The Silk Road

In October 2002, I travelled the China section of the ‘old Silk Road’. This route from the old capital Chang’an to Kashgar could take up to six months and caravans often were lost in the deserts or the high mountain passes. With the wonders of modern technology and time travel I managed it in three weeks. I was lucky and was lost several times, but it was satisfying not to be fettered by a large group and I now have a folio of the most amazing images. Also the six kilos of luggage I started with, turned into thirty-six on my back by the end of my trip. The joys of being a textile aficionado.

Transport yourself back a thousand years. The Silk Road is at its height, and you are at its beginning: somewhere in eastern China, in a humble, windowless hut, dark and silent, without furniture or people. But when you listen closely, you hear a noise, a faint rustling. It is silkworms gorging themselves on mulberry leaves. A silkworm's life is short and unspectacular: it eats, it spins a cocoon, and then is killed by its merciless human keepers. Its silken resting-place is soon unwound, then spun into a cloth legendary for its exquisite softness and beauty. This precious material coveted everywhere but made by a mysterious process known only inside China, now begins a long and hazardous journey.

The Silk "Road" is misleading, for actually it was many roads, many slender strands originating in thousands of towns and cities all over eastern China. They threaded west, skirted the deserts of Turkestan, gradually coalescing into just a handful of trails hacked out of some of the world's most impenetrable mountains. If the bundles of precious silk survived crossing these formidable barriers- they then descended to the Indian Subcontinent. Here the Silk Road swiftly multiplied again, spawning hundreds, then thousands of diverging tracks that brought Chinese goods to Persia, Arabia and Europe, then returned the treasures of those faraway lands to eager Chinese connoisseurs.

……………Picture a dry rock cliff face, 1600 meters long and three or four stories high pierced by hundreds of holes. Each hole leads to a cave, and each cave contains statues and murals of surpassing excellence, a whole museum of Buddhist Art entombed within sandstone. Step into the dark, cool interiors and you view murals spanning ten centuries of Chinese civilisation. The grottos range from very small to gigantic; inside one cave you gaze at a Buddha statue more than 30 metres high. In others you are fascinated by the flying Asparas. It is now the year 2003 and you are visiting the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.

How did these grottos come about in what is now a largely Muslim region? Both religions reached China along the Silk Road; but Buddhism--now largely supplanted by Islam along the route--was the first to arrive. From its birthplace in India, Buddhism was carried by faithful missionaries-- along the same trails travelled by merchants. Some of these Silk Road caravan sites became flourishing centres of Buddhist learning, and a string of dramatic legacies from this era still remain.

You travel on… Sand stretches in every direction, scorching and golden. Turpan is the hottest place in China, with maximum temperatures of more than 40 degrees. Yet, Turpan is not only fertile, but has become China's most famous centre of viniculture. Water comes from the Bogda Shan; a range of snow-capped peaks and then crosses the desert through ‘man-made’ aqueducts called karez, miracles of ancient engineering.

Because of its karez, Grapes are so much Turpan's mainstay that some of the town's streets are sheltered under grape arbors. You relish in this shade, vital in summer and delicious most any time of the year.

Scattered around Turpan are many relics of Silk Road splendour. The city of Jiaohe, dates from the second century BC, and was both a prosperous commercial centre and a devoutly Buddhist town--until its destruction by Genghis Khan. Walk Jiaohe's main street, clearly discernible among the crumbled remains of shops and homes. At the end are the remains of an enormous temple, its walls and terraces still standing; and if your imagination is good, perhaps you will catch sight of a dust- streaked silk trader bowing before the shrine.

Now comes the hardest part of your journey: skirting the great Taklamakan, whose name in the Uighur language means, "desert of no return." As you gaze across the blinding white sands, you might think that a thin, dark line drawn along the horizon is a mirage. But it's not; it's a line of trees, and they grow steadily taller as you approach. Suddenly you plunge into shade: a boulevard lined with regiments of poplars, channels of cool running water, kerchiefed women chatting by the roadside, children playing in the dust. A few miles of cool respite, then, just as suddenly, you pop out onto desert once more. Oasis after oasis.

The day has been long and you are weary. You welcome the avenue of Poplars as they meet overhead to form a cool, grey green tunnel. You have reached Khotan. It is one of the remotest places in China and you are here to trade its famed jade, carpets and silk. You have also heard about the Mulberry Paper makers of Khotan.

Today Khotan is still remote and there is only one Paper maker left. The small family makes sheets of Mulberry Paper in a ground pit the same way the generations did before. The paper is rough in your hands but firm and richly textured. You are invited into the cool, small dwelling; the walls and floors are lined with brightly coloured felt rugs. You have also seen these rugs on the donkey cart that brought you here.

A felt making family is just up the road so you walk through the dusty streets with the mud brick houses with yellow pumpkins piled high on every roof and flat surface til you hear a thumping sound. In a small thatched area in a courtyard two young boys are dancing a length of rattan along the ground. Hands behind their backs they skip the roll, back and forth. Another young man with a large bow 'cards' fleece and fibres dance like dandelions on the wind. It is time for the felt to be unwound. Its colours and designs are glorious. Rich reds, dark greens, pinks and purples. With your new rug under your arm it is time to continue into the desert once more.

Kashgar. It's Sunday, and from every district and from hundreds of farms in the region come the clip-clop hooves of donkeys, pulling carts heaped high with bounty: melons, grapes, vegetables, meat, flour, wool, lumber and more. Holding the reins are Uighur farmers; they are headed into town for the Great Sunday Bazaar, where they will trade for household goods like pots and pans, furniture, and clothing. Whatever they need, they can certainly find it here, for like them, you have arrived at the greatest market in all of central Asia.

As the carts near town, they converge into a gigantic donkey-jam. Because you are on foot you can avoid the chaos and duck into an endless maze of stalls. You walk down lanes lined with women's gauzy scarves, glitzy and bright material, ornate silver handled knives, men's tarboosh, shoes, jackets, aromatic spices, dried fruit, nuts, crystallised sugar, beads, buttons, copper pots, rugs and more rugs; felted, woven. And when your eyes cannot take any more you see the carpets, richly woven in brilliant hues.

When the heat becomes oppressive, take time to stop for a bowl of tea or refreshing sweet iced yogurt. You are now hungry, so stop for a mutton kebab, or pilaf, or freshly pulled noodles. You wander in the bazaar for hours until it is time to wend your way through the adobe mud brick dwellings to the silken sheets of your caravan.

Barbara Jackson

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