History is history, facts are facts. No one can change can change history and facts. – Xi Jinping, Head of the Chinese Communist Party, President of China, in remarks directed at Japan on the 77th anniversary of its invasion of China. The rebuilt Wall is better than the old one. If we did not rebuild …
Continue reading ‘Camping at the Great Wall – Fake Histories’ »
In Zhangye, we were back on the traditional Silk Road, with no more excursions into Tibetan lands. Zhangye is a midsized town located in the center of the Gansu Corridor, the spit of land running between the Qinlian Mountains and the Gobi desert that formed a passageway from inner China to the Taklamakan Desert. We …
Xining has a very Silk Road feel to the city. Qinghai, the province of which Xining is the capital of, is largely a Tibetan land, underpopulated, with vast stretches of wild, high deserts pockmarked with many mountains and almost no cities. However, Xining is dominated not by Tibetans but by Hui Muslims, the Chinese speakers …
The invitation came unexpectedly. An old friend on Facebook saw that the post I put up on our Silk Road Hitchhiking project. She contacted me in a message, telling me that a friend of hers was in Huazangsi, in Tianzhu County, just along the Silk Road in the Gansu Corridor, and she and an Australian …
Continue reading ‘Tibetans along the Silk Road – Tibetan Gansu Part I’ »
America has two kinds of national parks: one is a place of natural beauty, a Yellowstone or a Yosemite. Another is a place of historical significance, a Gettysburg or a Governor’s Island. In America, natural beauty and historical importance segregate themselves from each other naturally, like oil and water, as if a place cannot be …