On the Silk Road

Uncle Mark looks happy on top of this sand dune. He was less so at a different desert a few days before, when he wiped out on a sand board and tumbled 5 times. I, of course, was laughing my ass off, and even captured the moment on my camera as a short film.

Knowing that Marco Polo ate the same sand when he passed along the same route some 750 years ago makes Mark feel better. His passion for following historical journeys is rubbing off on me.

We are following the China side of the 7000 mile long ancient Silk Road, which ran all the way to Rome. It finally got put out of business in the 15th century by the popularization of overseas trade and increasingly dangerous overland traveling conditions.

Apparently, Marco Polo was one of the few to traverse all of it. Chinese monks also got pretty far. They went deep into India and brought back Buddhism to China. Most of the Silk Road relics we've seen have been Buddhist wall paintings and sculptures, funded mostly by rich silk road merchants and preserved only because they were sealed inside dark caves situated in a dry desert climate.

We are in Turpan right now, a city in China's most northwestern province, Xinjiang. Its an ugly city, except for the beautiful grape vines strung up everywhere that provide much needed shade. Turpan gets really hot in the summer, despite its high longitude, because its the second lowest place in the world after the dead sea at -154 meters. Diarrhea and sandstorms have kept us here a few days longer than expected. "Probably the same thing that would have delayed Marco Polo," Mark cheerily remarked.

During the time of Silk Road this area was not Chinese territory, and I can see why. When we passed the western most point of the Great Wall, the land immediately turned undesirable: dry, sandy, bare, and mountainous. Nomad land.

China annexed Xinjiang about 50 years ago around the time the People's Republic of China was formed. Since then loads of Han Chinese (China's ethnic majority) have gentrified the area, but the dominant ethnic group is still the Muslim Uighur people, who settled here in the 9th century.

When asking local Han Chinese about their presence here, they feel strongly that they are bringing civilization to a dirty, undeveloped land by building new buildings and providing jobs. Look around on the ground, though, and you can see the real reason the Chinese government wants to "civilize" Xinjiang. The desolate roadsides are filled with oil rigs.

America isn't the only one.

The Uighur driver who toured us around the area for 3 days is angry about the oil. He kept saying, "Shanghai needs oil and we need water. Why can't they send us water." He also pointed out that oil is the blood of Xinjiang, and worried what would happen when China sucked all of its blood dry.

Ironically, we communicated in Chinese. That's how he was able to get our business in the first place. He picked up the language while he was employed by a Chinese oil company for 20 years. I never asked him what he thought he'd be without his colonizer.

Beijing

It feels so good to be back in China. English got me around fine in South East Asia, but i hated to miss out on all the little details you only pick up on, and all the shortcuts you only get to take, when you know some of the local language.

I went back to Beijing to meet up with two high school friends, Tracey and Lauren, who were finishing up a 10 day China tour, and to meet my cousin Mark to embark on our Silk Road trip. In the meantime, I also managed to squeeze in what i see as a major historic event: China's biggest rock concert ever.

The concert knocked me on my ass, literally. The mosh pits were outrageous. I even crowd surfed. People watching was as it best. Loads of kids were walking around with huge mohawks and all sorts of other outrageous costumes.

The concert occurred during a week long holiday and it was super cheap, so loads of young Chinese students were able to attend. It went on four days in a row and it was outside, both major firsts for China. This was the concert's 8th year, and every year attendance grows exponentially.

What's interesting is that there are a lot of things you can only get away with at a long rock concert, especially if your a Chinese student, used to living in 8 person same sex dorm rooms: you can get really drunk over and over, you can have sex in a tent, you can smash into people in a mosh pit, you can meet a bunch of a people that are just like you, and you can discover a lot of inspiring music. All that is a recipe for newfound personal confidence and exploration, as well as a great way to blow of steam.

I was also interested to see the number of foreign kids walking around chattin' it up with their Chinese friends having regular conversations in Chinese. I hardly ever saw that 3 years ago. I even had a normal conversation of my own when catching a mini-van with some other Chinese teenagers back to the subway. We chatted about the bands we liked and not one of them asked the typical, slightly awkward, "How long have you learned Chinese," "Where are you from," type questions. I felt like i was talking with Europeans.

Things are changing fast here, and it is just so interesting to wach.