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On the Silk Road (and not alone)
Thursday, August 18, 2005-11:18 PM
Dunhuang, once a trading post on the Silk Road, today looks a lot like other places in China that attract a steady stream of backpackers. The center of the small city in Northwestern China has dozens of restaurants and hotels competing for the business of English speaking tourists.
The restaurants serve coffee and hamburgers. The hotels book train and bus tickets. Whether they can speak Chinese or not, Westerners know they don't have a whole lot to worry about when they're in Dunhuang.
But for every tourist drinking a smoothie and asking about buses to the Mogao Grottoes, there's probably someone else out there who has made it a point to avoid places like this. What a blow to come all the way to an exotic place like China and find out it might not be so exotic after all.
The ride from Golmud to Dunhuang on a sleeper bus was the worst bus ride I've taken in China yet. The bus only had beds for about 40 people, but an additional 20 or so passengers filled the aisles for the 13 hour trip.
The road from Golmud runs through landscape that looks like surface of Mars, rocky and completely barren. Around nine o'clock it becomes dark.
But there was no way to sleep. Other passengers were smoking and talking. The bus stopped for bathroom breaks and repairs just about every hour. Movies were playing on the television sets.
I was in the heart of the bus, in a bottom bunk in the middle row. I couldn't look out the windows. I could barely stretch my legs. I just stared at the television a foot in front of my face praying we'd arrive in Dunhuang soon.
At 7:30 in the morning we rolled into town.
After purchasing a plane ticket back to Guangzhou for the 29th and a train ticket onward to Urumqi for the 20th, I started looking for a place to have lunch.
Near my hotel were lots of restaurants: Sichuan, Muslim, and Western. My first instinct was to avoid the Western places.
But I reconsidered. Today the real Dunhuang is about backpackers and tour groups. I can eat Sichuan food anywhere.
I cautiously walked into "Shirley's Cafe". Inside were three Europeans and one Chinese.
In this kind of situation, it's easy to fall into the trap of competing with the other tourists, trying to demonstrate that there's some difference between yourself and the other Westerners in China.
I consciously tried not to fall into this trap. Since the waitress spoke to me in English, I spoke to her in English.
I looked over the menu. Part of me was trying to find the most authentic Chinese dishes. Part of me was trying to avoid coming off as arrogant by ordering Chicken Feet when what I really wanted was a hamburger.
I settled on something that you'd expect a stupid foreigner to order, Sweet and Sour Chicken.
In all honesty, the foreigners I've met so far in Dunhuang are friendly and helpful and have lots of travel experience. But, in the back of my mind, I still would like to know there's something different about me and them.
But I try not to look to hard for it. I should just concentrate on the Mogao Grottoes.
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