Bloody Blasted 2

Dunhuang

Wow. I've finally found a hotel I really like.

An old building with character, with stone walls and no lift.

Besides my little Tibetan homestay in Xiahe, a few places in Yunnan, and a couple of hostels, pretty much every hotel I've stayed in in China on this trip has been the high rise type, with marble lobbies and mirrored lifts, and the ubiquitous cigarette smoke-sullied carpeted hallways and bedrooms.

This is quite the opposite.

I have an airy room overlooking a semi-busy street, and Arabic and Chinese music seems to be playing almost 24/7 from somewhere down there, I love it.

Dunhuang is a small city of a couple of hundred thousand human souls, but there's infinitely more of them floating around in the ether, from its ancient past as a major trading post on the Silk Road.

These days it's a tourism hub, with people coming here from all over the Buddhist world to visit the Mogao Grottoes, one of the world's finest and most extensive collections of original Buddhist art.

So even though it's not the busy season yet, the town centre's still buzzing with people from many other parts of China, almost all of them here for a day or even less, and all wanting to eat and shop.

There's also Buddhists from Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

My street's only a five minute walk from the action.

Bunny home on my street corner.

The night food and craft markets seem to go forever, down various streets and laneways all over the place. So interesting.

Cave art reproductions

Crystal mining loot

The food is super meat heavy here. It's all grilled over coals, fried, baked, you name it.

The balls're definitely not in his court anymore

The dried fruits are amazing here. All sorts of things.

Daddy

Junior

Grandpa (deceased)

This Aries is a little hot over the collar

I vowed not to drink Tsingtao beer ever again, because the last can I drank tasted like it'd been bottled in the tailings dam of the local arsenic factory. But the woman at the eating place just grabbed me this when I ordered a beer, it was a different product of theirs, and, actually, it was pretty damn good. Especially on a balmy eve.

Beautiful Silk Road-themed mural.

This is a Chinese bakery chain that I've dangerously discovered. Their products are incredible, and I'll eat as many of them as I can while I'm here. I actually know that for a fact, I can feel it in my sugary creamy custardy bones.

This woman was doin' her thing way before Jimi Hendrix was even a twinkle in the eye. She's playing a pipa, a Chinese lute, and would've had the crowd pumping doing it like this.

The image has become a symbol of this town, based on many paintings and sculptures in the grottoes.

They really care for their bunnies here.

No, I'm not gonna say it. Stop it.

Shrimp and shellfish. Reminds me of Cambodia. Who knows where they've come from, we're in the middle of a landlocked desert here. Local aquaculture, I guess.

It is actually an oasis town though, so maybe there's underground water supplies.

Local mosque

More Romanesque sculpture

Yet another Fantastic drink.

It's All History Now

The area of Dunhuang originally belonged to local tribes of various descriptions, and first came under Han Chinese rule when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty took over in around 120 BC.

It was the westernmost garrison town of the Hexi corridor, that relatively narrow strip of land that stretches between the mountains of the Tibetan plateau to the south, and the Mongolian steppe to the north. So, strategically, it was extremely important to control the area, as it provided access to the huge but vulnerable fertile Chinese plains.

Even though it was a military garrison and major fortifications were built to defend it, it was such an important place strategically that over the centuries there were still many battles here, and the area came under the control of various groups, including the Xiognu (who ruled the area before the Hans as well), the Tibetans, and the Turkic Tuoba people.

Uyghurs eventually took over the area in 911 (I guess it was quite the emergency), and the Uyghurs formed an alliance with the Hans to  allow continued trading and access.

Kublai Khan's crew took it in the 1200s, along with the rest of China.

The Silk Road was a hugely important trade route between the West and the East, but when China became a major shipping power in the 15th Century, it was vastly cheaper and more efficient to move goods via southern shipping routes. The Silk Road, as a major trading route, then slowly died in the arse.

If you walk around town it looks like the population is quite diverse, and you see Hui Muslims, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians and other groups selling produce and crafts around the place. But actually, the population of the city is 98% Han.

Artfelt

The main reason I came to this place though, besides all the other good things, was to witness the Buddhist art masterpieces at Mogao Grottoes, with my own sandblasted bloodshot eyes.

The art is absolutely soul bursting and mind blowing, and I'll show it to you in my next gripping episode of "Yeah, Yeah, It's Another Incredible Place, Yada Yada," which follows on from my very successful previous series, "Yada, Yada, It's Another Incredible Place, Yeah Yeah."

But until then I'll be super busy trying to get gritty and annoying brown sand out of my nasal passages, fingernails, and other parts of my body that (until now) I didn't even know existed.

But for now, whilst firecrackers explode rapidly outside, it's time for me to further explore this surreal desert outpost❤️

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