and i saw a herd of camels....

i saw a herd of camels on the side of the road. ten of them staring at our bus as we passed.

duff and i have had the first successful sightseeing of our trip! today we went to see the mogao caves, the third largest complex of buddhist cave paintings in china.

getting to the caves wasn't easy, but it worked out very well. we spent a night and a half of the train from wuhan and disembarked at 2:30 am. it was a pleasant train ride and amazing to see the scenery change as we traveled. i started to knit another sock, and another chinese train employee came by and ripped it out. she was very friendly, though, and knit almost as much as she ripped out. we had an odd experience with some guys in our compartment. there are 56 minority groups in china, and three of the people in our 6 bed berth were minority. one guy was really friendly, i think he was traveling with his mother, but the other 2 guys were a little confrontational. the guys were huge, especially compared to han chinese. they were strong and had central asian features. many of the uigurs and western chinese have tatoos, as well as purposeful scarring on their forearms. the guys overheard me tell a fuwuyuan we were american and the smaller of the two guys tried to get into it with us. it was frustrating to understand enough to know he was badmouthing us and americans, but we couldn't understand all of what he said. he talked about foreigners coming to xin jiang and not knowing the language, he was derisive of tourists, and kept saying muslim. he went into a lot of bombing and shooting noises and got the whole car involved in this discussion. duff and i climbed into our bunks and ignored the guy. the knitting woman stuck up for us, calling him down and saying we were teachers. the guy tried to pick a fight between us and a pakistani guy on the train, who wouldn't even give the mean guy the time of day. when things died down, the guy from our compartment satisfied hiself by singing loudly in arabic for a few hours. after that the han chinese were really smiley with us, i think they were embarassed.

we arrived in liu yuan in the middle of the night and checked into a hotel for a few hours. this morning, we took a three hour bus to dun huang. from dun huang we hired really persistant little cab driver to take us to the caves. the caves were first carved in 300 AD, and the most recent in 1100 AD.

there are over 700 caves in the complex, of which we saw 10. the entrace fee was really steep, 120 kuai, but included in the price was an english speaking guide. her name was jessie and she studied english in lan zhou. she was amazing. the caves are locked, to protect them, and there are no lights inside. she took a flashlight and pointed out important features. they are set into a cliff face and have been really well preserved. they were discovered in 1900 by a monk named wang who took it upon himself to restore the caves and preserve them a a holy site. many expeditions have been to the caves and took with them many of the caves historical treasures. these are now housed in museums in england, russia, japan, france, and harvard. some of the scrolls, paitings and sculptures were sold by wang to finace his excavation. the greatest loss was the work contained in the hidden library. it was a cave honoring the work of monk hong bian, who worked in the caves, translated religious works and had a great impact on the area. hong bian's family and followers sealed the greatest works in a cave with a statue of him to protect them from warring minority groups in the south.

we saw the third largest statue of buddha in china, at 35.5 meters tall. the other two are in sichuan. in the complex there is also another 29 meters tall buddha and a 15 meter long reclining buddha. the reclining buddha is supposed to be after he reached nirvana and is placed in a coffin shaped room. there are 72 statues surrouing him with various expressions on the faces, indicating these people's different comprehension of nirvana and buddhisim. our guide talked about how as buddhisim was introduced, it fused with daoism, making it easier for the people to accept into their lives. they share many of the same dieties. we saw paitings of the daoist/buddhist dieties of thunder, lightening, wind, and rain. thunder had numerous arms to bang on drums, lightening had a metal knife, wind had a bag from which the wind came when he opened it, and when rain blew, there was rain. there was also a depiction of the tallest man in buddhism, whose feet touch the bottom of the ocean, and whose head passes the tallest mountian and he holds the sun and the moon.

the mogao caves are one of the best sites i have seen in china. i wish it had been one of the first places we visited!! it ties asia together, because it was such an important site on the silk road. in a few minutes we'll get on a bus back to liu yuan and get the train, again at 2:30 am, to turpan.