In the summer of 1992, I spent three months in the People's Republic of China. I was with a group of ten students and one professor in a Dartmouth College Foreign Study Program. We spent ten weeks living in the foreign student dormitory of Beijing Normal University and taking language and literature classes taught by Dartmouth Professor Mowry and several faculty that specialized in teaching Chinese as a second language. In late July, our group took a two week trip to Xinjiang, Gansu, and Shaanxi Provinces. In late August, after the academic term was complete, many of us took a two week trip on our own to the city of Shanghai, to Guangxi province, and finally to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, my camera was having problems that summer, so not all of the photos came out very well.

We took a tour bus up into the Tian Shan Mountains (the Heavenly Mountains,) to a lake called Tian Chi (the Heavenly Lake.) Tian Chi is two miles long, almost a mile wide, and is the second-highest body of water (at 6,494 feet above sea level) in the world. It is also about as far as you can get on the planet from an ocean. This was the view from a restaurant at the lake where we ate lunch.

Tian Chi spills out of the mountains in a dramatic (but really hard to photograph) waterfall, and a small, seasonal village (where we ate lunch) is nearby. The local Uygur population migrates into the mountains in the summer to work the tourist trade in the village or to graze stock in the high meadows like this one.

One of the local horses, grazing. I also wandered through a very steep mountain-side pasture of sheep, and hiked up to a smaller peak near this pasture.

Central Asian horses, grazing. The mountains behind them are on the other side of the lake.

A newborn calf greets me on the trail back into the village. You can make out some of the permanent structures in the village, including the dock and tour boat. We would later take a short cruise on the lake.

A gorgeous sunset looking out over the gorge formed by the waterfall at the base of the lake. Our group spent the night at the lake in the only overnight guest accommodations available then, yurts. Each yurt slept six to eight people, so the men slept in one and the women in another.

The next day, we spent visiting what there was to see in the city of Ürümqi (its Uygur name, in Chinese known as Wulumuqi.) About half of the population in Xinjiang are Uygur (a central Asian ethnicity, largely Muslim in faith) and half are Han Chinese, but most of the Han Chinese live in the cities, so the cities still feel mostly Chinese. I found this bilingual sign at a medical facility interesting. Uygur is a Turkic language, and written Uygur uses Reformed Arabic script.

We visited Hongshan Park in the city of Ürümqi. Hongshan means "red mountain" and if you climb to the top, you can get a nice view of the city. Ürümqi is a city of several million, and is located at the base of the Tian Shan Mountains where they meet the Dzungarian Gobi (the "western Gobi") desert. It is a highly industrial city, with a lot of petro-industry. The tallest building in town when we were there was the Holiday Inn, where we stayed. It is the tower on the right with the round top. It had opened for business only a couple of weeks before we arrived.

After a day in Ürümqi, we took a bus to Turpan (as it is known in Uygur - in Chinese, it is known as Tulufan.) Turpan is an ancient Uygur city on the southern side of the Tian Shan Mountains, where they meet the Taklamakan Desert. it was another important city on the Silk Road. The very barren landscape between the two cities often reminded me of what I imagine the moon must look like. The current road follows the ancient caravan route.

There are three important historical Buddhist temple complexes in the vicinity of Turpan. We drove out to visit the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, which are located in the cliff side of a very remote river valley in the deep desert. The road to the grottoes traversed rough, barren, red rock, dirt, and sand. If anything on planet Earth most resembles Mars, it must be this part of the Taklamakan Desert.

It was at least 100° Fahrenheit outside when we stopped briefly to take photos.

The Bezeklik Grottoes are sixty-seven natural caves that have been carved into rooms with flat walls and ceilings. Every flat surface is covered in paintings of the Buddha and sacred Buddhist iconography. Painted Buddhist statuary can be found in the largest caves. The oldest religious works in the caves are nearly 1,500 years old. Photography inside was forbidden.

The Buddhist monks lived in a small monastery by the river. Tourists were not allowed to go down there, and I assume that the personnel responsible for the site must use the buildings there as offices or residences.

A large sand dune or mountain above the grottoes. Aside from this one little bend in the river, the surrounding desert was really quite barren.

We visited the ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe near Turpan. The city was located on top of the cliffs between two rivers, which made an ideal location for both defense from invaders, and trade with those on the river. The city flourished during the Han Dynasty (202 B.C. - A.D. 220) when Jiaohe was the capital city of South Cheshi state, and was finally destroyed and abandoned in the thirteenth century.

Not much is left, but you can get a sense of some of the more permanent structures, made from the local mud bricks and adobe.

These caves could have been root cellars, sleeping quarters, or storage.

This was apparently part of the outer city wall.

The ruins stretch on and on. In its prime, Jiaohe was an important city on the Silk Road routes from east Asia to eastern Europe.

Another segment of the outer city wall.

Some shepherds and their flock traveling down a road that goes right through the middle of the ruins. I doubt this scene would have looked much different two or three hundred years ago. What on earth can the sheep actually eat out here?

Another barren moon-scape in the Taklamakan Desert.

We visited this mosque in Turpan. This is the Emin Tower, and was constructed in 1777 to commemorate a Uygur military victory by the Emin Khoja. The adjoining mosque is very large, and has been in continuous use for hundreds of years.

The actual city of Turpan itself is covered in grapes. Even the sidewalks in the middle of the city had grape arbors like this growing over them (and signs in English, Chinese, and Uygur telling you not to eat the grapes!) An ancient, underground irrigation system brings melt-water from the Tian Shan Mountains down to the city, which would otherwise never have enough water to grow grapes and other crops. Most of the grapes are dried and sold as raisins throughout Asia.

From Turpan, we took an overnight train to the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province. As foreigners, we were expected to purchase tickets in the "soft sleeper" cars. The other designations, in decreasing cost per ticket, were "hard sleepers," "soft bench," and "hard bench."

In the "soft sleeper" cars, each cabin had four beds and a little table. Pete is sitting on a lower bunk, and I think the legs belong to Anna. Traveling by train in China wasn't too bad - it was a lot cheaper than airfare, and we saved the cost of a hotel room.