The route upriver from Dahejia would involve passing through two narrow gorges of the Yellow River: only one of which had a road that I could travel. The Jishishan (积石山) Gorge was immediately upstream beyond a dam and led to the county town of Xunhua (循化). Beyond that lay the Gongbo (公伯) gorge whose sides were so steep they precluded the building of a road.
In true Chinese style, road engineers had built an extensive series of tunnels and bridges through the mountains on the south side of the river to create a new motorway that linked up to the town of Jainca (尖扎), where the river flowed down from Kanbula. The problem for me was that bicycles were strictly prohibited on motorways, so I would have to find an alternative route beyond Xunhua. It looked like I would have to use the old highway that went north into the high country towards a small town called Hualong (化隆).
But first I had to get to Xunhua. Beyond the dam at Dahejia, the road ran between cliff walls of red soil. When I set out, the hills were darkened by rainclouds, and for the first time on this trip I had to don my rain cape. The rain increased in intensity but I stayed mostly dry except for my legs and feet.
At the Jishi Gorge dam the road crossed to the south side of the river and started a long ascent up into mountainous terrain. This was where I would really start to gain altitude to reach the Qinghai plateau. The road passed through several tunnels and made long curving arcs up into bleaker and barren hills with barely any vegetation.
The soil was red and the loess mountains on either side of the road were riven by deep gullies through which the once dry beds had been turned by the rain into something resembling a mudflow.
There were a scattering of small settlements in the valley, and each village had a small mosque. They looked recently built and followed the Chinese architectural style of a pagoda-style minaret with four open levels each covered by a sloping roof with upturned eaves. On top was a golden spire comprising the Islamic symbols of three spheres and crescent moon.
There was little traffic on this road except for a few tractors. At one point I was passed by two coaches: one carrying men wearing prayer caps, the next carrying women in hijabs.
As I neared Xunhua, the landscape opened out into a wider plain of brown, bare mountain ridges alongside the equally brown and still waters of the Yellow River.
Xunhua was the home of the Salar Muslim people but also had a sizable number of Tibetan residents, most noticeably older females wearing the traditional ankle-length off-the-shoulder chuba dress.
In the 1950s the Tibetans of Xunhua County had been joined by the Salar people in a short-lived rebellion against the heavy-handed policies of the new Communist regime. Dubbed the Xunhua Incident, the revolt occurred when Mao launched his disastrous and unpopular Great Leap Forward policies in the region, which included the creation of agricultural cooperatives which were unpopular with local farmers. Riots were triggered when a prominent Tibetan lama was taken away by the Chinese for ‘re-education’ - Jnana Pal Rinpoche was a revered local monk who had been a tutor to the 10th Panchen Lama (who had been born in Xunhua in 1938).
The Xunhua Tibetans were joined by the Salar Muslims in surrounding the local government buildings in Jainca town and demanding an end to collectivisation and the release of the Rinpoche. The protests escalated over the next few days, with buildings being ransacked and a local Communist Party leader being killed. The Communist authorities called in the People’s Liberation Army, who sent in two regiments to suppress the rebellion by force - killing more than 400 Tibetans and Salar people and sending more than 2000 protestors to prison. The uprising was noted by the Tibetan leaders in Lhasa and was said to be a precursor to the uprising there the following year - which led to the escape of the Dalai Lama to India.
There was little in modern day Xunhua to suggest its turbulent past. It was a sleepy town with just a few modern high rise buildings next to the river. A large mosque dominated the city centre, and an outdoor market at a road junction on the outskirts of town had crowds of Muslim traders selling produce such as water melons.
Xunhua did have a monument to commemorate the county’s role in one of the disastrous and lesser known episodes of the Long March: the passage through the area of Zhang Guotao’s ill-fated Western Route Army. Once described as ‘the man who could have been Mao’, Zhang Guotao (张国焘) was a rival leader to Mao among the original Long Marchers from Jiangxi province. However, he made the calamitous mistake of trying to lead his 30,000 strong column of Red Army troops through Gansu and Qinghai to try connect with the Soviet Union, rather than going directly north to Shaanxi with Mao’s smaller force of 10,000 Red Army soldiers.
Zhang’s Communist Long Marchers failed to gain support from local Muslim communities in the barren hills around the Yellow River. Many of Zhang’s column dropped out or were captured by pursuing KMT forces. Ultimately they were almost completely wiped out in attacks by cavalry troops of the regional Muslim warlord Ma Bufang (马步芳). Ma was allied to the KMT government and recruited many Salar Muslims from the Xunhua area as soldiers. Ultimately, most of Zhang’s army was wiped out and only a few hundred made it to join up with Mao and other Communist leaders in the Shaanxi.
The annihilation of his column meant that Zhang lost power and influence in the Party after he arrived in Shaanxi - he was purged by Mao and eventually defected to the KMT. Later in life he fled to Hong Kong and ultimately moved to Canada, where he converted to Christianity and died in Toronto in 1979.
The Long March monument in Xunhua noted that hundreds of Long Marchers - including a female battalion - had been taken prisoner by Ma Bufang. They were sent to work in forced labour brigades in the ‘wasteland’ around Xunhua. They were given the worst jobs in digging the fields, logging and land reclamation.
The monument made no mention of the fate of many other female Long Marchers captured by Ma Bufang’s troops in Gansu.
An article on Red Martyrs by Tommaso Previato published by of Academic Sinica notes that:
“Women soldiers and non-combat auxiliary staff were either tortured, or stoned and thrown into ditches, sometimes still alive, or distributed to Ma Bufang’s men as concubines or second wives, thereby converting to Islam. Estimates show that among the women who lived on and could not return to Yan’an, where the CCP had set up its headquarters, 231 put roots down in Gansu …”
Putting a positive spin on the disaster, the official monument said the prisoners had ‘planted the red gene’ of revolution in the area by spreading propaganda messages and building up links with local Salar peasant farmers.
Passing through Xunhua, I stopped at a simple Muslim restaurant to have some steamed mutton baozi buns to fortify for me the road ahead. The ‘detour’ took me over a wide section of the Yellow River and along a narrow agricultural strip before the road turned north and headed steeply upward into a narrow twisting rocky gorge.
As I pushed on the pedals, the landscape slowly changed from red loess clay to solid rock. It was a long and tiring ascent and for the first time I had to move up a gear in pedal assistance to get up the switchback slopes. After passing through a narrow rocky defile the road eventually topped out at a small reservoir and led into a plateau of rolling grassland hills.
A final steep slope took me up to a shabby small town that was the centre of Hualong Hui Muslim County. It was only mid afternoon and I would have preferred to keep going on towards Kanbala, but it was still 90 kilometres away and I had used up all my battery getting up through the gorge. Hualong had only one decent hotel, which fortunately allowed me to check in. After setting up my batteries to recharge, I went for a stroll around Hualong.
It was the most ‘Muslim’ town I had been in so far, with many of the local Hui men having beards as well as the prayer caps. Almost all the local women covered their heads with a black hijab. A store next to the large mosque specialised in Islamic home decorations which included paintings of mosques and plinths holding stone discs bearing Arabic inscriptions. My presence drew a lot of stares from the locals, so much so that I felt uneasy at the attention and retired to my hotel room to get a bit of privacy.
Walking the streets I had felt an unusual sense of fatigue and lethargy. Then I realised that I was now at high altitude. Hualong was almost 3000 metres above sea level.
Kanbula was thankfully all downhill from Hualong. The road ran through grassland and fertile farmland, passing a relic of the Great Wall from the Ming Dynasty. The stump of brown earth would not have been recognisable as part of the wall had it not been for a signpost - and the protective fence surrounding it. On the other side of the road was the first Tibetan stupa that I had seen on this trip - this was the transition zone of eastern Qinghai from the Tibetan plateau to the Hui Muslim lowlands.
Continuing downhill towards the Yellow River I ran into some touring cyclists going the opposite way. Two Hui Muslim men with prayer caps under their bike helmets told me they were on their way to Xunhua ‘just for fun’. They were from a nearby small town called Kanyang (康扬) and invited me to visit the beef noodle restaurant that they ran there.
About 30 minutes later I ran into another cyclist - this time a young guy who had just graduated from Lanzhou University. He had just come from Kanbula and was able to give me a lot of useful tips. The road through the park was closed due to landslips, he told me, but it was possible for bikes to get through if you pushed over a few rough sections of gravel.
The river at Kangyang was a beautiful green colour and placid: quite a contrast to the muddy brown soupy mess that I had last seen at Xunhua. Here I faced a choice: a minor road ran uphill along the north bank of the river up to the large Xiaqiong (夏琼寺, Jakhyung) Tibetan Buddhist Monastery perched on the edge of a precipice high above Kanbula. Founded in 1350, Jakhyung was one of the oldest monasteries in the Tibetan world and the birthplace of the Gelugpa branch of Buddhism. It didn’t seem that far away, but my navigation app told me it would be a 40 kilometre round trip from the river, as there were many switchbacks in the steep road. I decided to press on to Kanbula.
Until recently named the Kanbula National Forest Park, the mountainous region along the south bank of the Yellow River had recently been designated a ‘global geopark’ by UNESCO. The Qinghai government had obviously decided that it would be a major tourist attraction, and was in the process of building a holiday resort around the entrance to the park.
The small town of Kanbula had a few modest hotels and homestays along the main street, but I decided to try the new Kanbula International Hotel further down the road, as this was the only one showing that it was open to foreigners. It was a new and flashy, almost Las Vegas-style hotel, but I decided against staying there: like my previous experience at Hanguguan in Henan, the hotel appeared deserted and was located at the end of a road along which were a series of unfinished concrete frameworks for buildings that might one day be hotels, restaurants and shops. For now it was a gloomy and isolated ghost town and an inconvenient long walk from the main street, to which I returned on the bike.
In contrast to the Jakhyung monastery overlooking the town, Kanbula was still a predominantly Hui Muslim community. There were a few tourists about town but most of the new streets and the landscaped tree-lined walkways along the waterside were empty. I rode my bike down to see the river scenery, which was spectacular: red rock cliffs and pristine clear green water.
I discovered the reason for the lack of tourists in Kanbula the next morning: the park was closed. Beyond the deserted Kanbula International Hotel the road was blocked by a makeshift metal screen on which a sign stated that the highway had been blocked by landslides and all traffic was prohibited while construction was underway. Remembering the advice of my Chinese cyclist, I found a way to push my bike around the side of the screen, through some bushes. With some trepidation, I set off along the empty road, which ascended alongside the river until I reached a viewpoint above the huge dam.
The views back towards Kanbula were impressive, but I was startled by a stern mechanical voice barking out orders at me in Chinese: “Attention! This is a prohibited area! Leave immediately!” The electronic voice was coming from a surveillance camera array mounted on a post overlooking the viewing area. The message kept repeating itself, making me realise it was a recording triggered by movement sensors rather than a real-time warning from someone spying on me via the cameras.
I moved on, entering a tunnel that took me through the hillside and then along a series of zig-zag loops of road up to an empty carpark with an even better view of the dam. Here there was a real life security guard with an electric buggy, but he ignored my presence.
From here I began my ascent into the mountains of Kanbula. The switchback road was steep, and as mentioned in the warning sign, a few short sections had been obliterated where the hillside had collapsed due to erosion. These had been bypassed by newly-scraped dirt tracks that were even steeper than the official highway. I had to get off the bike and push through these rough sections because they were already a mess of ruts, sandy soil and large broken stones. It was hard work and I was rapidly using up my battery, as well as my water bottle supplies.
It took me until late morning to reach the 2800 metre altitude where the uphill slope of the road eased and I was able to get panoramic views of the lake, now far below. I was now among terraces of grass and crops, and there were occasional marmots scurrying away from the road to hide in their burrows as I approached on my bike. When I reached a collection of buildings labelled Jiancang (尖藏) village, I saw my chance to get a battery recharge. A large ‘visitor service centre’ had a power cord trailing from an open window, where it had been used to charge up an electric buggy, but was now disconnected.
After a word with the staff, they agreed that I could use it for my bike. I joined them inside where they offered me hot water from a huge urn to make tea. They were ethnic Tibetan villagers who worked as park maintenance staff, but on this day they had little to be getting on with. One of them sat with his daughter, spending an hour patiently working through the homework exercises in Mandarin from her school textbook.
I asked them about restaurants on the road ahead, but they shrugged and said nothing was open at the moment. With a few more bars of battery charge I resumed my journey on the road that now rose and fell for several hundred metres between more small villages. On the hillsides above and around the road there was a thick covering of trees, interspersed with pinnacles and mounds of red rock. These ‘Danxia landforms’ were the ‘geo’ part of the park.
The rock formations became more common and greater in size until I reached the high point of the Kanbula park road at a village called Dehong (得红). Here the road began a long and twisting descent through the most fantastic and extensive rock formations. Some were rounded mounds, others formed sheer rectangles of cliffs while further down was a whole series of twisted pinnacles in the shapes in the forms of horns, wedges and pinnacles that resembled the skeleton of a massive dinosaur.
I had the empty road all to myself and made slow progress because I kept stopping in the middle of the highway to take more photos. At an almost deserted visitor car park I found a Tibetan mother and son with a stall selling cartons of instant noodles and roast potatoes. These made a most welcome lunch to fuel me on the next leg of my journey towards the distant town of Guide (贵德, pronounced gway-duh).
The map showed it was possible to take a side road steeply downhill to the shore of the Kanbula reservoir and from there ride on a boat back to Kanbula town via a dock near the dam. My plan was to continue through the park and take the road out to the northwest on to the Tibetan plateau. Ominously, however, there were rumbles of thunder as I freewheeled down past the last of the rock spires. I donned my rain cape, removed the phone from its handlebar holder and ensured all the panniers were sealed.
The empty road descended sharply and I began to feel lonely and vulnerable as drops of rain started to spatter down around me. The dark grey mist rolled in from the peaks and thunder and lightning began to roll into the lower valley. I reached another junction where a smaller road had a sign pointing in the direction of Guide - its rough condition further eroded my confidence in the way ahead.
Lightning bolts now cracked almost overhead, and when I saw the bright line of one zapping almost horizontally towards a nearby hillside, I decided to seek shelter. The only place I could see was beneath the arch of a small bridge over a gully - but this would mean leaving my bike exposed to the rain now pelting down. In desperation, I cranked up the power setting on the bike and pedalled around the side of the hill to another gully, where the road turned uphill.
Some way above I could see a few buildings by the road, so I set out to see if they offered shelter. The rain eased off briefly but another bank of cloud and mist was rolling in from the mountain peaks. It took about 15 minutes and a lot of effort to get up the hill and reach the village. The houses appeared deserted and the gates and doors were firmly locked up. At that moment, a tractor chugged down the hill and the female Tibetan driver gestured vaguely back up the road when I asked her if there was anywhere to shelter from the rain.
The last building in the village had a plastic canopy in the yard covering a shabby table and a few plastic chairs. I pulled my bike underneath it and moved as close to the wall as I could to escape the wind-driven rain. The door of the wooden house opened and a peasant face gaped out at me with a momentary expression of disbelief and incomprehension. The man’s rough voice urged me to come inside and shelter from the rain. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
Striding through the door I found myself looking into the faces of a group of men all lolling on the wooden floor tucked up in sleeping bags.
“Sit down! Join us! Take off your wet clothes!” they urged me in heavily accented Mandarin.
After I slumped in exhaustion against the wall and declined their offers of cigarettes, they explained that they were a road repair crew who were ‘resting’ because of the storm. They plied me with hot water and told me they weren’t locals but Hui Muslim men from Ningxia, near Zhongwei. We bonded instantly when I told them I had recently cycled through Zhongwei, and they were full of praise for my Yellow River journey.
They told me it would likely rain for the rest of the day and urged me to stay with them in their cabin until the morning. I said I had waterproof bike gear and would wait and see what the weather did.
Over the next 40 minutes we swapped stories: I heard about how they travelled around north west China doing itinerant labouring on the roads. They thought it was good work because it was stable and simple labour that paid a regular wage. And they were a group of friends working together without having to rely on a ‘middle man’ labour hire agency who would take a percentage of their earnings. They were inquisitive about my job, how much I earned, and about my family.
They asked me what religion I was and for sake of simplicity I said I was Catholic. When they asked about whether there were muslims in Australia I told them yes, but they were generally people whose families came from places like Lebanon, Malaysia and Pakistan.
One of them responded: “So Islam is not a native religion in Australia like it is in China?” I’d never thought of it in those terms before. The conversation continued to range across a random range of topics, including the British monarchy, whether Michael Jackson was really ‘black’ and the benefits of the western diet compared to Chinese food.
Against their protestations that I should stay and eat dinner with them, I eventually decided that the storm had passed and the rain had eased up enough to continue my journey.
Dining my rain cape again, I faced a long climb back up to a second ‘pass’ that led me out of the Kanbula park and into a wide valley overlooking the Yellow River. It was dryer on this side of the mountains and as I rode down the long, twisting road back to the river I passed Tibetan families who had stopped their cars to have picnics on the grass and enjoy the view.
The final 40 kilometres of road that led me to Guide took me along a wild stretch of the river with an unusual mix of terrain. Beyond the green waters there was a beach-like strip of fertile land along the far river bank, covered with bushes and trees. Behind this ran a low line of dark coloured hills, resembling slag heaps from coal fields. And in the distance was a continuous backbone of sharp, spiky rock ridges whose layers changed colour from brown to beige to red.
I had to push against a headwind for much of the way, and was later subject to another torrent of rain from a passing storm. And so it was with great relief that I finally reached the fertile green fields around Guide. Lying on the main highway south from Xining, it was a bigger transport hub than I had expected and had a good range of hotels to choose from. Guide was also very much an ethnic Tibetan town, and I felt a sense of reassuring familiarity when I saw Tibetan monks walking the streets in their crimson robes, returning my greeting of ‘tashi delay’.
After washing the worst of mud from my bike and my clothes, I was too tired to do anything more than grab a simple dinner at a Sichuan restaurant and return to my hotel room to put my feet up. When I came out of the hotel lift and found myself in an art deco hotel corridor I was once again struck by the incongruity of the sudden transition from wilderness to stylish comfort.
No comments:
Post a Comment