Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

A more immediate danger was this watchtower, the first of the five he had to pass. He waited until nightfall and found the little spring that Pantuo had told him about. It is still there today, clear and cool, surrounding the watchtower’s ruins. He went down to drink at it and wash his hands. Then, as he was filling his water bag, he heard the whistle of an arrow, which nearly hit him in the knee. A second later, another arrow followed. Knowing he was discovered, he shouted with all his might: ‘I am a monk from the capital. Do not shoot at me!’

Xuanzang was brought before the captain, who was a lay Buddhist. On hearing the monk’s plan, he too told him to turn back. The road was dangerous and he did not think the pilgrim would be able to reach India at all. Xuanzang was grateful for his concern but told him that he was so troubled with doubts, he just had to go. ‘You, a benevolent man, instead of encouraging me, urge me to abandon my efforts. This cannot be called an act of compassion,’ he said to the captain, and then added: ‘You can detain me if you want to, but Xuanzang will not take a single step in the direction of China!’

Impressed by Xuanzang’s determination and fearlessness, the officer decided to help the pilgrim. Xuanzang stayed with him for the night and began his journey with a good supply of food, water and fodder for his horse. He was given an introduction for the fourth watchtower, but was warned against the fifth because the officer there had no sympathy for Buddhism. Instead, he should head for the Wild Horse Spring sixty miles to the west of it, and from there all paths would be clear. But with no experience of travelling in the desert, Xuanzang soon got lost. To add to his grief, his water bag slipped from his hand as he lifted it to drink. In an instant, his whole supply of water vanished into the sand. In total confusion and despair, he turned back and started retracing his footprints. But after a few miles he stopped. He remembered his vow: ‘Never take one step back towards China before reaching India.’

I had to keep going westwards too. I could resume my train journey from the Willow Station, and asked the driver to take me back there. When I looked out of the train window I saw nothing apart from the cloudless blue sky, a few lonely white aspens along the railway line, and a vast expanse of sand and gravel, grey, featureless; craggy mountains hemmed a distant horizon, topped with snow, but they looked impossibly aloof. Crossing the Gobi Desert even on a modern train is forbidding. I found it incredible that Xuanzang had journeyed through it alone, with no guide but his own shadow and his faith. I talked to the young man opposite me and told him about Xuanzang’s adventure in the Gobi.

‘I thought the emperor had all sorts of arrangements made for him. It says so in The Monkey King.’

‘That is fiction,’ I said.

‘I know the monkey is a fictional creation. But Xuanzang must have had a lot of protection and companions. You aren’t telling me he did it all on his own.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘You remember what happened to the famous scientist who disappeared in the desert in the 1980s? He even had satellite communication. But he never came back. Such a waste of a life.’

Xuanzang almost suffered the same fate. For four days he was lost in the Gobi, without a single drop of water. The burning heat and the punishing winds brought him to the verge of collapse. On the fifth day he fell on the sand, unable to take a single step further. His horse fell too. All he had strength for was to mutter a few prayers. He desperately turned to Guanyin: ‘In venturing on this journey, I do not seek riches, worldly profit or fame; my heart longs to find the true Law. Your heart, O Bodhisattva, forever yearns to deliver all creatures from misery. I am in such danger. Can you not hear my prayers?’

This was the worst moment in his entire journey. He was young, only twenty-seven, and had never faced the real dangers of life and death. He was determined and thought he was prepared, but he had not expected so much hardship so soon, before even leaving China. The emperor and nature itself had joined forces to put an end to his journey almost before it had begun. He was alone; he was lost; and he was dying. He remembered a sutra with the story of Guanyin saving a merchant who had been shipwrecked in the open sea for seven days. But his favourite Bodhisattva seemed to be ignoring his plea for help, although he prayed all the time to her. Was she really up there somewhere? If so, why would she not come to rescue him? The vast desert looked ready to swallow him up; death could be hours or minutes away. He would become just another pile of bones in the sand.

After praying to Guanyin, Xuanzang began to recite the Heart Sutra. He had learned it many years before from a sick man he had tended. It is the shortest sutra in the Buddhist canon but is regarded as the essence of Chinese Buddhism. He was told to recite it when he was in danger and when everything else had failed. Now he needed it more than ever. When he approached the end, these were the words he would have spoken to himself: ‘The world is ultimately empty. The wisdom of the Bodhisattva is such that he has no illusions in his mind, hence, no fear.’

The Buddha taught that having no illusions means seeing things as they really are, which in turn means recognizing the impermanence of everything. The Buddha often told his disciples that life is only a single breath. It is momentary, changing every second, and in one continuum with death. And for a Buddhist death is not an end, just a point between this world and the next. One will be reborn – though in what form depends on one’s karma. Xuanzang could hope that he would still be able to carry on his mission in his next life.

So he calmed himself. His panic was behind him, and he could think about what to do next. He picked himself up, and pulled hard on the horse’s reins. To his amazement, the old roan staggered up and set off. They struggled for nearly four miles when suddenly the horse turned in a different direction, and no matter how hard Xuanzang tried, he could not make it change its path. He let himself be guided by the creature’s instinct. Before long he saw green grass a little way off, and a shining pool, bright as a mirror. He was saved. Old horses indeed know the way.

In the Gobi, Xuanzang had passed the ultimate test. In this contest between nature and will, he triumphed over his anxiety, fear and despair. It had nearly cost him his life, but it gave him confidence. From then on, he felt there was nothing he could not face. I could hardly believe the story, and when I told it to the young man sitting opposite me, he could not believe it either. He thought I was pulling the wool over his eyes, or telling him an episode from the story of The Monkey King.

From the Wild Horse Spring, Xuanzang and his horse drank long and deep. Then they followed the beaten track. After two days he was out of the Gobi, and outside China. He was now in the Western Region, a vast territory between the Jade Gate and the Pamir Mountains, consisting mainly of the Taklamakan Desert, the second biggest in the world, with a string of independent oasis city-states along its edge, all depending on the Silk Road for their survival and wealth. Xuanzang would have known the history of the region well. China took it in the first century BC after the Silk Road was opened, but lost it to various nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes. At the point at which Xuanzang arrived, the Turks were the overlords, but the Chinese wanted it back.

Today the area is called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Uighurs were a nomadic tribe of Turkic origin, who migrated from the Eurasian steppes to the Taklamakan in the ninth century AD, not long after Xuanzang passed through the region. It was the Uighurs who have left us some of the most splendid Buddhist art, Nestorian Christian artefacts, and rare Manichaean documents and paintings. Eventually they took to Islam with the same zeal as they had embraced other religions of the Silk Road. Highly mobile with their versatile and speedy horses, they were one of the biggest threats to China on its northern and northwestern borders. But unlike many other powerful nomadic peoples, the Uighurs never managed to rule China. In the eighteenth century, after the longest military campaign in Chinese history, the region finally became part of the empire again.

Turfan is one of the biggest oases and cities in Xinjiang, situated on the eastern edge of the Taklamakan. A guide from a travel agency would meet me at the station. ‘How will I recognize you?’ I asked him on the phone after I had told him what I wanted to see in Turfan. ‘I’m fat, like a laughing Buddha outside a temple. People call me Fat Ma.’ The description was accurate. At the exit of my compartment, I spotted him immediately. He was dressed in a t-shirt and wiping sweat from his face. We looked at each other and smiled.

‘You need some rest in the hotel?’ he asked, taking my rucksack from me. ‘You said you’re interested in history and what Xuanzang did in Turfan. You’re in for a big treat. Anyway you can make your mind up later, we are still fifty miles from the city.’ While we walked to his car I mentioned the oddness of the location of the station, both here and in Anxi. ‘Perhaps they could only build straight lines in those days,’ he laughed, and then added more seriously: ‘We did so many crazy things back then. I wouldn’t be surprised if the decision where to put the stations was completely random.’

In five minutes his battered Beijing jeep was out of the station and driving at 100 kph on a tar road as soft as melting butter. It was late summer but Fat Ma was panting more than the old engine. I was a bit worried. ‘You should have seen me a few weeks ago. It was over fifty degrees every day. I hardly dared to move. Do you know how officials conducted their business in the old days?’ I shook my head. ‘They read their papers in the bath-tub soaking in ice-cold water.’ But the extreme weather here is not due to global warming. The city is right in the centre of a depression – in fact, it is the second lowest spot on earth, after the Dead Sea. Fat Ma told me Turfan means ‘lowland’ in the Uighur language. It has been called the Oasis of Fire.

I told him I did not need a rest – he was so entertaining I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anyway. So he suggested we head for the ruins of Gaochang city. ‘Your monk really had a hell of a time there,’ he said. We were back in the middle of the desert. There were no trees, no farms, not a speck of green anywhere. Perhaps if you are brought up there you learn to spot small details and it seems infinitely variegated. But to the unaccustomed eye it is sad in its monotony, a faceless plain of unrelieved sameness. Surrounded by a void, it was hard to imagine that we were on what was once a thriving commercial thoroughfare, or that this poem, written in the seventh century, actually described what Xuanzang would have seen on his journey through the area:

A good day to start on a long journey,

Wagon after wagon passes through.

The camels-bells never stop,

They are carrying the white chain (silk) to Anxi*.

After driving for twenty miles in the desert, my eyes caught some trees in the distance. ‘The oasis,’ I nearly shouted, pointing to a spot of green on the horizon. ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Fat Ma said, ‘It’s still quite a way off.’

We drove for another ten miles. Then I saw poplar trees and suddenly – fields of melons; plantations of vines inside and outside courtyards, spreading on to the walls; children playing by the road, carts loaded with cotton. I had not travelled in the blazing sun for days on end like the old caravans, nor did I experience any danger, but I was overwhelmed by the sudden fertility of the oasis – the renewal of life and succour for the traveller in the midst of the desert. I could only imagine how Xuanzang would have felt when he stepped from the sterility of his Gobi trek into the luxuriance of Gaochang.

The remains of Gaochang city are very grand, fitting for one of the oldest and wealthiest Silk Road kingdoms. For centuries, it was the second major oasis outside China, the starting point for the grassland Silk Road, and an obligatory stop for travellers. The mud walls that surrounded it, now broken in places, were more than ten metres high and five kilometres long. We entered from the western gate – quite a small one, but it opened up a broad, impressive view of the city within. The fallen houses and lonely pillars made it look even bigger. Under the blue sky, clouds flew past as if speeded up by a special-effects camera. As far as the eye could see, rugged walls stood erect after more than a thousand years. It was hard to believe that something built of mud could last so long. Straight ahead of us in the centre of the city was a tall, impressive terrace built of baked red clay bricks, the remaining foundations alone more than fifteen metres high. ‘We think this is King Qu Wentai’s royal palace,’ Fat Ma said. I felt my pulse quicken. This was it – the place where Xuanzang had one of his most dramatic experiences on his journey.

The King of Gaochang was a fervent Buddhist and so his capital was a city of temples: Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, with one for every hundred inhabitants. There were thousands of monks in the kingdom, but the king felt the country lacked a great master. He was inspired when he heard the praises that caravan traders heaped on Xuanzang after they had listened to his preaching in Liangzhou. It reminded him of the wonderful monasteries and profound masters he had encountered in the Chinese capital: he had gone there to pay tribute to the Chinese court three years earlier. A close relationship with his powerful neighbour was vital for the survival of his small kingdom. He was also very impressed with the way the Chinese conducted themselves – on his return, he ordered all his people to adopt the hairstyles of the gentlemen and ladies in Chang’an. Now he could have an erudite Chinese master from the very centre of learning to enlighten him and his people. How exciting it would be! The Chinese have a saying: ‘Something you could only meet but not seek.’ He felt this was his chance. He sent his envoys to meet Xuanzang. They abducted him to Gaochang, despite his plans to travel by a different route.

It was here, in this very palace, that the king paced about when he heard the Chinese master would be arriving that night. He forgot to eat, or sleep. At midnight, the guards announced Xuanzang’s arrival and he proceeded by torchlight to meet him. The king was so excited that despite Xuanzang’s fatigue, he insisted on talking to him all night and for the next ten days, for one purpose alone: to ask him to stay on as the master for his people.

Xuanzang thanked the king profusely for the invitation, but he could not accept it. He must go to India to find out what was missing from the teachings in China, he explained. But the king was unyielding: ‘It would be easier to shift the mountains of Pamir than to make me change my mind.’

Seeing how keen the king was to keep the Chinese master, his ministers also put their minds to it and came up with an ingenious idea. Xuanzang was young and single; so was the princess royal. She was beautiful, pious, cultivated, and very fond of Chinese culture and dress. Surely Xuanzang could not refuse such a wonderful bride. When the king broached the subject with his sister, she was only too happy to oblige. She had listened to the clear, deep and profound preaching by the handsome Chinese master. She had nothing but admiration for him; and to spend the rest of her life with such an enlightened man would indeed be yuan, her destiny.

But Xuanzang explained to the king that he regarded it as his destiny to fulfil his mission to bring back the sacred sutras that were needed in China and circulate them to his fellow-countrymen. Surely the king would not stand in the way of his destiny?

But the king – typically for kings – was unused to his decrees being questioned, not to mention defied. He grew angrier with Xuanzang’s obstinacy until at last he issued an ultimatum: ‘I am determined to retain you by force, or else to have you escorted back to your own country. I invite you to think the matter over; it is best to accept my offer.’

Without hesitation, Xuanzang replied: ‘The king will only be able to keep my bones; he has no power over my spirit nor my will!’

To make the king let him go, Xuanzang began a fast. For three days, he meditated and refused to take food or water. On the fourth day, he was getting weak and had trouble breathing. The king was shocked. He had seen many monks come and go through his kingdom, but never one like Xuanzang – so learned, spiritual and determined, and so fearless, ready even to sacrifice his life for the faith. A true Buddhist, a living example of the enlightened mind. As the Dhammapada, the Sayings of the Buddha, described:

From attachment springs grief,

From attachment springs fear,

For him who is totally free

There is no grief, and where is fear?

The king begged Xuanzang to eat. He would let him continue his journey; perhaps the master could contemplate stopping in Gaochang on his way back from India. Xuanzang had already decided to do that: he was deeply moved by the king’s piety and devotion to the Buddha, and the sincerity of his wish for a better understanding of the Dharma. While he was taking some food, the king looked at him, weakened and exhausted by his hunger strike and months of travelling in secret and getting lost in the desert. He recognized the greatness of this young man but wondered whether he could achieve his purpose penniless and alone. In a remarkable reversal, he decided to help the young Chinese monk. He asked Xuanzang to preach for a month, while preparations were being made for his journey.

Fat Ma was melting in the midday sun. He suggested we have lunch in a restaurant outside the gate where we parked the car. It was an oasis in itself; everywhere you looked there was green: pots with fragrant-leaved plants dotted over the floor, an overhead trellis spilling grapevines and casting a welcome weave of shadows on the ground. The grapes hung low enough for you to reach up and pick them. Water gushed in runnels at your feet, circling the place. After the dust, the heat and the ruins, I felt I could breathe again. We ordered a real Silk Road meal: noodles from China, Turkish kebabs and nans from India. After a couple of cold beers, Fat Ma revived, joking and calling for the car-radiator to be filled with water. We were doing just what Xuanzang and all Silk Road travellers would do when they arrived in Gaochang: refuelling with shade, water and food.

Here merchants and travellers from as far as Syria and southern India would check into one of many caravanserais inside the city. After a wash and a meal, they would inspect their pack animals to see if they needed to change them for healthy, rested ones, or simply to trade in one type of animal for another more suitable for the next stage of the journey – Bactrian camels were the favourite for this stretch of the Silk Road: they could sniff out subterranean springs and predict sandstorms; if they bunched together and buried their mouths in the sand, you knew one was coming. In the bustling bazaars the travellers would sell their goods, buy local specialities and stock up on food and supplies. If they had completed a profitable deal, they could go into one of the many taverns. Gorgeous women from Kucha, the next oasis, and even from as far away as Samarkand, entertained them with whirlwind dances and melodious songs, as they filled their glasses with the delicious Gaochang wine made from ‘mare’s teat’ grapes.

Gaochang, like all oasis kingdoms on the Silk Road, depended on levies from the caravans passing through. On entering the city gate, everyone was asked to show their passes issued in their country of origin. Then the merchants would be charged on the spot by their animal loads and then again when they sold their goods in the bazaars. A camel could carry an average of three hundred pounds, and a horse or a donkey half of that. Caravans could be as small as a dozen travellers or as big as several thousands – the bigger, the safer because the merchants could afford to pay for protection. An annual customs report of Gaochang from Xuanzang’s time recorded buoyant trade in large quantities: a man selling five hundred and seventy-two pounds of spices, another eighty pounds of raw silk and a third eight pounds of silver. The list goes on, giving us the most direct evidence of how the oasis kingdoms like Gaochang earned their income. The wealth of Gaochang was such that when China conquered it in the first century BC, its annual revenues could finance the defence and running costs of the entire Western Region.

After lunch we set out for Bezeklik. ‘The locals call it “the place with paintings”,’ Fat Ma said. It is one of the biggest Buddhist cave complexes in the Western Region, dating from the fifth century to the thirteenth century when Islam became the dominant religion in the area. Originally built by monks for meditating in a quiet valley, it soon became a famous centre of worship for lay followers, and the travellers of the Silk Road, who would pray for a safe journey by making offerings to the images of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Xuanzang did not mention it in his record but Fat Ma was absolutely certain that he visited it. ‘It was just over twenty kilometres from Gaochang city,’ he said, ‘and it would have taken only an hour or two on horseback. The king was so keen to impress Xuanzang, I’m sure he would grab any opportunity to persuade the monk to stay. Judging from the pictures of the murals, it must have been a splendid place.’

I also had seen pictures of the Bezeklik murals and they looked spectacular. Larger than life-size, they were painted in meticulous detail and exuberant colours and seemed as if they had been finished yesterday. Kings and queens, princes and princesses, Indian monks, Persian and Roman traders stood piously in their best costumes on the side walls, facing the altar where the image of the Buddha would be. Their names were written by their heads: they were the donors who had paid for the caves and the splendid paintings. Those murals were mostly painted after Xuanzang’s time, but a Tang dynasty record of Gaochang gives us a vivid account of Bezeklik, which it called Ningrong Cave Monastery. This is undoubtedly the Bezeklik Xuanzang would have seen. ‘Everywhere you look, there are mountains. Long, open corridors connect the monastery and the caves, with a clear stream running rapidly down below. Tall trees, morning mist and clouds make them invisible at first sight. This monastery has been known for a long time.’

We reached the valley quickly. The mountain is stark, barren and bald. I could hear the sound of water gushing at the bottom of the gully although I could not see it. We were picking our way over a rocky road more suitable for goats than cars when suddenly it opened up to a wide space where half a dozen cars were parked. I rushed to get out; Fat Ma made no move.

‘I think I’ll wait for you here,’ he said. ‘The thing with Bezeklik is: if you don’t see it, you will regret it; after you’ve seen it, you’ll regret it even more. Go and find out for yourself.’

The caves were indeed a terrible letdown, even with Fat Ma’s warning. Gone were the fantastic murals, the pictures of which I so loved. The majority of the fifty-odd caves were barred over, like a zoo without animals; the ‘good’ ones were virtually bare, just here and there a faint trace of a mural, a featureless Buddha, or a broken flower petal. All I could see clearly were the chisel marks made by the German explorer Albert von Le Coq and his colleagues as they divested the caves of their treasures to take them back to Europe.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bezeklik and other treasures of Xinjiang became the target of frenzied international exploration. This was the age of adventure. As one scholar put it, ‘No heroes stood taller in the Victorian pantheon than explorers. These explorers were the dashing film stars of the imperial era. Tinting unknown lands on a nation’s map became the embodiment of cultural virility. Plants, animals, falls, rivers, and even entire mountain ranges were named for these peerless travellers. Museums and galleries vied to display their collections. Readers never seemed to have enough books about these far-flung places.’