The 5000 Project

Dunhuang is a new city, not an old-town new city, but a nice new city with pedestrian crossings and traffic lights that the locals seem to obey – first time in asia where I have crossed a road without fearing death, I think its because of the lack of population in this town. The city/town is located in the middle of the desert, on an oasis next to a giant set of sand dunes, quite an impressive view even from the main road.

we checked into a hostel and were greeted by many chinese backpackers who knew really good english, really awesome liberal backpackers – some were about to hitchhike to a city 600kms north, which is a big thing for a chinese person; although I find that most of the new generation chinese are pretty free thinking kick ass people, the future for china is bright.

During the next few days, I washed the hostel dog (he was pretty filthy, really cute chinese lapdog, couldn’t resist) and hiked a dune. The main central dune had a hefty entrance fee, that’s right, a ticket gate for… the desert; I was determined to find another way in. After a bit of socializing I found info of a location where there is no more fence and it is right next to a large dune, not too far from the main entrance. We headed there just before sunset to get the most out of the view, it was quite impressive; the bonus being that to get there we had to walk through an apricot and pear orchard, which made for enjoyable scrumping.

The next day we headed to the Mogao caves, a set of caves that were used for ancient (~300AD) artists to paint buddhist paintings in worship and later used for expressive graffiti during the use of the silk road route. There are paintings referring to all religions, there was even an Icarus painting from greek mythology.

I parted ways with my german friend; booked a ticket for urumqi and hopped on the train two days after, urumqi is a controversial city that only last year held intense riots where many were killed; conflicts occur between han chinese and ethnic natives, the urgurs. The current day reality is quite different, however.