Would it be the northern or southern route?-- I had been wondering for a week. From their spot way out in the middle of the Taklamakan, it only really made sense to go south. I, of course, was hoping they would go north, but from the ruins of Loulan, the NHK Team headed south, back to the main road. The main road being, of course, the Southern Pass of the Silk Road. Unbelievably desolate, even the solitary line of electricity poles seem unbearably lonely.
In this desert landscape--- which has to be without a doubt the most remote and hazardous-looking plae I have ever seen-- a glorious string of flourishing Buddhist kingdoms once existed here in a straight east-west line of oases. These Lost Cities have remained buried under the sands of the Taklamakan for 1000 years. Sleeping under a thick blanket of sand, they were first roused from their sleep by the "foreign devils" who trespassed here during the early part of the last century. After China finally shut the door on the foreigner tomb raiders, the cites were then left completely untouched until the 1980s when the NHK team arrived.
The first wave of foreigners (Stein, Hedin, Otani et al) had already smuggled out many of the greatest artistic treasures and important historical artifacts, but it was NHK team (funded in great part by NHK) who uncovered the real archaelogical secrets of the lost cities of the desert.
I already described the intense rivalry that went on to uncover-- and steal-- artifacts and works of art from their desert resting place during the early days of the 20th century. It bears repeating again that all the excavating and removal of art treasures and artifacts went on with no permission from local authorities whatsoever. So, we have Le Coq and Hedin, for example, using jacksaws and hatchets to cut down huge rock murals, which further had to be cut into pieces for transport. The American Warner (the model for Indiana Jones) used a "new" chemical method for removing the murals which was every bit as marring as just plain hacking them down. The infamous Stein lied, pretending to be a messenger sent by the famed 7th century Buddhist monk, Xuanzang to be allowed to purchase the famed documents from Dunhuang. Nothing was too low for them to stoop...
And yet-- I don't believe they were greedy, per se. No, it wasn't that. In fact, the more you read their accounts, the more you see they were like men possessed-- in love. And, they believed that they were liberating these precious art works.
Like all men possesed, too, they went about their objective with laser-like precision too.
Coming along almost 100 years later, the NHK team still had nothing but Stein's maps to go on to reach the site of Niya. And, even equipped with his highly accurate maps, they still passed right by the site and had to back track hours back in the direction from which they had come. It was brutal. From a small outpost called Kabake-Arsihan, the team-- again on camels-- had to treck 30 miles straight into the heart of the desert (My Silk Road guidebook recommends nowadays UNIMOG trucks over camels).
One of the Chinese members of the team remarked that
"I will always remember the moving moment when we finally saw the ruins of Buddhist stupa of Niya after wandering seven days in that no-man's land of a desert with no clear idea of where the site was."
Stein had removed all the most valuable artifacts, still the project at Niya stretched on for years. October is the only month where the winds die down enough to work, so expeditions are mounted in October and over the years the project has pieced together quite a lot about life in Niya, 2000 years ago.
Stretching some 25 kilometers from north to south the city was dominated by a towering 6.5 meter tall stupa. It's so dry that the archaeological digs have uncovered all kinds of things which paint a picture of daily life back then: richly colorful Chinese brocades and bamboo basket cosmetic cases; delicate wooden comb sets and coins written in several languages. Especially plentiful were agricultural tools and jars with grains or other crops still preserved within them! And, of course, there were mummies. NHK showed a married couple-- who were buried still holding hands (she with a ring still on her finger).
Niya had been another great wooden city with rows upon rows of poplar-lined boulevards. Also like Loulan, some anthropologists posit Caucasian people as the inhabitents of the city. Others, however, say they were the descendents of Alexander the Great's men, who settled here, marrying into the local tribe. Their language was written in the Kharosthi alphabet-- another long dead alphabet that once flourished in this area (On the coin above, you can see Greek on one side and Kharosthi on the other). It was the discovery of this language which was Stein's second greatest coup-- in fact. The first coup being-- of course-- Dunhuang.
**
I think many people when they think of Stein and the library at Dunhuang, inevitably think of the Elgin Marbles in Britian, which are still bitterly contested and debated about down to today. The big difference, however, is that while Elgin sought permission and paid the Ottoman ruler (who was ruler of Greece at the time) for the marbles, Stein and his friends basically came, took what they wanted and then quietly left.
Many British at the time, including Lord Byron, were deeply upset about Lord Elgin's removal of the marbles from the Parthenon and there was much debate then which has continued down to today. Not much is said about Dunhuang, however. Elgin, of course, didn't just take marble friezes but he also removed large quantities of sculpture as well.
Wouldn't it be tremendous to travel to Athens and see the Parthenon with its original sculpture and friezes? Wouldn't it make all the difference? Of course, having the treasures of Dunhuang on exhibition in museums in London, Paris, St. Petersburg and Berlin may allow more people to see-- and study--the treasures, Richard Bernstein, though, in a book I just finally finished after three abortive efforts, describes how moving it is to see these art works en situ. To travel into the heart of the desert and see the murals where they were originally painted on the rocks is the way this art was surely meant to be seen.
Though, its only a matter of time before, I suppose, the caves are shut down, like in Lascaux.
Coincidentally, I spent the day working on a translation on a documentary on the Summer Palace, which was the staggeringly large complex of gardens, temples and Western-style palaces used by the later Qing dynasty emperors as a summer retreat. The Japanese documentary dances around the destruction as best as seems possible.
In a nutshell, it was a time when foreign Western powers were circling around China like vultures. When the Emperor declined the request to meet with the British face-to-face in Beijing as they were demanding, he then up and left the capital all together in a huff. The "allied" British and French decided to "teach him a lesson," which resulted in the looting and burning of the Summer Palace in a manner that is difficult to even understand. Of course, they had not planned to do this, though I am not exactly clear what they were planning...The result, though, was full-scale looting and then burning everything to the ground.
The loot included tremendous amounts of treasure (in particular huge pearls and other jeweles) as well as porceleins and silks and fabulous glass and ivory objets. I have a book, originally published in Italy, with an engraving of the chaos that took place just before the order was given to burn the Palace to the ground. You can see the Western-style Palace to the East (designed by none other than Giuseppe Castiglione) and many Chinese temples and gardens unfolding toward the West. In the center of the engraving are the allied French-British soldiers who are dancing all dressed up in concubines' silks, loaded down with their looted jewels, prancing on the lawn under parasols and fans.
It must have been an engraving done later in protest. It seems to say two things: that yes, just as the rumors in Europe stated, this palace had been one of the great wonders of the East. And two: the soldiers had gone mad. In 1861, Victor Hugo wrote a passionate letter, which has become rather famous, where he describes described the looting as, "'Two Robbers' broke into this museum, devastating, looting and burning, and left laughing and hand in hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain."
When news reached the Emperor, he was astounded by the barbarity of the Barbarians and caved to their demands: Tianjin would be opened to the foreigners and foreign missionaries would be allowed to preach and build churches in the interior of the country.
Orders to burn the Palace down were given by none other than Lord Elgin-- the son of the Lord Elgin of the Parthenon marbles fame. The Italian book ends its section of "The Sacking of the Summer Palace" with this description:
Amid the ruins of the Summer Palace, Captain Hart Dune, a British officer, had found a pack of small dogs with a grotesque oriental apperance. When he got home, the dog-loving officer requested and ws given permission to present one of the "Pekinese" to Queen Victoria. Little Lootie, named for obvious reasons, yapped in the royal apartments until 1872.
**
You can see some of the most important pictures of the Palace which were taken about 10 years after the Palace's destruction here. A certain Qing historian talks a bit about the current discussion going on in Beijing concerning the idea of re-building the Summer Palace in time for the Olympics. Apparently the "conversation" has grown heated. While the original drawings and plans for many of the structures remain, still is it possible to rebuild something of that scale with any kind of authenticity? I would guess no. And, I would also guess having it exist in park-form as it does today might serve the community best.
Recommended reading:
I crossed-posted this article from Washington Post staff writer Li Xinguang, who participated in one of the spin-off NHK-China projects here-- it is fascinating reading, and it highlights an important point about the NHK Silkroad TV series, which is the series resulted in a further 20 years of research (much funded by private Japanese donors and through these long-term Japan-China projects in the Taklamakan, much important scholarly reearch has been accomplished.
*(On the sacking of the Summer Palace): Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan
*(Online article from Athena Review on Buried Silk Road Cities) Buried Silk Road Cities of Khotan
*(Online article on the Kizil Caves) The West to East Propagation of Buddhist Culture: The Kizil Grottoes and Kumārajīva
Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road remains highly, highly recommended reading (this was my 2nd read and I still really enjoyed the book)
On the Elgin marbles, I have been wanting to read this book, but may hold out for this one instead. Also coming out is this.
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