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Tuesday 2004-06-29 - Kuqa, Xinjiang (China)
Buddha caves - from the outside
A two-hour drive away from Kuqa are the Kizil Buddha cases; similar to the Thousand Buddha caves near Turpan (which I visited two years ago), but supposed to be more beautiful.
The road out there takes us through some really spectacular landscapes: the Tien Shan Mountains here consist mostly of layers of sediment only partially hardened into real stone. In some place, these layers are still perfectly horizontal and water erosion (!) has worn them into near-perfect pyramids — these formations are a protected landscape. Farther on, the layers have been pushed around and in one area are now nearly vertical: erosion here has worn away the softer layers, leaving near-vertical ‘walls’ of the harder stone; sometimes such a wall has toppled but many stand. After an hour of such impressive views from a fairly good road, we suddenly take a turn to the left onto a track which first takes us through a wide river bed and then on into the desert which looks like a flood plain (maybe there are flash floods here when it does rain?). Our driver actually gets off the bus to check the track (marked with a line of little flags) before turning into the side track. We’re vaguely worried: are we really heading into the right direction? When a taxi with one passenger overtakes us a little later, it seems we are; after another hour over rough tracks, half-finished roads and detours around road-building works we do indeed arrive at the site of the caves.
Another bus arrived just before us. At the gate, the ticket-selling lady waves us through but when we have climbed a lot of stairs and arrive at the first of the caves — all locked with a padlock — it turns out we do need to buy a ticket after all, as well as a guide to open all those locks for us. So down again we go, with my knees and my hurt foot screaming in protest: stairs are not good for me now!
So I pass: I’m not going to climb all those stairs again (and then lots more) and descend them again; these caves may be better than those near Turpan (the pictures I see later do suggest that) but at least I have seen something similar already. Instead, I take a nice quiet (and slow) stroll in the little wood at the foot of the mountain, where I spot two cuckoos who refuse to sit still for a photograph, and (at last!) make my first picture of the elusive flowering tamarisk bush (until now always only seen from a moving bus). Pity about the caves but I have a nice time anyway, and the landscape on the way here was worth the trip all by itself.
On the way back over the same tracks, half-finished roads and detours our driver suddenly stops. Photo stop? The landscape is beautiful. No — it turns out we have a very tire: no surprise really on these tracks covered with sharp stone fragments. Our driver is quick replacing the tire, obviously having done it before.
Uyghurs and Han Chinese
Back in Kuqa, Carla and I first walk around the new part of town a little, checking out the shops. In the evening, we all have dinner together: next to the Min Mao hotel is a well-stocked supermarket and next to that is the “Uyghur Restaurant”.
Although this is actually my fourth visit to Xinjiang, here in Kuqa I see for the first time ‘imported’ Han Chinese interacting normally and friendly with the original local population — Uyghurs here. (Original at least when the Chinese claimed this territory; much farther back in history, the Turkic peoples and Tajiks themselves moved into what is now the Xinjiang province of China.) What I saw until now was two different societies living almost completely separate lives, going to different schools, shopping at different shops and market stalls, eating at different restaurants. Here in Kuqa I’m interested to see a mixture of Chinese and Uyghur on the market, a Chinese woman having a friendly chat with an Uyghur woman on the street corner; and here in the restaurant, run completely by a team of Uyghurs serving both Uyghur and Chinese food, both Uyghurs and Chinese come to eat.
This warms my heart: maybe, given time, these peoples can indeed live peacefully together without the Uyghurs giving up their identity.
The atmosphere at the restaurant is very pleasant, and the food is truly excellent so we end up taking nearly all our meals here.
