today. The Muslim Turks had gashed out all the eyes of any figures that they found-- and I was stunned at how brutally it had been done with huge gashes dug out of the mountain. Then he walked over to entire panels of wall paintings that had been literally peeled away by the German team. He said, "It feels like someone ripped off a person's skin. Looking at all the damage, my heart hurts."

You just cannot help but marvel at the human condition! Like the ancient Greek gods, just as we create, so do we violently destroy.

Again, from my Great China video narration:

During the 7th century, Gaochang, a culturally vibrant and wealthy state, was overthrown by the Tang dynasty. Then in the early 10th century  the Tang dynasty itself was overthrown. A new people swept in to fill the power vacuum: this time Uighur nomads who had been pushed out from the Mongolian Steppe.

The Uighurs absorbed many of the cultural practices of the existing peoples with their own and through inter-marrying came to become true people of the oasis.

It was in this way that the Silk Road oases become Turkified and Islamicized. Of the original inhabitants (the Persian Caucasians of which I have been writing about), it's impossible to say what became of them. But from the mid 9th century onward, the entire area has been home to the Muslim Uigurs and to this day, the area is known for its vibrant mosques and bazaars, its legendary grapes and sweet wines-- as well as Persian-style music and dancing.

It's also known for its mummies.

I want to say that the Mummies of Urumchi, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (another book that I have greedily been saving to open like a fine bottle of wine for years) took me by surprise. It would have, had I not read the remarkably good reviews. I have to say, I agree. It is the best book-- on an unlikely subject-- I have read in a long time. It is written with all kinds of charmingly old-fashion expressions and is full of mystery. In fact, it is written kind of like a whodunit mystery novel.

Who were these people, and why are they dressed in clothes so similar to famed kilts of the Celtic Irish that the similarities quite simply cannot be attributed to chance?

And the mummies themselves. They are incredible. Unlike the Egyptian ones you see that were elaborately prepared with chemicals and ointments, the Tarim mummies occurred naturally in their salt bed graveyards. This is why they are so life-like.

As Barber, who is a professor of archeology and linguistics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, points out, more than anything, it is their clothing that fascinates. Textiles this old, quite simply do not last that long. As the author comments, "Outside of Egypt, you find a presentable piece of cloth in a prehistoric dig about as often as you find a ruby in your oatmeal."

Her writing is actually like a tapestry itself as she weaves in stories of ancient peoples around the world, with explanations of dating techniques (from carbon dating to tree-ring dating), she then takes a very unusual (for a US scientist) approach: like a detective, she invokes deduction to present a story of who these people were, where they came from and where they went. This is from one online review:

Her argument proceeds where it leads, which on occasion might be graphically represented by a drawing of the Meander River in Turkey. The eddies and still pools along the way are as seductive as the channel. Tracing the advance of languages, for example, she travels from place names in Chinese Turkistan to the borrowings of American settlers from the Indians, as in Allegheny, Adirondack, and many others. "When wave after wave of new people passes through," she writes, "each group speaking a different language, the layers of old language accumulate like lines of seaweed on the sand behind the tide." Thus, while Athenai has been the Greeks' name for their principal city for 3,500 years, it belongs to earlier non-Greek inhabitants, as do the names of the local mountains Hymettus and Lycabetus, which can be traced to the Minoans. Then it's back to Turkistan, where most of the place names are Turkic, not Chinese.

I am not going to spoil the story. But the intricate connections that existed between peoples in ancient times-- not to mention the vast migration distances involved-- is truly thought-provoking (cf., Hattori's Letters from the Silk Road)

Here is a NYTimes Book Review on Barber's book by none other than my man Bernstein himself.

NHK (Part 5) A River of Jade

Moving on to their next destination, from Niya, it was only a matter of going back to the "highway"-- yes, I use the term loosely! As I wrote about in Part 3, nowadays there actually is a highway. That is because oil and gas reserves were found beneath this great ocean of sand. Hence, an asphalt road was built across the Taklamakan to transport the gas and petrol to the people! You can see pictures and read here about one American's (well, he's from New Jersey!) trip down the cross-desert highway from his base in Korla all the way to our team's next destination of Hotan.

It's interesting to see what a major difference an asphalt road makes. For 30 years ago, all there was was an ephemeral track cutting through the shifting sands.

And I keep meaning to mention this, but the NHK team is relying heavily on the detailed maps made by Stein 65 years ago. However-- and even more interesting-- Stein's own maps were made relying very closely on those made by the Tang dynasty monk Xuanzang of a 1000 years ago! As you can see, not many people venture into the desert.

For this segment, however, there really wasn't much need of maps as the NHK team just followed the caravan trail through the swirling, hissing sands and arrived at Hotan rather painlessly. While Hotan is its modern-day Chinese name, the NHK team refers to it by its ancient name of Khotan.

Of all the "Pearls of the Taklamakan," Khotan was one of the earliest oasis kingdoms of the desert. Some think it was peopled by Persians while others say it was populated by exiles from the great Indian kingdoms to the south. Whoever they were they were Mahayana Buddhists who were both devout in religion and expert at trade.

This is from Bernstein's book:

Khotan to me was the very emblem of remote, the edge of the edge of beyond, and that gives it several meanings. For those for whom the prosody of ordinary life is unbearable and who yearn to be away, to expel themselves from their own time, Khotan is the Platonic away. Look at a map and see it, a small dot surrounded by the vastness of the desert and the jagged heights of the uncrossable mountains to the south and west. This is a place where you can experience all the gratification and dislocation of life spent avoiding attachment.

[See what I mean about him? He continues:]

But for a Buddhist monk like Xuanzang whose heart thrilled at the site of Buddhsit monuments, Khotan was a refuge. There are no Buddhist monuments there anymore, only the already excavated ruins of the temples and stupas that the monk saw. But Khotan was the first place in modern China to be reached by the Law, by the Good News from India. This is because it was one of the first places to become important on the Silk Road. It was in that sense astonishing-- a vast commercial and religious emporium in a place of no intrinsic or organic existence of its own. It was the seventh-century equivalent of a space station, a place that lived vibrantly and brilliantly because it connected points that did not mesh organically, those points being nothing less than the east and the west, China and Rome, the Celestial Empire and India.

Khotan was the first Buddhist kingdom in the desert, and it was also the first place to be excavated by Stein. There, digging around in the icy sand with his frozen mustache, Stein was astonished by what would later come to be called Gandharan art.

Gandhara was an ancient Indian Kingdom (located in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan), and is known for its astonishing amalgamation of ancient Greek culture with Indian Buddhism. A vast and flourishing kingdom, some scholars believe that the oasis kingdoms of the Taklamakan were direct offshoots of Gandhara. They think this because the people were clearly Indo-Europeans by race and by language. The art found also points to this common heritage.

The art, by the way, is remarkable. Just weeks before I left Madison, the University's Elvehjem Museum of Art had an exhibition of Gandharan art that was pretty unforgettable. The Museum, which has been re-named apparently since I left, has a small, but excellent collection of Gandharan sculpture in its permanent collection. I got to view the pieces of the collection many, many times and felt that I got to somehow know the statues while I was there. There is much that fascinates about this cross between classical Greek and Indian sculpture and for me, getting to spend so much time in the museum looking at the statues was one of the highlights of my time in Madison.

Known broadly as Greco-Buddhist art, the style originated in what were the Greek colonies of Alexander the Great-- isn't that amazing?

And because prior to Gandharan art, Buddhism-- like Islam-- was iconoclastic, it was forbidden to create images of the Buddha-- so there existed no Buddhist sculpture prior to Greco-Buddhist art. In Gandhara, what with that Greek tradition (it was probably in their blood), the first Buddhist statues were created-- and surprise, surprise, the Buddha looked like ancient Apollo, Adonis and Hercules! Wearing graceful togas, Asian sculpture was never before or never after to see such classical realism.

As the first real Buddhist sculpture, it was to define the canon of Buddhist art for centuries to come. And, this sculptural tradition would have tremendous impact as faraway as Japan (by way of the oasis kingdoms in the desert).

All the famous travelers of Chinese Turkestan-- from Han dynasty Faxian to Tang dynasty Xuanzang to Yuan dynasty Marco Polo-- passed through this great city. And, they all remarked on the fervent faith of the people as well as the famed products of the city: carpet, silk and jade.

The carpets of Khotan are still famed. Created in wool, silk and felt, there are both Persian-style carpets and Turkish-style kilims. The town's silk products are also highly sought after and there is a famous legend surrounding them. China guarded the secret of silk as its most important national treasure. The Byzantines, for example, till quite late times believed silk to be made from a type of tree growth. It was only a matter of time before someone outside China learned the secret, though, and it was the Kingdom of Khotan which was believed to have gotten it before any others.

Given a Chinese princess in marriage, the King of Khotan urged her to bring the secret of silk with her or she wouldn't have anything pretty to wear ever again-- and such is a lady's heart! For she smuggled some silkworm eggs and mulberry tree seeds in her headdress across the desert. The NHK team showed the glorious mulberry groves that surround the green oasis and there was a dance performed where three young girls swirled around on felt carpets holding bamboo baskets full of white cocoons.

One of the murals that Stein uncovered (I think it was somewhere else in the desert) was of a princess with a large headdress. Standing next to her was a man who was pointing at the headdress with a long, thin finger-- wagging it at the headdress as if to say: "the bugs were in here!" 

As silk moved west, a very famous product from Khotan was to move east-- as it still does today. That is jade.

Valued above gold and diamonds, this aesthetic preference- unique to China-- is one of the most central and oldest elements in Chinese art and cultural history, going well back at least 5,000 years . Tools were fashioned from jade in early Neolithic times, but already by the late Neolithic to early Shang Dynasty (1500-1050 B.C.), jade had moved from being a utilitarian resource to something precious to be used in burial, worship and ritual.

According to the Shuowen jiezi, a dictionary compiled in the late Han Period (206BC-AD220), there were over 170 different characters which included the jade radical. The dictionary describes the beauty of jade as having the following five virtues: benevolence (in its warmth and luster); justice (in not hiding its flaws); wisdom (in its clarity which when struck rings clearer from a distance then right up close), bravery (which though it can be broken, can never be bent) and graciousness (with sharp sides that never injure).

In addition to the ostentation and social rank surrounding the possession of jade, we can see from the above that from very early times jade has been closely associated with virtue, moral authority and wisdom-- precisely those attributes any ruler was expected to possess and display. Jade seals were historically used by Chinese rulers “as emblems of imperial power.” Being connected with the Heavens through their spiritual properties and great antiquity, Emperors had long surrounded themselves with ancient pieces of jade, believing the jade helped them to better mediate the will of Heaven.

So, in very much the same way as we saw with China's desire to possess a "pipeline" to the finest stallions of Ferghana, so too did Chinese rulers desire to possess the place where jade came from. And, no where was more famous for its jade than the jade found in Khotan's River of Black Jade and River of White Jade.

Very few cultures share this preference for jade. I can only think of the Mayans and maybe the ancient Persians. So, while those to the West desired Chinese silk, the Chinese above all desired horses and jade. It is very interesting to me that for all their heavy borrowing from the continent, the Japanese never took to either fine horses or jade. While these were central themes running through 2000 years of Chinese history, both are conspicuously absent from Japanese history.

I have to qualify this, of course, as Japan's Imperial Regalia, known as the Three Treasures, are in fact a sword (valor), a bronze mirror (wisdom) and a jade jewel (benevolence). Known as magatama 勾玉　these curved jade pendants are an ancient symbol of the Japanese emperor and were in very ancient times entombed with dead kings. Found as early as 1000 BC, most Japanese do not see a Chinese origin to their sacred imperial treasure and megatama are found in various stones-- not just jade. In any case, the point I am trying to make is that concepts surrounding horses and jade were not imported into Japan, which is quite surprising considering that so many Chinese cultural practices were adopted en masse during the Nara Period (Tang dynasty).

For our story-- that of the Shosoin-- it is Buddhism and Buddhist art, as well as music and textiles that were to play the largest role. But as is typical of the Japanese, their almost obsessive antiquarianism was selective and adapted to their own tastes.

So, why ceramics, tea, incense, and the calendar but not horses and jade? I wish I knew the answer.

**

NHK (Part 4) More Lost Cities

Would it be the northern or southern route?-- I had been wondering for a week. From their spot way out in the middle of the Taklamakan, it only really made sense to go south. I, of course, was hoping they would go north, but from the ruins of Loulan, the NHK Team headed south, back to the main road. The main road being, of course, the Southern Pass of the Silk Road. Unbelievably desolate, even the solitary line of electricity poles seem unbearably lonely.

In this desert landscape--- which has to be without a doubt the most remote and hazardous-looking place I have ever seen-- a glorious string of flourishing Buddhist kingdoms once existed here in a straight east-west line of oases. These Lost Cities have remained buried under the sands of the Taklamakan for 1000 years. Sleeping under a thick blanket of sand, they were first roused from their sleep by the "foreign devils" who trespassed here during the early part of the last century. After China finally shut the door on the foreigner tomb raiders, the cites were then left completely untouched until the 1980s when the NHK team arrived.

The first wave of foreigners (Stein, Hedin, Otani et al) had already smuggled out many of the greatest artistic treasures and important historical artifacts, but it was Sino-Japanese team (funded in great part by NHK) who uncovered the real archaelogical secrets of the lost cities of the desert.

I already described the intense rivalry that went on to uncover-- and remove-- artifacts and works of art from their desert resting place during the early days of the 20th century. It bears repeating again that all the excavating and removal of art treasures and artifacts went on with no permission from local authorities whatsoever. So, we have Le Coq and Hedin, for example, using jacksaws and hatchets to cut down huge rock murals, which further had to be cut into pieces for transport. The American Warner (the model for Indiana Jones) used a "new" chemical method for removing the murals which was every bit as marring as just plain hacking them down. The infamous Stein lied, pretending to be a messenger sent by the famed 7th century Buddhist monk, Xuanzang to be allowed to purchase the famed documents from Dunhuang. Nothing was too low for them to stoop...

And yet-- I don't believe they were greedy, per se. No, it wasn't that. In fact, the more you read their accounts, the more you see they were like men possessed-- in love. And, they believed that they were liberating these precious art works.

Like all men possesed, too, they went about their objective with laser-like precision.

Coming along almost 100 years later, the NHK team still had nothing but Stein's maps to go on to reach the site of Niya. And, even equipped with his highly accurate maps, they still passed right by the site and had to back track hours back in the direction from which they had come. It was brutal. From a small outpost called Kabake-Arsihan, the team-- again on camels-- had to treck 30 miles straight into the heart of the desert (My Silk Road guidebook recommends nowadays UNIMOG trucks over camels).

One of the Chinese members of the team remarked that

"I will always remember the moving moment when we finally saw the ruins of Buddhist stupa of Niya after wandering seven days in that no-man's land of a desert with no clear idea of where the site was."

Stein had removed all the most valuable artifacts, still the project at Niya stretched on for years. October is the only month where the winds die down enough to work, so expeditions are mounted in October and over the years the project has pieced together quite a lot about life in Niya, 2000 years ago.

Stretching some 25 kilometers from north to south the city was dominated by a towering 6.5 meter tall stupa. It's so dry that the archaeological digs have uncovered all kinds of things which paint a picture of daily life back then: richly colorful Chinese brocades and bamboo basket cosmetic cases; delicate wooden comb sets and coins written in several languages. Especially plentiful were agricultural tools and jars with grains or other crops still preserved within them! And, of course, there were mummies. NHK showed a married couple-- who were buried still holding hands (she with a ring still on her finger).

Niya had been another great wooden city with rows upon rows of poplar-lined boulevards. Also like Loulan, some anthropologists posit Caucasian people as the inhabitents of the city. Others, however, say they were the descendents of Alexander the Great's men, who settled here, marrying into the local tribe. Their language was written in the Kharosthi alphabet-- another long dead alphabet that once flourished in this area (On the coin above, you can see Greek on one side and Kharosthi on the other). It was the discovery of this language which was Stein's second greatest coup-- in fact. The first coup being-- of course-- Dunhuang.

**

I think many people when they think of Stein and the library at Dunhuang, inevitably think of the Elgin Marbles in Britian, which are still bitterly contested and debated about down to today. The big difference, however, is that while Elgin sought permission and paid the Ottoman ruler (who was ruler of Greece at the time) for the marbles, Stein and his friends basically came, took what they wanted and then quietly left.

Many British at the time, including Lord Byron, were deeply upset about Lord Elgin's removal of the marbles from the Parthenon and there was much debate then which has continued down to today. Not much is said about Dunhuang, however. Elgin, of course, didn't just take marble friezes but he also removed large quantities of sculpture as well.

Wouldn't it be tremendous to travel to Athens and see the Parthenon with its original sculpture and friezes? Wouldn't it make all the difference? Of course, having the treasures of Dunhuang on exhibition in museums in London, Paris, St. Petersburg and Berlin may allow more people to see-- and study--the treasures, Richard Bernstein, though, in a book I just finally finished after three abortive efforts, describes how moving it is to see these art works en situ. To travel into the heart of the desert and see the murals where they were originally painted on the rocks is the way this art was surely meant to be seen. 

Though, its only a matter of time before, I suppose, the caves are shut down, like in Lascaux.

Coincidentally, I spent the day working on a translation on a documentary on the Summer Palace, which was the staggeringly large complex of gardens, temples and Western-style palaces used by the later Qing dynasty emperors as a summer retreat. The Japanese documentary dances around the destruction as best as seems possible.

In a nutshell, it was a time when foreign Western powers were circling around China like vultures. When the Emperor declined the request to meet with the British face-to-face in Beijing as they were demanding, he then up and left the capital all together in a huff. The "allied" British and French decided to "teach him a lesson," which resulted in the looting and burning of the Summer Palace in a manner that is difficult to even understand. Of course, they had not planned to do this, though I am not exactly clear what they were planning...The result, though, was full-scale looting and then burning everything to the ground.

The loot included tremendous amounts of treasure (in particular huge pearls and other jeweles) as well as porceleins and silks and fabulous glass and ivory objets. I have a book, originally published in Italy, with an engraving of the chaos that took place just before the order was given to burn the Palace to the ground. You can see the Western-style Palace to the East (designed by none other than Giuseppe Castiglione) and many Chinese temples and gardens unfolding toward the West. In the center of the engraving are the allied French-British soldiers who are dancing all dressed up in concubines' silks, loaded down with their looted jewels, prancing on the lawn under parasols and fans.

It must have been an engraving done later in protest. It seems to say two things: that yes, just as the rumors in Europe stated, this palace had been one of the great wonders of the East. And two: the soldiers had gone mad. In 1861, Victor Hugo wrote a passionate letter, which has become rather famous, where he describes described the looting as, "'Two Robbers' broke into this museum, devastating, looting and burning, and left laughing and hand in hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain."

When news reached the Emperor, he was astounded by the barbarity of the Barbarians and caved to their demands: Tianjin would be opened to the foreigners and foreign missionaries would be allowed to preach and build churches in the interior of the country.

Orders to burn the Palace down were given by none other than Lord Elgin-- the son of the Lord Elgin of the Parthenon marbles fame. The Italian book ends its section of "The Sacking of the Summer Palace" with this description:

Amid the ruins of the Summer Palace, Captain Hart Dune, a British officer, had found a pack of small dogs with a grotesque oriental apperance. When he got home, the dog-loving officer requested and ws given permission to present one of the "Pekinese" to Queen Victoria. Little Lootie, named for obvious reasons, yapped in the royal apartments until 1872.

**

You can see some of the most important pictures of the Palace which were taken about 10 years after the Palace's destruction here. A certain Qing historian talks a bit about the current discussion going on in Beijing concerning the idea of re-building the Summer Palace in time for the Olympics. Apparently the "conversation" has grown heated. While the original drawings and plans for many of the structures remain, still is it possible to rebuild something of that scale with any kind of authenticity? I would guess no. And, I would also guess having it exist in park-form as it does today might serve the community best.

Recommended reading:

I crossed-posted this article from Washington Post staff writer Li Xinguang, who participated in one of the spin-off NHK-China projects here-- it is fascinating reading, and it highlights an important point about the NHK Silkroad TV series, which is the series resulted in a further 20 years of research (much funded by private Japanese donors and through these long-term Japan-China projects in the Taklamakan, much important scholarly reearch has been accomplished.

*(On the sacking of the Summer Palace): Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan

*(Online article from Athena Review on Buried Silk Road Cities) Buried Silk Road Cities of Khotan

*(Online article on the Kizil Caves) The West to East Propagation of Buddhist Culture: The Kizil Grottoes and Kumārajīva

Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road remains highly, highly recommended reading (this was my 2nd read and I still really enjoyed the book)

On the Elgin marbles, I have been wanting to read this book, but may hold out for this one instead. Also coming out is this.

NHK (Part 3) "Looking for Loulan" 楼蘭王国を掘る

"The Chinese complain, and the foreigner cannot well deny it," writes Sir Eric Teichman in his Journey to Turkestan that, "caravan-loads of priceless treasures from the temples, tombs and ruins of Chinese Turkestan have been carried off to foreign museums and are forever lost to China." Indeed, China still burns with rage about the loss of so many of its important antiquities in what was really a by-product of the 19th century Great Game.

You remember the Great Game: the British, in their colony in India saw the 2000 miles that existed between the end of their empire and the start of Russia as up for grabs. Sure it was a no-man land of burning deserts and towering, impossibly high mountains, but they weren't picky-- for to them, it was strategically tempting to start aggressively moving north from their northernmost bases in Kashmir and Ladakh. The Russians-- seeing the British encroachments into Central Asia as an obvious threat, began their own encroachments-- south.   

With more and more eyes focused on this huge no-man's land, scholars, art-historians and adventurers also turned their attention to Central Asia in a manner which can only be described as extremely competitive. These scholars and adventurers came, discovered and hauled back vast amounts of loot-- which are, in fact, national treasures that probably really should belong to the places where they were found.

Those doing the looting, in their own defense said, "we were saving them from being destroyed" (isn't that what the US army said when it destroyed a village in Vietnam? Something like, they were destroying the village to save it from the Vietcong?) Not to mention that most of the treasures had been preserved for 2000 years just fine before the Europeans got there...!

But, it is true, many, many treasures have been destroyed by iconoclast Muslims (just think of modern day Bamiyan). The ancient Muslims, while they didn't use dynamite, did hack off heads or deface sculpture which they considered an affront to their religion. Still, the Chinese would counter that more art was destroyed-- forever lost to history-- during one night of bombing during WWII than all the Muslims and Chinese tomb raiders in history. That is, when all the "removed" Central Asian art housed in Berlin was wiped out during a nighttime of Allied bombing. Another huge collection of masterpieces also went missing during WWII when Count Otani's looted artifacts disappeared, and Japanese scholars still cannot trace what happened to the collection.

You get the picture-- there were Russians, British, Swedes, Americans, Japanese and French scholars and adventurers who were combing Central Asia for new discoveries in a rivalry that made Egyptian artifact-hunting look friendly. While the Chinese have their problems with them for a myriad other reasons, in this story, the Russians end up looking pretty good.

Our main antagonists, according to Hopkirk (whose book you will remember I am presently re-reading) were (in order of infamy I presume): Sven Hedin of Sweden, Sir Aurel Stein of Britain, Albert von Le Coc of Germany, Paul Pelliot of France, Langdon Warner of the US and the mysterious Count Otani of Japan. (Hedin and Stein are superstars, Pelliot is of the famous museum in Paris, and Warner was the model for-- who else?-- Indiana Jones).

More on the characters, though, later.... as I want to talk about the setting.

I like to call it the desert of death. Have you ever heard anyone say anything good about the Taklamakan? The name itself comes from the Uighur language meaning, "if you go in, you won't come out," and that is just what people have been saying for 2000 years. That while water and food is truly abundant by comparison in the deserts of Arabia or even in the Gobi, in Taklamakan there is nothing. No water and no life.

And, don't forget the infamous sandstorms of the Taklamakan, which are so severe that they have been known to wipe out, not just entire camel caravans of hundreds of people and animals, but of entire cities as well. It's not just the east-west blowing wind either, but being right smack in the center of the continent, not far from Siberia, the extreme cold temperatures truly make this one of the most hazardous places on earth.

No matter how many pictures you see if the desert, you can only think one thing: "this is the kind of place a country dumps its toxic stuff." And, surprise, surprise, this is where China tests its nuclear bombs and long-range missiles (and I have heard some right out in the open.) Sounds like Nevada? Well, yes. The Taklamakan desert is a complete wasteland. However, below the surface (again, surprise surprise) are vast fields of oil and natural gas.

In order to transport this petrol from the new petrol fields back to civilization, China has recently built a huge highway down the length of the Taklamakan! Not only that, but to keep the infamous blowing sands of the desert from covering up the highway (which probably would have happened even before the highway was completed) they had to plant a huge corridor of trees and shrubs-- called the greenbelt-- along the entire stretch of the highway. That, of course, meant that they had to also construct a vast irrigation system to keep the trees alive! Unfortunately this highway was built after our NHK team passed through, but then again it also cuts north to south so wouldn't have been much use to our team anyhow-- as they were headed due West (toward Persia and Rome).

Back on the road with NHK

After their jaunt to Kharakoto, the NHK team had returned back the way they had already traveled-- back to Dunhuang, and from there, they had started traveling west again. After leaving the Jade Gate Pass, they enter the desert proper-- and even after all my reading, still the images of the desert actually stun me. As I watch the desert unfold before my eyes on my television, I recall how the ancient Chinese monk described it. They had, there is nothing soaring above and nothing moving on land below. That is, it is a wasteland.

Our team is now traveling in a caravan of 9 jeeps. It is 18 days of roughing it. Sleeping in canvas People's Liberation Army tents, the winds rips the army tents right off from the stakes. The main reporter-- still in his hat-- says it was 18 days of not brushing their teeth or washing their faces (presumably because there wasn't any water). To be sure, all the men are covered in a layer of white sand-- sand, which their jeeps continually get stuck in. That is on the days when they aren't passing through rocks so jagged they rip open the tires on the jeeps. Watching, all I can think is: If I ever finally get to Western China, I think I will skip the Taklamakan.

Soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army had joined the team for this part of leg and had to generate signals in Morris Code to some Chinese Army Post every night. China was already testing its missiles at that time, so I am assuming this is why. Even today, my guidebook tells me that to visit the region, you will need to get the permission and be escorted by someone from the army. I think the entire area is full of gulags, nuclear waste and other toxic waste. I personally wouldn't go near the place, but our team had a mission: they were trying to locate the famed Lop Nor Lake-- which is another mystery. You always see it on the map-- a huge lake some 10 times the size of Lake Biwa, and yet-- I don't think it really exists anymore.

Of course, the Taklamakan swallows up and devours all the rivers running into it.

Surrounded on three side by the tallest mountains on earth-- just arriving at the desert of doom was incredibly perilous in itself. Can you imagine those ancient travelers had hiked over the Heavenly Mountains, or the Karakorum Mountains or the Kunlun Mountains-- which are the highest mountains on earth. But that was the easy part-- it was skirting the desert that posed the problem.

The mountains, of course, are part of the story (aren't they always?) For the mountains had huge glaciers which fed the deserts with snow runoff that generated several large rivers. Along these rivers were the famed oases of the desert (which I call the Pearls of the Takmalakan).

In fact, 2000 years ago, the rivers were large and numerous an these rivers gave life to a string of great Kingdoms, which flourished along the rivers. However, with climate change, the glaciers have shrunk and the desert basically took back everything into its deathly gripe. Now, there is nothing but sand. But buried beneath these sands are Lost Cities-- many full of treasure (well, by treasure I mean relics of staggering historical worth).

So, there you have it. The Great Race for antiquities.

The Lop Nor Lake was a huge inland salty lake, and located along its shores was the legendary Oasis Kingdom of Loulan.

The man who discovered the ruins of Loulan in 1899 was a certain Swede named Sven Hedin. Like the NHK team, Hedin had actually set out to find out how and why the waters of the Lop Nor kept shifting. It seems that most brilliant men have extreme characters, and Hedin was no different. He was accused of being Pro-Nazi. He was also a genius. Fluent in seven languages, he went about to uncover buried cities in the most hazardous desert on earth as sort of a side-line to his main job: the making of accurate maps. His maps are so accurate that satellite photographs have only just shown how precisely on target they really were. All made when he was still in his twenties too.

Isn't this the stuff of Indiana Jones:

"Over there, on the verge of the horizon, were the noble, rounded forms of sand-dunes which I never grew tired of watching... Beyond them, amid the grave-like silence, stretched the unknown...the land that I was going to be the first to dread."

This romantic vision is the midst of seeing one of his men lose BOTH feet to frostbite in the desert can be the only way to explain what made men like Sven Hedin keep going. But keep going he did. In what is another priceless image, he had a wooden boat built and sailed through the desert along the Keriya (Tarim?) River-- as far as the river would take him. From there, he traveled further east (yes east again) to the very edge of the desert on foot.

And there, he stumbled on the wooden carvings that so distinguish the Lost City of Loulan. A myriad of minutiae from daily life in Loulan was uncovered, first by Hedin and then by Stein-- who after uncovering a trash heap which would give all kinds of clues to what life in the ancient city was like, then carted vast quantities back with him to Britain. In what was a 2000 year old town, they found houses, government offices, post offices (!) and gardens, which had once been full of apricot, apple and poplar trees. Oh, and of course, pagodas and temples-- for this too had been a thriving Buddhist civilization.

Beautifully colored felt carpets and cartloads of documents-- written on small wooden planks or on leather were uncovered, as well as silk and glass. There were textiles with ancient Greek patterns and coins from northern India. How was it that this once prosperous and cosmopolitan trading town got swallowed up by shifting sands? The Chinese call Loulan the Vesuvius of the East...

Since we know the changing environment most probably was what caused its ruin, it gives pause, doesn't it? A researcher in China, who has devoted her entire life to Loulan studies, remarked that, "All the research achievements of Loulan have touched the inner fears of modern people, because it was the common aspiration of mankind to avoid a recurrence of the Loulan tragedy."  Yes, we are talking about the environment.

People, when they talk about Loulan, don't talk as much about its ruin as about its glories. In fact, most people mainly talk about two things: the wooden carvings (which decorated homes and offices in what is quite reminiscent of what can be seen in Nepal)-- and the mummies.

Yes, mummies-- well not really, but that is what they are called. Most people are probably aware that very, very ancient mummies of Caucasians have been found in Western China. It is hard to track down all the facts since the Chinese didn't really advertise that they had found Caucasians mummies in Western China. An American scholar stumbled upon them in the famous museum in Urumqi and with that, the secret was out.

These mummies, first of all are not really mummies-- but get ready for this: many are over a 1000 years older than those in Egypt. The Takmalakan Desert is located in the great Tarim basin which is one of the lowest places on earth. Extremely dry and extremely salty, the bodies were basically preserved in the dry saline of the sand. They are phenomenal (and I will devote an entire post to them later) but they are most famous for their textiles . Not only are the colors and textures pristine but it was these textiles which first placed these people as Caucasians.

When the NHK team pulled the mummy of a perfectly preserved woman out of the ground (you could see her eyelashes!), She was dressed in colorful robes and had a felt hat on. Buried beside her was a beautifully woven basket with barley grains inside, and she was lovingly draped in a camel skin blanket-- to keep warm. The team said, "she must have been a queen or an aristocratic lady." Even at almost 4000 years old, she was beautiful.

Here is an artist rendition of what she might have looked like-- our beauty of Loulan. Many of the mummies had blue eyes and blonde or red hair. It is their clothes, however, that attracts the most attention, for they are woolens like you don't see anywhere but in Europe: we are talking of stripped leggings in 1960s colors and very tailored looking pants, with conical felt hats and capes. The "beauty of Loulan," such was her fate that she has been held up a banner for everything from the Uighur separatist movement to modern Aryan-type movements in Germany. She is most likely of Russian or Ukrainian stock-- though the American scholar who found the first mummy in the museum in Urumqi believes them to hail further west yet-- in Germany or Austria.

Poking around on the Internet last night for interesting information on the Tarim mummies, I became increasingly disappointed at the racial slant. To me, I would have been equally fascinated if they had been Japanese or Africa for, like Hattori, what is fascinating truly is all the connections and interactions that happened between humans at what was a remarkably early period of history.

This is an interesting read from a Japanese Silk Road project site.

The Otani Mission 大谷隊

As the Great Race for antiquities heated up-- and as if the Europeans weren't having enought trouble with each other-- a mysterious Japanese team appeared on center stage.

It was not the first time, of course, that the Japanese played a part in the events along the Great Road. Indeed, perhaps of all the peoples who have played a part in the history of the Silk Road, it is the Japanese who played one of the most significant roles of all. While not traders or missionaries-- in fact, the Japanese were not even among the active participants in the unfolding of Great Events along the Road; and yet, their service in preserving the riches of the Road, cannot be over overstated. For without the Japanese, there is so much that would have been lost forever.

Their almost obsessive antiquainarism began during Tang dynasty times, and, indeed it continues right down to today. For example there are dances and musical compositions, which while have completely vanished in Central Asia and China, are preserved and even performed as part of the Imperial Calendar events within the Japanese Imperial Household today (see this post for the music and dance preserved in Japan).

The Japanese were quietly there practically from the beginning-- and this participation in events was in no manner diminished during the period of intense rivalry for antiquties that ocurred at the start of the 20th century. Yes, the Great Game.

From the perspective of stunning triumphs, the Japanese came home in 3rd place with the 3rd greatest haul of loot. In terms of scholarship, no country has played a greater role than Japan (and from London's point of view its too bad all the scholarship is being done in Japanese).

Peter Hopkirk paints an almost comical picture of the role of the Meiji Period Otani Mission, describing how the British had them tailed for a year, believing them to be spies sent by the Mikado. Hopkirk sets the stage:

In the autumn of 1908, around the time when Pelliot was shipping his treasures home from Central Asia, British intelligence chiefs in Simla began to take an interest in the movements of two young Japanese archaelogists who had turned up on the Silk Road. Although unaware of it themselves, the men had been observed from the moment they entered Chinese Turkestan overland from Peking. In true KIM fashion they were shadowed for over a year by a succession of Moslem traders, native servants and others on the payroll of the Indian {British} government

The two men were ostensibly Buddhist monks, but they didn't act very Buddhist (reportedly being cruel to the natives everywhere along the way). In addition, they kept drawing things (which is something, of course, archaelogists actually do!) It was the Otani Mission, in fact, that first discovered what is one of the most important artistic discoveries of that period: the splendor of the Kizil Gottoes. Not only are these cave murals the oldest cave grottoes in China, but they are considered to be by many people the most beautiful.

Located not far from Kucha, the Japanese team was tremendously lucky to find them. However, that luck turned on them when a very powerful earthquake ocurred which caused them to have to leave the site empty-handed. In the chaos of the disaster they even lost their notes and photographs, and this was all the window of time necessary which allowed the Germans (who were right on their tail) to move in and take the glory.

The German team was led by Albert von Le Coq (who was independently wealthy and served as assistent to the Director of what was Berlin's famous Ethnology Museum). Hopkirk paints a picture of tension that existed between Le Coq and the Director, who had a more conservative approach to Le Coq's "penchent for wholesale removal." Le Coq was not on the losing side of the argument as the German team hauled back three hundreds of crates (360 kilograms) of art during their three expeditions at Kizil.

You are probably wondering just how does one cut out paintings which have been painted on to thick rock inside caves 1500 years ago? Well, they used very sharp knives to cut around the paintings and then jimmed in pickaxes to create the space necessary to get their saws in. After huge chunks of rock had been removed, the paintings were further cut down for transport.

Le Coq's published catalog Alt-Kutscha can be seen in very high definition on this Japanese site. Note the saw marks on the murals-- which one has to admit were carefully done given the environment of the caves.

It is apparent from Le Coq's writings that he remained deeply impressed by what he found in the caves. His first impression was of the astounding beauty of the blue pigment used in the paintings decorating the cave walls.

“…the extravagant use of a brilliant blue – the well-known ultramarine which, in the time of Benvenuto Cellini was frequently employed by the Italian painters, and was bought at double its weight in gold."

As Le Coq explains, this ultramarine pigment was the same blue so beloved of the Renaissance painters, which was actually made from ground up lapis luzli. Victoria Finlay, in her breathtaking book, Color: A Natural History of the Palatte, begins her chapter on blue with these words:

One Day many years ago somebody told me that all the true ultramarine paint in the world came from one mine in the heart of Asia.

It's true all the ultramarine paint in the world was painstakingly derived from the lapis luzli rocks mined from one place in northeast Afghanistan. Located not far from Bamiyan, from there, donkeys transported the expensive pigment in rough scaks over mountain ranges East to Central Asia and beyond, and West to Venice and beyond.

In Europe, the precious pigment was so expensive that it was worth more than gold, and the legnedary painters of the Renaissance were forced to wait till their patrons provided them the pigment before they could apply the heavenly blue to Mary's robes-- for this ultramarine pigment was Mary's. Finlay says in today's money, a pound would cost about $3000. The color is truly heavenly-- just look at the Wilton Diptych-- shown left. That is all lapis luzli from the Sar-e-sang mine in Afganistan.

Le Coq was with good reason stunned to see the precise same shade being used in the cave paintings of Kizil-- the famed ultramarine of the Renaissance. More precious than gold, Le Coq was surprsied not only by it being present this far East, but also by the abundant use of the extremely costly pigment.

He was even more taken aback by the content of the paintings and wrote that “there was … not the slightest sign in the paintings of any East Asiatic influences.” That is to say that "despite its geographic proximity to China, the Buddhist art there did not show any Chinese elements, but more Indian and Persian (Iranian) influence."

The people depicted in the paintings surprised him as well, for red haired light eyed peoples dominated the pictures. He thought their looks and their swords were highly reminiscent of his own Frankish culture and was one of the earlier proponents of a Caucasian Buddhist culture in Central Asia. He wrote:

Such more striking are representations of red-haired, blue-eyed men with faces of a pronounced European type. We connect these people with the Aryan language found in these parts in so many manuscripts.. These red haired people wear suspenders from their belts.. a remarkable ethnological peculiarity!

**

So, what of our supposed Japanese spies? Well, while they missed the boat at Kizil, they managed to come away with the third largest collection of Central Asia art-- only beaten by the British and Germans. The Otani team got its name from a certain Count Otani Kozui (picture at top). It is hard to say whether they were spies or not since many secrets remain secrets in Japan.

Otani himself had a fascinating life.

The son of the 21st Abbot of one of Japanese Buddhism's most important sects, Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land Buddhism) Otani was actually sent away for a Western-style education in London as a young man. There he met several of the adventurers and scholars whom I have been writing so much about like Marc Aurel Stein (of Dunhuang infamy) and Sven Hedin of Sweden. It is not at all had to imagine the young man coming under their spell-- for these adventurers were the toast of London. You can well imagine how, more interested in adventure than Buddhism-- he vowed that one day he too would make his name through discovery and adventure.

Hopkirk doesn't discuss this aspect at all, but I think it's also relavent to also keep in mind that an essential aspect of East Asian Buddhism is grappling with the problem of translation. Buddhism was so much harder to translate into various langauges than the Bible or the Koran, for example, and truly huge problems had to be overcome. First, of all, the written tradition does not depend on a bible or book of revelation, but rather is a highly sophisticated system of philosophy and is therefore not easily understood in its original language.

But the early languages used to write down the Buddhist texts, particularly Sanskrit, had tremendously rich vocabularies for expressing philosophical content. Sooil used to tell me about Sanskrit's unparalled vocabularly. He said that English still does not have all the finely nuanced philosophical vocabulary as Sanskrit. Even worse than English were Chinese and Japanese-- both of which quite simply did not have the native words necessary to express the obscure concepts. So from the very earliest days of Buddhism, there were really large issues concerning viable translations, and monks and scholars would seek to find the answers by traveling back to the source of the religion.

Indians like to say that "all roads lead back to Ajanta." Well, they at least lead back to Dunhuang.

For that reason alone, I wouldn't find it odd that Otani would have sunk a vast fortune of his own money into these expeditions which brought back Buddhist sculpture, documents in several of languages, countless artifacts and several 2000 year-old mummies. As a Buddhist, I do not think it ought that he would be in Central Asia as he had more of a reason, perhaps, than any of the Westerners out there digging in the sands.

The Russians remained absolutely convinced they were up to no good and maybe they had their reasons. In the end, though, Otani's project caused he, his family and his temple grave financial hardships. He lost his post as Abbot of the Temple and had to sell off vast holdings-- including his beloved villa full of two-thirds of his art collection.   

The part of the colection that Otani kept hold of, eventually was scattered here and there into various collections in Japan. The Japanese government during the 1960's sought to track down as many of the pieces as it could and finally gathered a substantial amount of Otani's personal hoarde together where they were brought together and are now kept at the Tokyo National Museum. More remains out of the Tokyo collection as in it, and to try and see the Otani Collection in its entirity you would have to travel to more than a dozen museums in three countries. Many pieces remain unaccounted for as well.

After his financial difficulties, Otani shifted his base to China-- closer to the Lost Cities he still dreamed of. He took a large part of his collection with him to Shanghai and Lushun. These pieces mostly ended up in museums in China (History Museum in Beijing and the Lushun Museum).

Of those pieces left in his Villa in Kobe? Well, an industrialist was the person who bought Otani's villa along with all its contents-- including the art, and this clever businessman (?) sought to barter the precious treasures for mining rights in Korea. It was in this way that another third of the collection ended up in Seoul, where it still sits, I believe in storage boxes in the National Museum there.

French Medievalist (wouldn't you love to be called a French Medivalist?) Michel Pastoureau wrote a book called Blue: the History of a Color in 2001 that I really liked-- reading it twice in a row in fact! While the Japanese have had a love affair with the color blue right from the very start-- having died in indigo for centuries. In Europe, blue had a much rougher start. In fact, in antiquity it wasn't even acknowledged as a color at all. It wasn't until the middle Middle Ages (around the 12th century) that blue rose to fame, becoming associated with the Virgin Mary. I tend to prefer French scholarship as it greatly resembles Japanese scholarship's preference toward lyrical narative over logical argument. It also does great service to the art of studying minituae-- Pastoureau's book is highly recommended.

NHK (Part2): Kharakhoto 幻の黒水城

From a distance, it is like the most exquisite mirage you could image. Shimmering in the shifting sands of the Gobi Desert, a towering Tibetan stupa rises up. You can just make out the edges of the crumbling city wall but the sand of the desert hisses like a great slithering snake-- as if to warn you: stay away!

And, you cannot help but think-- how did it come to this? How did this great city on the crossroads end up crumbling in the sands of the desert? And, will this be our fate as well? Will someday people stumble through the ruins of Tokyo or Los Angeles and say, "how beautiful it must have been?"

**

Yes, we are back on the road with NHK (see Part 1). After having been shown around the famed sites of Dunhuang by none other than my favorite novelist Inoue Yasushi), the team hit the road again. But this time they were traveling backwards-- that is, back in the same direction from which they had already traveled-- motoring East back toward China!

Back within the embrace of the Great Wall, they arrive in Jiuquan (closest city to China's main rocket launch center). After gathering up the necessary supplies, the team once again boards their jeeps to head due northeast on what was once called the Old Gobi Trail. A dusty trail that cuts straight through the Gobi Dowser;, half-way to their destination, their cars gave out and so they had to exchange cars for camels for the last leg. The Chinese-Japanese team was now joined by a group of Mongolians who were there to guide the way and help manage the camels. They still had 60 kilometers to travel, which on the back of a camel is a day and a half.

That night, setting up camp in the desert, the Mongolians show the Chinese and Japanese how to erect a traditional felt yurt. Compact and very warm, the yurts, they say, make the best tents for camping in the freezing desert. Exhausted the men sit around the camp fire drinking black tea and smoking cigarettes. Before long, talk turns to their destination-- the legendary city of Kharakhoto.

Kara signifies "black" in Altaic languages like Japanese, Manchurian and Turkish-- and Khoto means city or fortress, so Kharakhoto literally means the "Black City." In English, "black city" doesn't perhaps conjure up the most promising images. However, as Hattori in his book Letters of the Silk Road reminds us, black (kara) does not have the same associations in the East as it does in the West. The Black Sea is no more black-- and no more "dark"-- than the Red Sea is red. In the East, black signifies North (with red being south, white being west and blue being east).

Closely associated with China's theory of the five elements, from the earliest of times four celestial beasts 四獣 have been associated with each of the cardinal directions: the tortoise (black warrior of the north): the white tiger of the west; the red phoenix of the south and the blue dragon of the east. These concepts (along with so many others) traveled East to Japan and west as faraway as Turkey. According to this cosmology, the Black Sea really just means the "northern sea" and the Red Sea the "southern sea." In Turkish, the Mediterranean is known as the White Sea (that is, the Western Sea).

The "black city" of Kharakhoto, then, is the "northern city;" which makes sense since the city is located to the north of the Silk Road. It should also be noted (though I don't think it's particularly relevant here) that also according to this ancient system, black was the position of authority. The Imperial Palaces of China were always positioned in the north-- facing south.They sat, in fact, beneath the Northern Pole Star, which was associated with the color purple and abode of the Celestial Emperor. For this reason the Imperial Cities 紫禁城 of Peking and Hue are called in Chinese "Forbidden Purple Cities" (that is, located in the place of authority-- the north-- under the Northern Pole Star). You have to admit there is something very Chinese about imagining the Emperor sitting in a place literally beneath where the heavenly emperor sits in sky above.

In Japanese "kara" (using a different character) is has for 2000 years been used to refer to China, but the concept (kara→black→north→authority) is actually believed to have been of Mongolian or Turkish origin (which is why it perhaps spread so far West into Turkey).

In any case, the city of Kharakhoto probably got its named from the waters of the Heihe (Black River) which flowed just outside the city gates, and indeed, the Chinese called the city: Heishuicheng (黒水城　"black water city")

Getting back to our team in the desert, though, as everyone was sitting around the campfire smoking cigarettes and drinking black tea, the elder member of the Mongolian contingent took out a traditional Mongolian stringed instrument and as he played a melodious tune began to speak of the famous legend of the last King of Tanguts who perished within the walls of his great capital city of Kharakhoto.

The Tanguts, as I mentioned before, were the people most dreaded by the Chinese of the Song dynasty. Their empire-- the Xixia Empire-- had caused nothing but trouble. Try as they might, though, the Chinese were unable to crush them. Ethnically Tibetan, the Tanguts were devout Buddhists of the Tibetan school. In fact, as the team finally approaches the ruins of the city, huge towering stupas rise up from the sands. It must have been a city full of Buddhist temples and monasteries, the narrator tells us (still in his hat).

Like all the Buddhist kingdoms and cities of the desert, Kharakhoto was a huge fortress city with city walls 9 meters high. During the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, the city served to link Karakorum to the west with the Mongol capital of Xanadu to the east along a far northernly route. During this time, the city flourished  not only as a place of Buddhist scholarship but as a market town as well. Just outside the walls (which were believed to be Chinese-style walls of colorfully glazed tiles) there was a Muslim mosque (pictured at left). The Japanese archaeologist (along for this segment of the show) was delighted to find pieces of Chinese silk, wooden combs and fabric shoes just lying scattered in the sand.

Again: How did it come to this?

Well, it seems that the King of the city had angered the Emperor of China (Who happened to be none other than Genghis Khan). The Mongol warrior sent a great Chinese army to destroy the Black City of the Gobi Desert. After engaging in several battles, the Chinese army had the Tanguts cornered in their capital city. But it was really a stalemate as the Chinese could not breach the 9 meter-tall walls. The Chinese growing tired of waiting (for how long could an army really wait in the blisteringly hot desert?), decided to cut off their water supply. Filling thousand of bags full of sand, they built a dam to divert the river (which served as the city's sole water supply) off to the west-- away from the thirsty city.

Digging desperately for water, it became clear that the Chinese plan had worked and there was nothing to do but face the enemy. The ruler of the Tanguts, put his massive collection of treasures down the well along with that of the bodies of his two wives and their sons (who he had killed to keep them away from Chinese hands). He then cast a spell over the well to keep it hidden from his enemies.

Charging out to face the Chinese army, he along with his entire army were decimated and their glorious city reduced to ruins. The Chinese, it is said, desperately tried to find the Tangut King's treasures. Said to be the angry spirit of the dead king, all they found, though, were red and green snakes which slithered all over the city.

It was this city (and its treasure) that so captivated the Russian Colonel Petr Koslov, who led the infamous Russian expedition to the site in 1908. Since I am now re-reading Peter Hopkirk's Foreign Devil's of the Silk Road, I will be writing more about the topic of the Great Game in Part 3 of this series. For now, suffice it to say, that as a "foreign devil" in East Asia myself, while I don't much like the term, it is probably well-deserved when it comes to the Russians, Americans and Brits (and Japanese) of the story.

For Colonel Koslov, Kharakhoto was the lost city of his dreams; he said: "Ever since reading about the ruins in the explorer Potanin's book Khara-Khoto has been constantly on my mind." Me too.

They were in a very remote part of the Gobi desert and were needless-to-say stunned to stumble upon it: "The walls of the town," he reported, "are covered in sand, in some places so deeply that it is possible to walk up the slope and enter the fortress." The Chinese will never forgive what took place during the early part of the 20th century when Western explorers waltzed into Western China and literally lugged off tons of important paintings and ancient documents (many being ruined in the process). The Russians, actually come off looking better than the others. It was really only at Kharakhoto that they carted away vast amounts of important relics, treasures and documents.

While they were unable to find the legendary treasure of the last tangut King, they did uncover enough books, coins and documents to launch an entire new field of study: Tangut Culture and Xixia Language Studies. His discoveries were all sent back to St Petersburg where they remain today in a special wing of the Hermitage. 

NHK Silkroad (part 1) 天馬行空

 

  

The power of a kingdom lies with its horses

Who would have known there were kofun (3rd-7th century megalithic tombs) in Tochigi? I had always associated these ancient tumuli with the old capitals of Nara and Kyoto.

T was as surprised as I was when Makoto invited us to go and take a look. We stopped for lunch at organic wonder, Howdy & Cafe. One has to have lunch before setting out to visit a tomb after all!

I told Makoto that I was watching the classic NHK Silk road documentary, borrowed from the local library. His eyes lit up, "The one with music by Kitaro?" We are talking about "the" video! Said to have started the "silk road craze" in Japan, it doesn't hurt that Japan is also home to some of the most important relics from the Silk Road in existence.

I would say that Japan has been in its "silk road boom" (their expression not mine!) for the entire 18 years I have been here-- and sure enough, it all started with the production of this amazing video series.

Production began in 1979. The first volume was a joint-production between NHK and China's CCTV. Setting out from what is usually said to be the "terminus" of the Silk Road, Xian, the team heads West. Not using public transportation, their caravan of range rovers and a bus aims to get as close to the original routes as possible.

Yes, they go off-road.

Even 30 years ago, NHK is NHK. It is public television at its best. Of course, TV has come a long way in 30 years. Instead of digital high definition, the program has a narrator who wears this very unfortunate white "jungle" hat (like the helmets Japanese wore during WWII). Carrying a portable box-like audio recorder with microphone, he is from a different time and space!

China too must have changed a lot. In the filming, you see rural images that could have been taken a 1000 years ago. And, even in Xian, everyone is in gray Mao jackets and red caps, bicycles everywhere. Party officials ride through the crowded streets like hornets in their motorcycle side-cars. Its like those communist-era ballets that you see-- you can hardly believe your eyes.

And, of course, it's the tail end of the 70's, so you get the obligatory psychedelic shots of 12 arm goddesses moving to the rhythm of Kitaro's new age synthesizer.

That said, still, it was remarkable for its time. Not only was it one of the world's only joint TV productions with communist China, but it marked the first time in history that a foreign camera crew was allowed to film along the Silk Road-- within what has long been a closed country.

The team, departing from Xian to the narration of a poem by a Tang dynasty poet, immediately headed west ("west of the River") toward the famous Hexi Corridor. For this first stage, they remain east of the famed Jade Gate (which marked the historical end of China proper). Because they are East of the Gate, the lands they pass through the Corridor have long been considered part of China-- though they were controlled by Tibet off-and-on during Tang times and then by the Xixia during Song times (this is the time period of Inoue's Dunhuang of my recent post).

Following the Yellow River, if you look at a map you notice two things.

First, this 1000 kilometer long stretch of land is sandwiched in between towering mountains to the south and the Gobi desert to the north. There is only one way to go-- and that is straight ahead, as the path barely skirts the edges of the Gobi, hemmed in by the mountains. The second point is that control of this long and thin corridor is de facto control of trade to and from China. Therefore, it has always been of great strategic importance as there really was no other way in or out of the Empire.

The first real settelment they arrive at is the city of Lanzhou. It is truly another world: as here we have arrived in the Land of ancient Chinese garrisons, troublesome nomadic tribes and the Silk Road. There are four main garrison cities located along the Hexi Corridor. They are the gate city of Lanzhou, then moving west is Wuwei, Zhangye and finally Dunhuang.  Just before reaching Dunhuang, in fact, on the Lanzhou-Urumqi railway line is the westernmost remaining segment of the Great Wall of China. To think that Wall reached this far West-- well, it boggles my mind. But then much boggles the mind along this road!

There isn't much to see at Lanzhou, so the team quickly pushes off. Their next stop is the garrison town of Wuwei, which was established as such during the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) when the Chinese were finally able to oust the troublesome Xiongnu (aka, "the Huns") from the area. In honor of the accomplishment, they named the new town, "Wuwei," (武威) which means military prowess.

The Chinese had pushed into the area during the Han and it was in a Han dynasty tomb just outside of the town of Wuwei that the famous bronze Galloping Horse was dug up. It is an extremely important piece of Han sculpture that the Chinese Tourism Agency uses as their official logo (why I am not exactly sure). With all four legs in the air and its tail aloft as well, the great power of the animal as it soars is made apparent by the swallow that is shown just under its foot. The glorious horse has flown, surpassing even the flying swallows in the air.

A heavenly horse soars through the sky 天馬行空

Not coincidentally, horses play an extremely important role in the unfolding story of the Silk Road. At Dunhuang the Silk Road-- in order to avoid the desert of death-- splits into two roads: the Southern and Northern routes. The two routes then come together again at the town of Khotan. This is quite near the legendary area of the blood-sweating horses of Ferghana. Located on the southern banks of the Syr Darya (in Oxiana), Ferghana was in all probability populated by the descendants of Alexander the Great's Greek colonists. In this lush valley surrounded by the towering Pamirs , came the heavenly horses 天馬 which were celebrated for a thousand years in China.

China's many amazing accomplihsments are really all the more amazing when one consideres how early in history they were achieved. From astonishingly ancient times, China had become what was a huge agricultural country with a highly sophisticated social structure.  During different times in the country's history, from Beijing stretching 2000 miles to the west (as well as along their western flank), China had had to contend with nomadic (and semi-nomadic) peoples who made up for their lack of sedentary culture with great military might. This military might was achieved through outstanding horsemanship and weaponry. From the Khitans to the Tanguts, from the Mongols to the Manchus, these people to the north were expert horsemen and archers. They were the reason, after all, why the Great Wall had been built and re-built for centuries. 

So because of this situation, whether the Chinese liked it or not, their future was bound up in their own ability to fight on horseback. Training a calvary and keeping horses became top priority, and this was especially so during Tang times.

So  magnificent, they were believed to have been descended from dragons, the horses of Ferghana were known as "celestial horses," horses of the air" and as "blood-sweating stallions." Both China and Persia vied for them and both countries at all costs sought to keep the supply lines open to their source in Central Asia.

Horses had been popular among emperors and aristocrats at least since Han times. It was the famed Han dynasty diplomat Zhang Qian (who-- such was his steadfast loyalty to his country-- really puts all future diplomats to shame!) who brought back tales of the horses of the heavenly mountain area of Ferghana. Dispatched by the Han Emperor in the 2nd century BC, his task was to travel west to find out more about the peoples of Central Asia.

 At first, he didn't get very far at all as he was detained by the dreaded Xiongnu for 10 years! Finally managing to escape, his next stop was Ferghana. Known in Chinese as Duyuan (or the great Yuan people), the name is thought to come from he word, "yona" which was the word used to designate the Greek colonists of the area of the time. Official Zhang describes the people of Ferghana as being civilized and peaceful like the Parthians and Bactrians.

 From Han times onward, the desire for these heavenly horses continued unabated, but it was during Tang times that the horse craze really took off in China. Tang art is known for its glorious silver metalwork and ebullient three color ceramics. It is also known for its horse paintings and sculpture.  Indeed, during the middle Tang, so popular had horseback riding and polo become that women for the first time in Chinese history left their veils and robes behind in favor of men's trousers and low cut tops. The most popular hairstyle of the day was a swept-to-the-side hairdo known as a "thrown from the horse bun." Riding and polo was the aristocratic pastime par excellence during the Tang when women rode like men.

 The art of calvary warfare required the best horses that money and silk could buy, and the horses of Ferghana became a great symbol of power-- both military power and the power of appropriate foreign policy. They also came to be associated with imperial power itself. The horse shown in the ink painting at the top of this post remains my all-time favorite Tang horse painting-- and miraculously it is now housed at the Met in New York. "Night Shining White" was the name of Emperor Xuanzang's favorite steed. The characters for his name--照夜白 means "illuminating the night white"-- in reference to the animal's brilliant lunar-white coat. He was the emperor's favorite steed and in art stood in for the emperor himself. Is he a still half-wild creature or is he dancing like some of the emperor's famed "dancing stallions"? That the picture has been be lovingly passed down for a millennium years is attested to be the colophons and seals on the scroll which span a thousand years of Chinese history. 

The NHK documentary takes great pains to ensure that we keep in mind that this part of the silk road is as much about horses as it is about silk. And, not to state the obvious, but by Tang times, Chinese-style foreign policy can already be seen. Having colonies on the other side of the world never interested the Chinese. Their focus has always been on the lands which border their realm. And the further from thhe Centre, the less interested China became.

Keeping the North and West "pacified" and maintaining relations with important foreigner powers for the sole purpose of trade comprised the focus of Chinese-style foreign policy-- this mainly continues right down to today. This is a relationship which defines Central Asia and perhaps even ancient Persia as well. The great Russian Orientalist V.V. Bartold described as a symbiotic relation, calling it the "Steppe and the sown." Mutually independent, the steppe peoples and the sedentary civilizations have always had a very uneasy relationship. For 3000 years in fact, this uneasy balnce of power continued, with the steppe people posing a constant threat, China waivered between using trade and war to deal with them. And, horses were absolutely essential to this.

Fortified cities and armed fortresses were also bult the entire length of the country along China's northern border. If military help was required, great fires were lit sending huge smoke into the air which could be seen from the next lookout. In what had to be the world's most magnificent smoke relay signal in history, NHK says that a signal set in Dunhuang would reach the capital some 2000 kilometers away in half a day!

Anyway, from Wuwei, our team hit the road again. On the dusty and desolate road that skirts the Gobi, the announcer says, it's impossible to really believe they will come upon another town. And, yet, for a thousand years or more, travelers traveled along the Hexi Corridor in camel caravans. Departing from one oasis at dawn, they would walk half a day before reaching the next oasis that afternoon. It was slow going; the narrator says they averaged 40 kilometers a day. 

There next stop would be the city of Zhangye. Known as Ganzhou in ancient times (this is the Kanji NHK uses which throws me off), Marco Polo stayed here for a year. In my post Pearls of the Taklamakan, I talk about at great length the Buddhist kingdoms of East Central Asia. For now, I will just reiterate what Susan Whitfield says in her Life Along the Silk road, that people tend to be thrown off by modern day Western China and Eastern Central Asia.

Nowadays, not only is the entire Central Asia region-- from the former Turkestan to Kashmir and on to Uighur country-- almost completely Muslim, but the people themselves are altogether different as well.  Where now there are Turkic and Persian derived Muslims, there once existed here great Buddhist Kingdoms composed of Indo-Europeans. 

Zangye was one of these great ancient Kingdoms. And as if Marco Polo's visit wasn't enough, Ganzhou has a Sleeping Buddha statue, dating from 596 AD(!) that is not only larger than the glorious Wat Po, but it is one of the largest sleeping Buddha statues on earth!

And speaking of the famous Venetian merchant, People still fight over whether Marco Polo even made it as far as China. However, Popo himself wrote that he stayed in Ganzhou for a year with his uncle on "business that is not worth mention." Hmmm.... The video showed a statue of Polo which stands today in the center of the modern town.

Zhangye is the largest oasis of the Hexi Corridor. Driving into town the road is lined with tall poplar trees. It reminds me of the town T lived in in Lesotho. You would drive into Mafeteng from the lunarscape of the high mountains of this Kingdom in the Clouds, and approaching the town, the road was lined on both side by tall poplar trees. Standing in two perfectly straight lines on either side of the perfectly straight road, the trees would wave gently in the wind. That is the typical oasis look-- a splash of green along the road as you approach.

Zhangye is dominated by its huge bell and drum tower (which dates from the Ming dynasty). As the camera does a closeup on the structure, the narrator mentions that 7th century documents from the town record that during the early Tang 27 different nationalities had permanent trading missions set up in the town-- not bad for the days before trains and airplanes, I'd say. In 609, the Sui Emperor himself traveled here to attend a grand trade fair that took place. Marco Polo waiting for permission from the Great Khan to travel further East, mentioned that the cosmopolitan town was full of temples and even had three Nestorian Churches which were "quite fine." And, speaking of the Great Khan, the temple of the Great Buddha is reportedly said to be the birthplace of Kublai Khan himself.

 The video ends at the Western-most point of the Wall. Hundreds of soldiers were stationed here to defend "China" during  Ming times. The Wall. It is said that rather than breaching the wall, Genghis Khan had just bribed his way in.

A wall is only as good as the soldiers who protect it after all explains our narrator, still in his unfortunate hat. From this point, the road leads to Dunhuang...

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Of Zhang Qian's extraordinary 2nd century BC mission, of 100 men dispatched only 2 made it back to the capital alive. French scholar Luce Boulnois takes time to describe the amazing manner in which-- Zhang Qian kept his imperial insignia safe during the entire course of his travels. Attached to a bamboo pole 2 meters high were three great tufts of tak's tail-- which was considered an emblem of power throughout Asia from very ancient times. Can you imagine? For what had to be 8000 or so kilometers roundtrip, he managed to keep a 2 meter tall bamboo standard safe from harm....

 In the late 90s the China Institute in New York put on yet another unforgettable show. This one called Power and Virtue: The Horse in Chinese Art. The catalog remains one of two important books on the subject (You can see Shining White on the cover). You would be amazed at how many important Chinese works of art in the horse genre are kept in US museums. Below is a review of the exhibition that I thought worth giving offering the link to as well. It's here and is certainly worth reading. The Painting just above is by famed modern painter Xu Beihong.