Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

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‘You want to see the Jade Gate. Does it matter if it is a Han or Tang dynasty one? Anyway, everybody comes here.’

I tried to calm myself. It was really my fault; I should have explained and made it clear. At least my mistake had cost me only a few pounds for the unnecessary ride. I put it down to experience. I would have to be more careful – this was only the first stop from Xian and I had gone wrong already. But it was odd that the people of the Tang dynasty chose the same name for the new gate; they must have loved it so much.

Having come all this way, I thought I should at least take a look; it would have been similar to the right one. This gate was a fortified military post in the Great Wall, with a courtyard and quarters for soldiers. When I looked left and right, I could see, for miles in a straight line, low ledges of rubble, even neat piles of reeds and desert-willow branches for making repairs, now covered in sand. It was all that was left of the Great Wall here, reduced by time and nature. Once the threat to China had shifted from the nomads in the west to those in the north near Beijing, there was no incentive to maintain it. But in the Han dynasty, this place was crowded with travellers. ‘Messengers come and go every season and month, foreign traders and merchants knock on the gates of the Great Wall every day,’ say the Han Annals of History. The soldiers checked their passes, and kept bonfires ready to send smoke signals for reinforcements if danger threatened.

I entered the watchtower through a doorway as wide as my arms could stretch. Inside, it was spacious, big enough for a platoon to exercise in. I could see clear up to the sky; the roof had long since collapsed. Through the gaping holes in the thick mud-and-lath walls, I looked out across the desert, shimmering in the heat haze, stretching to the horizon. It was a similar forbidding prospect that faced Xuanzang, and he did not even have a road to follow across it.

The driver felt bad. ‘I can take you to where they think the Tang gate was, but why are you interested?’ I explained to him as I ought to have done sooner that I was following Xuanzang’s route. ‘You should have said. Anyway, let’s go back. There is really nothing left of the gate, but I think we should go to the watchtower. There’s a little museum there. I won’t charge you extra.’

We went back the way we had come, and he brought me to another ruin which archaeologists believe was the first watchtower outside the Jade Gate, now just huge piles of mud and straw. This was where Xuanzang faced the next danger on his journey. You could see why – apart from a large hut next to it, which turned out to be the museum, there was nothing within miles. Any traveller here would be totally exposed. Half of the museum is devoted to the Communist Long Marchers who passed through here in 1936. But the other end has paintings on the walls showing Xuanzang crossing the desert. Colourful as they are, the pictures hardly capture the real drama.

Xuanzang had already had a close shave before he even reached the first watchtower, at his bivouac with his guide Pantuo. They had skirted the Jade Gate in the middle of the night, by crossing a river four miles away, with a raft made of tree branches and reeds. Then Pantuo suggested they rest for a few hours before tackling the five watchtowers beyond. He seemed a perfect guide; he knew the terrain, the habits of the soldiers, where and when they might be able to slip by unnoticed. Xuanzang was relieved, said a short prayer, and fell asleep in no time. But before long he was woken by a noise; he opened his eyes and saw Pantuo creeping towards him, drawing his sword, then hesitating and returning to his sleeping-mat.

Once up at the crack of dawn, Pantuo pleaded with Xuanzang not to proceed. ‘This track is long and fraught with danger. There is neither water nor grass except near the watchtowers. We can only reach them at night. And if discovered, we are dead men! Please, let’s go back.’ Xuanzang refused. Finally Pantuo told the truth: he regretted his decision to break the law and now was worried about being caught; he must leave. His strange behaviour last night now made sense: if Pantuo had killed him in the midst of the desert, nobody would have known. But either from superstitious fear or from a last remnant of piety, he changed his mind. He asked Xuanzang to promise not to mention his name if he was caught by the frontier guards. Then he turned back, leaving Xuanzang an old horse that had made the journey many times – it knew the way, Pantuo said.

And so, abandoned and alone, Xuanzang pressed slowly and painfully on through the Gobi Desert, unsure of his direction and guided only by heaps of bones and piles of camel-dung. The frontier poet Cen Sen left us a description of what Xuanzang had to go through: ‘Travellers lost their way in the endless yellow sand. Looking up, they saw nothing but clouds. This was not only the end of earth but also of heaven. Alas, they had to go further west after Anxi.’ Through exhaustion, and the heat, Xuanzang saw what appeared to be hundreds of armed troops coming towards him. ‘On one side were camels and richly caparisoned horses; on the other, gleaming lances and shining standards. Soon there appeared fresh figures, and at every moment the shifting spectacle underwent a thousand transformations. But as soon as one drew near, all vanished.’ Xuanzang believed himself to be in the presence of the army of Mara, the demon in Buddhist mythology who had attempted to distract the Buddha while he was in deep meditation to achieve enlightenment. But it was only a mirage.

A more immediate danger was this watchtower, the first of the five he had to pass. He waited until nightfall and found the little spring that Pantuo had told him about. It is still there today, clear and cool, surrounding the watchtower’s ruins. He went down to drink at it and wash his hands. Then, as he was filling his water bag, he heard the whistle of an arrow, which nearly hit him in the knee. A second later, another arrow followed. Knowing he was discovered, he shouted with all his might: ‘I am a monk from the capital. Do not shoot at me!’

Xuanzang was brought before the captain, who was a lay Buddhist. On hearing the monk’s plan, he too told him to turn back. The road was dangerous and he did not think the pilgrim would be able to reach India at all. Xuanzang was grateful for his concern but told him that he was so troubled with doubts, he just had to go. ‘You, a benevolent man, instead of encouraging me, urge me to abandon my efforts. This cannot be called an act of compassion,’ he said to the captain, and then added: ‘You can detain me if you want to, but Xuanzang will not take a single step in the direction of China!’

Impressed by Xuanzang’s determination and fearlessness, the officer decided to help the pilgrim. Xuanzang stayed with him for the night and began his journey with a good supply of food, water and fodder for his horse. He was given an introduction for the fourth watchtower, but was warned against the fifth because the officer there had no sympathy for Buddhism. Instead, he should head for the Wild Horse Spring sixty miles to the west of it, and from there all paths would be clear. But with no experience of travelling in the desert, Xuanzang soon got lost. To add to his grief, his water bag slipped from his hand as he lifted it to drink. In an instant, his whole supply of water vanished into the sand. In total confusion and despair, he turned back and started retracing his footprints. But after a few miles he stopped. He remembered his vow: ‘Never take one step back towards China before reaching India.’

I had to keep going westwards too. I could resume my train journey from the Willow Station, and asked the driver to take me back there. When I looked out of the train window I saw nothing apart from the cloudless blue sky, a few lonely white aspens along the railway line, and a vast expanse of sand and gravel, grey, featureless; craggy mountains hemmed a distant horizon, topped with snow, but they looked impossibly aloof. Crossing the Gobi Desert even on a modern train is forbidding. I found it incredible that Xuanzang had journeyed through it alone, with no guide but his own shadow and his faith. I talked to the young man opposite me and told him about Xuanzang’s adventure in the Gobi.

‘I thought the emperor had all sorts of arrangements made for him. It says so in The Monkey King.’

‘That is fiction,’ I said.

‘I know the monkey is a fictional creation. But Xuanzang must have had a lot of protection and companions. You aren’t telling me he did it all on his own.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘You remember what happened to the famous scientist who disappeared in the desert in the 1980s? He even had satellite communication. But he never came back. Such a waste of a life.’

Xuanzang almost suffered the same fate. For four days he was lost in the Gobi, without a single drop of water. The burning heat and the punishing winds brought him to the verge of collapse. On the fifth day he fell on the sand, unable to take a single step further. His horse fell too. All he had strength for was to mutter a few prayers. He desperately turned to Guanyin: ‘In venturing on this journey, I do not seek riches, worldly profit or fame; my heart longs to find the true Law. Your heart, O Bodhisattva, forever yearns to deliver all creatures from misery. I am in such danger. Can you not hear my prayers?’

This was the worst moment in his entire journey. He was young, only twenty-seven, and had never faced the real dangers of life and death. He was determined and thought he was prepared, but he had not expected so much hardship so soon, before even leaving China. The emperor and nature itself had joined forces to put an end to his journey almost before it had begun. He was alone; he was lost; and he was dying. He remembered a sutra with the story of Guanyin saving a merchant who had been shipwrecked in the open sea for seven days. But his favourite Bodhisattva seemed to be ignoring his plea for help, although he prayed all the time to her. Was she really up there somewhere? If so, why would she not come to rescue him? The vast desert looked ready to swallow him up; death could be hours or minutes away. He would become just another pile of bones in the sand.

After praying to Guanyin, Xuanzang began to recite the Heart Sutra. He had learned it many years before from a sick man he had tended. It is the shortest sutra in the Buddhist canon but is regarded as the essence of Chinese Buddhism. He was told to recite it when he was in danger and when everything else had failed. Now he needed it more than ever. When he approached the end, these were the words he would have spoken to himself: ‘The world is ultimately empty. The wisdom of the Bodhisattva is such that he has no illusions in his mind, hence, no fear.’

The Buddha taught that having no illusions means seeing things as they really are, which in turn means recognizing the impermanence of everything. The Buddha often told his disciples that life is only a single breath. It is momentary, changing every second, and in one continuum with death. And for a Buddhist death is not an end, just a point between this world and the next. One will be reborn – though in what form depends on one’s karma. Xuanzang could hope that he would still be able to carry on his mission in his next life.

So he calmed himself. His panic was behind him, and he could think about what to do next. He picked himself up, and pulled hard on the horse’s reins. To his amazement, the old roan staggered up and set off. They struggled for nearly four miles when suddenly the horse turned in a different direction, and no matter how hard Xuanzang tried, he could not make it change its path. He let himself be guided by the creature’s instinct. Before long he saw green grass a little way off, and a shining pool, bright as a mirror. He was saved. Old horses indeed know the way.

In the Gobi, Xuanzang had passed the ultimate test. In this contest between nature and will, he triumphed over his anxiety, fear and despair. It had nearly cost him his life, but it gave him confidence. From then on, he felt there was nothing he could not face. I could hardly believe the story, and when I told it to the young man sitting opposite me, he could not believe it either. He thought I was pulling the wool over his eyes, or telling him an episode from the story of The Monkey King.

From the Wild Horse Spring, Xuanzang and his horse drank long and deep. Then they followed the beaten track. After two days he was out of the Gobi, and outside China. He was now in the Western Region, a vast territory between the Jade Gate and the Pamir Mountains, consisting mainly of the Taklamakan Desert, the second biggest in the world, with a string of independent oasis city-states along its edge, all depending on the Silk Road for their survival and wealth. Xuanzang would have known the history of the region well. China took it in the first century BC after the Silk Road was opened, but lost it to various nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes. At the point at which Xuanzang arrived, the Turks were the overlords, but the Chinese wanted it back.

Today the area is called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Uighurs were a nomadic tribe of Turkic origin, who migrated from the Eurasian steppes to the Taklamakan in the ninth century AD, not long after Xuanzang passed through the region. It was the Uighurs who have left us some of the most splendid Buddhist art, Nestorian Christian artefacts, and rare Manichaean documents and paintings. Eventually they took to Islam with the same zeal as they had embraced other religions of the Silk Road. Highly mobile with their versatile and speedy horses, they were one of the biggest threats to China on its northern and northwestern borders. But unlike many other powerful nomadic peoples, the Uighurs never managed to rule China. In the eighteenth century, after the longest military campaign in Chinese history, the region finally became part of the empire again.

Turfan is one of the biggest oases and cities in Xinjiang, situated on the eastern edge of the Taklamakan. A guide from a travel agency would meet me at the station. ‘How will I recognize you?’ I asked him on the phone after I had told him what I wanted to see in Turfan. ‘I’m fat, like a laughing Buddha outside a temple. People call me Fat Ma.’ The description was accurate. At the exit of my compartment, I spotted him immediately. He was dressed in a t-shirt and wiping sweat from his face. We looked at each other and smiled.

‘You need some rest in the hotel?’ he asked, taking my rucksack from me. ‘You said you’re interested in history and what Xuanzang did in Turfan. You’re in for a big treat. Anyway you can make your mind up later, we are still fifty miles from the city.’ While we walked to his car I mentioned the oddness of the location of the station, both here and in Anxi. ‘Perhaps they could only build straight lines in those days,’ he laughed, and then added more seriously: ‘We did so many crazy things back then. I wouldn’t be surprised if the decision where to put the stations was completely random.’

In five minutes his battered Beijing jeep was out of the station and driving at 100 kph on a tar road as soft as melting butter. It was late summer but Fat Ma was panting more than the old engine. I was a bit worried. ‘You should have seen me a few weeks ago. It was over fifty degrees every day. I hardly dared to move. Do you know how officials conducted their business in the old days?’ I shook my head. ‘They read their papers in the bath-tub soaking in ice-cold water.’ But the extreme weather here is not due to global warming. The city is right in the centre of a depression – in fact, it is the second lowest spot on earth, after the Dead Sea. Fat Ma told me Turfan means ‘lowland’ in the Uighur language. It has been called the Oasis of Fire.

I told him I did not need a rest – he was so entertaining I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anyway. So he suggested we head for the ruins of Gaochang city. ‘Your monk really had a hell of a time there,’ he said. We were back in the middle of the desert. There were no trees, no farms, not a speck of green anywhere. Perhaps if you are brought up there you learn to spot small details and it seems infinitely variegated. But to the unaccustomed eye it is sad in its monotony, a faceless plain of unrelieved sameness. Surrounded by a void, it was hard to imagine that we were on what was once a thriving commercial thoroughfare, or that this poem, written in the seventh century, actually described what Xuanzang would have seen on his journey through the area:

A good day to start on a long journey,

Wagon after wagon passes through.

The camels-bells never stop,

They are carrying the white chain (silk) to Anxi

.

After driving for twenty miles in the desert, my eyes caught some trees in the distance. ‘The oasis,’ I nearly shouted, pointing to a spot of green on the horizon. ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Fat Ma said, ‘It’s still quite a way off.’

We drove for another ten miles. Then I saw poplar trees and suddenly – fields of melons; plantations of vines inside and outside courtyards, spreading on to the walls; children playing by the road, carts loaded with cotton. I had not travelled in the blazing sun for days on end like the old caravans, nor did I experience any danger, but I was overwhelmed by the sudden fertility of the oasis – the renewal of life and succour for the traveller in the midst of the desert. I could only imagine how Xuanzang would have felt when he stepped from the sterility of his Gobi trek into the luxuriance of Gaochang.

The remains of Gaochang city are very grand, fitting for one of the oldest and wealthiest Silk Road kingdoms. For centuries, it was the second major oasis outside China, the starting point for the grassland Silk Road, and an obligatory stop for travellers. The mud walls that surrounded it, now broken in places, were more than ten metres high and five kilometres long. We entered from the western gate – quite a small one, but it opened up a broad, impressive view of the city within. The fallen houses and lonely pillars made it look even bigger. Under the blue sky, clouds flew past as if speeded up by a special-effects camera. As far as the eye could see, rugged walls stood erect after more than a thousand years. It was hard to believe that something built of mud could last so long. Straight ahead of us in the centre of the city was a tall, impressive terrace built of baked red clay bricks, the remaining foundations alone more than fifteen metres high. ‘We think this is King Qu Wentai’s royal palace,’ Fat Ma said. I felt my pulse quicken. This was it – the place where Xuanzang had one of his most dramatic experiences on his journey.

The King of Gaochang was a fervent Buddhist and so his capital was a city of temples: Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, with one for every hundred inhabitants. There were thousands of monks in the kingdom, but the king felt the country lacked a great master. He was inspired when he heard the praises that caravan traders heaped on Xuanzang after they had listened to his preaching in Liangzhou. It reminded him of the wonderful monasteries and profound masters he had encountered in the Chinese capital: he had gone there to pay tribute to the Chinese court three years earlier. A close relationship with his powerful neighbour was vital for the survival of his small kingdom. He was also very impressed with the way the Chinese conducted themselves – on his return, he ordered all his people to adopt the hairstyles of the gentlemen and ladies in Chang’an. Now he could have an erudite Chinese master from the very centre of learning to enlighten him and his people. How exciting it would be! The Chinese have a saying: ‘Something you could only meet but not seek.’ He felt this was his chance. He sent his envoys to meet Xuanzang. They abducted him to Gaochang, despite his plans to travel by a different route.

It was here, in this very palace, that the king paced about when he heard the Chinese master would be arriving that night. He forgot to eat, or sleep. At midnight, the guards announced Xuanzang’s arrival and he proceeded by torchlight to meet him. The king was so excited that despite Xuanzang’s fatigue, he insisted on talking to him all night and for the next ten days, for one purpose alone: to ask him to stay on as the master for his people.

Xuanzang thanked the king profusely for the invitation, but he could not accept it. He must go to India to find out what was missing from the teachings in China, he explained. But the king was unyielding: ‘It would be easier to shift the mountains of Pamir than to make me change my mind.’

Seeing how keen the king was to keep the Chinese master, his ministers also put their minds to it and came up with an ingenious idea. Xuanzang was young and single; so was the princess royal. She was beautiful, pious, cultivated, and very fond of Chinese culture and dress. Surely Xuanzang could not refuse such a wonderful bride. When the king broached the subject with his sister, she was only too happy to oblige. She had listened to the clear, deep and profound preaching by the handsome Chinese master. She had nothing but admiration for him; and to spend the rest of her life with such an enlightened man would indeed be yuan, her destiny.

But Xuanzang explained to the king that he regarded it as his destiny to fulfil his mission to bring back the sacred sutras that were needed in China and circulate them to his fellow-countrymen. Surely the king would not stand in the way of his destiny?

But the king – typically for kings – was unused to his decrees being questioned, not to mention defied. He grew angrier with Xuanzang’s obstinacy until at last he issued an ultimatum: ‘I am determined to retain you by force, or else to have you escorted back to your own country. I invite you to think the matter over; it is best to accept my offer.’

Without hesitation, Xuanzang replied: ‘The king will only be able to keep my bones; he has no power over my spirit nor my will!’

To make the king let him go, Xuanzang began a fast. For three days, he meditated and refused to take food or water. On the fourth day, he was getting weak and had trouble breathing. The king was shocked. He had seen many monks come and go through his kingdom, but never one like Xuanzang – so learned, spiritual and determined, and so fearless, ready even to sacrifice his life for the faith. A true Buddhist, a living example of the enlightened mind. As the Dhammapada, the Sayings of the Buddha, described:

From attachment springs grief,

From attachment springs fear,

For him who is totally free

There is no grief, and where is fear?

The king begged Xuanzang to eat. He would let him continue his journey; perhaps the master could contemplate stopping in Gaochang on his way back from India. Xuanzang had already decided to do that: he was deeply moved by the king’s piety and devotion to the Buddha, and the sincerity of his wish for a better understanding of the Dharma. While he was taking some food, the king looked at him, weakened and exhausted by his hunger strike and months of travelling in secret and getting lost in the desert. He recognized the greatness of this young man but wondered whether he could achieve his purpose penniless and alone. In a remarkable reversal, he decided to help the young Chinese monk. He asked Xuanzang to preach for a month, while preparations were being made for his journey.

Fat Ma was melting in the midday sun. He suggested we have lunch in a restaurant outside the gate where we parked the car. It was an oasis in itself; everywhere you looked there was green: pots with fragrant-leaved plants dotted over the floor, an overhead trellis spilling grapevines and casting a welcome weave of shadows on the ground. The grapes hung low enough for you to reach up and pick them. Water gushed in runnels at your feet, circling the place. After the dust, the heat and the ruins, I felt I could breathe again. We ordered a real Silk Road meal: noodles from China, Turkish kebabs and nans from India. After a couple of cold beers, Fat Ma revived, joking and calling for the car-radiator to be filled with water. We were doing just what Xuanzang and all Silk Road travellers would do when they arrived in Gaochang: refuelling with shade, water and food.

Here merchants and travellers from as far as Syria and southern India would check into one of many caravanserais inside the city. After a wash and a meal, they would inspect their pack animals to see if they needed to change them for healthy, rested ones, or simply to trade in one type of animal for another more suitable for the next stage of the journey – Bactrian camels were the favourite for this stretch of the Silk Road: they could sniff out subterranean springs and predict sandstorms; if they bunched together and buried their mouths in the sand, you knew one was coming. In the bustling bazaars the travellers would sell their goods, buy local specialities and stock up on food and supplies. If they had completed a profitable deal, they could go into one of the many taverns. Gorgeous women from Kucha, the next oasis, and even from as far away as Samarkand, entertained them with whirlwind dances and melodious songs, as they filled their glasses with the delicious Gaochang wine made from ‘mare’s teat’ grapes.

Gaochang, like all oasis kingdoms on the Silk Road, depended on levies from the caravans passing through. On entering the city gate, everyone was asked to show their passes issued in their country of origin. Then the merchants would be charged on the spot by their animal loads and then again when they sold their goods in the bazaars. A camel could carry an average of three hundred pounds, and a horse or a donkey half of that. Caravans could be as small as a dozen travellers or as big as several thousands – the bigger, the safer because the merchants could afford to pay for protection. An annual customs report of Gaochang from Xuanzang’s time recorded buoyant trade in large quantities: a man selling five hundred and seventy-two pounds of spices, another eighty pounds of raw silk and a third eight pounds of silver. The list goes on, giving us the most direct evidence of how the oasis kingdoms like Gaochang earned their income. The wealth of Gaochang was such that when China conquered it in the first century BC, its annual revenues could finance the defence and running costs of the entire Western Region.

After lunch we set out for Bezeklik. ‘The locals call it “the place with paintings”,’ Fat Ma said. It is one of the biggest Buddhist cave complexes in the Western Region, dating from the fifth century to the thirteenth century when Islam became the dominant religion in the area. Originally built by monks for meditating in a quiet valley, it soon became a famous centre of worship for lay followers, and the travellers of the Silk Road, who would pray for a safe journey by making offerings to the images of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Xuanzang did not mention it in his record but Fat Ma was absolutely certain that he visited it. ‘It was just over twenty kilometres from Gaochang city,’ he said, ‘and it would have taken only an hour or two on horseback. The king was so keen to impress Xuanzang, I’m sure he would grab any opportunity to persuade the monk to stay. Judging from the pictures of the murals, it must have been a splendid place.’

I also had seen pictures of the Bezeklik murals and they looked spectacular. Larger than life-size, they were painted in meticulous detail and exuberant colours and seemed as if they had been finished yesterday. Kings and queens, princes and princesses, Indian monks, Persian and Roman traders stood piously in their best costumes on the side walls, facing the altar where the image of the Buddha would be. Their names were written by their heads: they were the donors who had paid for the caves and the splendid paintings. Those murals were mostly painted after Xuanzang’s time, but a Tang dynasty record of Gaochang gives us a vivid account of Bezeklik, which it called Ningrong Cave Monastery. This is undoubtedly the Bezeklik Xuanzang would have seen. ‘Everywhere you look, there are mountains. Long, open corridors connect the monastery and the caves, with a clear stream running rapidly down below. Tall trees, morning mist and clouds make them invisible at first sight. This monastery has been known for a long time.’

We reached the valley quickly. The mountain is stark, barren and bald. I could hear the sound of water gushing at the bottom of the gully although I could not see it. We were picking our way over a rocky road more suitable for goats than cars when suddenly it opened up to a wide space where half a dozen cars were parked. I rushed to get out; Fat Ma made no move.

‘I think I’ll wait for you here,’ he said. ‘The thing with Bezeklik is: if you don’t see it, you will regret it; after you’ve seen it, you’ll regret it even more. Go and find out for yourself.’

The caves were indeed a terrible letdown, even with Fat Ma’s warning. Gone were the fantastic murals, the pictures of which I so loved. The majority of the fifty-odd caves were barred over, like a zoo without animals; the ‘good’ ones were virtually bare, just here and there a faint trace of a mural, a featureless Buddha, or a broken flower petal. All I could see clearly were the chisel marks made by the German explorer Albert von Le Coq and his colleagues as they divested the caves of their treasures to take them back to Europe.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bezeklik and other treasures of Xinjiang became the target of frenzied international exploration. This was the age of adventure. As one scholar put it, ‘No heroes stood taller in the Victorian pantheon than explorers. These explorers were the dashing film stars of the imperial era. Tinting unknown lands on a nation’s map became the embodiment of cultural virility. Plants, animals, falls, rivers, and even entire mountain ranges were named for these peerless travellers. Museums and galleries vied to display their collections. Readers never seemed to have enough books about these far-flung places.’

In Xinjiang, it all started as part of a broader geo-political rivalry between the British in India and Russia’s ambitions to the east. But no big power wanted to be left out of the glory, so for almost half a century, adventurers and explorers – Russian, British, Swedish, German, French, Japanese and American – raced against each other to unearth the antiquities of a lost and immensely rich civilization, buried under the sands of the Taklamakan Desert and untouched for more than a millennium. The chase, often with Xuanzang’s record as their guide, was all the more intense because of the Greco-Roman origins of many of the treasures – almost as if that made them theirs to despoil. And they were not disappointed. Their finds, measured in tons and thousands of camel loads, have filled major museums around the world and reveal the glorious past of Buddhist history.

The Germans carved out Turfan, Karashar, Kucha and Tumshuq, the major oases on the northern route of the Silk Road, as their sphere of influence. Their man was Albert von Le Coq, who spoke several oriental languages and worked for the Berlin Ethnographic Museum. He and his assistant spent two years from 1904 to 1906 combing through all the ancient sites of Turfan, which were mostly ruins or buried by sand. They heard about Bezeklik from a shepherd and found the caves filled to the ceiling with sand. They were overcome by the murals once they removed the sand: ‘If we could secure these pictures,’ Le Coq wrote in Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, the record of his explorations, ‘the success of the expedition was assured.’ With a hammer, a chisel, a knife and a fox-tail saw, he and his assistant managed to remove all the best-preserved murals of Bezeklik, which filled 103 huge trunks, each weighing well over a hundred kilograms. After twenty months of travelling they arrived safely in Berlin, where they occupied an entire room of the museum. ‘This is one of the few temples whose sum-total of paintings has been brought to Berlin,’ he wrote with a great deal of satisfaction. Moreover, he thought he was doing the Chinese a favour by his crude archaeological theft. ‘It cannot be too often emphasized that it is solely due to European archaeologists that any of the Buddhist treasures of Turkestan have been saved.’ He would never have suspected the Berlin Ethnographic Museum would be the graveyard for these precious objects. After surviving for more than 1,500 years in the desert, most of the murals were reduced to ashes in the bombing of Berlin in 1945. Only photographs remain.

I was in and out of the caves in twenty minutes. I was not the only unhappy visitor. A woman in high-heeled shoes and a long black velvet dress was blaming her partner loudly: ‘I’m baking hot. It’s all your fault. I told you we should have gone to the bazaar …’ When I got back to the car, I was complaining to Fat Ma about the destruction by the barbarians.

‘It wasn’t just the Germans,’ he said, ‘a friend of mine did his bit too.’

‘What? Your friends helped the Germans?’

‘No, it is a different story.’

There were still a few murals in some of the caves a decade ago. His friend and five other amateur archaeologists were told to clean them with soap and water. After the grime and mud were washed away, his friend saw a lovely face of the Buddha. He worked very hard for several days to clean the rest of the murals, Fat Ma explained, his voice falling almost to a whisper, as if he were afraid he would be overheard. But in a few days the cleaned murals began to crack and disintegrate; in no time they were gone. The cleaning had washed away the glue that held the pigments together. What had stood for so long and survived various depredations was finally destroyed by the ignorance of good intentions.

It was a sad story, and it matched my disappointment with the caves. Fat Ma tried to cheer me up. ‘Come on, lighten up. You’re going to see something really interesting. Promise.’

Barely two hundred yards from the caves, by the side of the narrow road, stood a grinning monkey, bright yellow and made of clay, and a pantheon of other characters from the novel – the gluttonous piggy, the novice, a red demon, a crab, a fox and of course the venerable Xuanzang on his white horse. They were crudely made and painted in day-glo colours. I had not noticed them before because I was looking for the water I could hear but not see. There was a terracotta dome in the background and on top of it the Islamic symbol of the crescent moon, presumably to appeal to the local Muslim population as well as tourists. The backdrop of the whole site was the red rock of the Flaming Mountain. ‘This theme park is for visitors so they can relive the myths of The Monkey King,’ said Fat Ma enviously, no doubt regretting that he had not come up with this enterprising idea. Two young men seemed to be enjoying themselves: for 30 pence each, they put their faces through cardboard versions of the Monkey King and Xuanzang, and then had their photos taken. For a pound, they could be the monkey, putting on a mask and a bright yellow martial-arts costume, with a walking stick for his cudgel. If the pilgrim himself took their fancy, they could put on a monk’s robe and get up on a real white horse.

I stood surveying the scene, a little shocked that the government had given permission for a theme park to be built so close to a grade-one listed ancient site. Turfan is not exactly crowded – it is as big as Ireland – and most of it is desert. They could have built this garish entertainment anywhere. But Fat Ma said, ‘I would have chosen this spot too. It’s near the famous site, many people come this way. And after the disappointing caves, why not have some fun?’

‘They have the Flaming Mountain,’ I said.

‘That’s where we are going next,’ he replied.

In The Monkey King, the Flaming Mountain bars Xuanzang’s way: for hundreds of miles around it everything is on fire and nothing can grow. To cross it, he has to borrow the magic fan from the princess of the Iron Fan. Waved once, the fan puts out fire; twice, it raises a wind; and the third time, it brings on rain and makes everything flourish. The local people have to sacrifice a child every year to appease the evil princess and borrow her fan for planting and watering their crops. Naturally the princess will not lend it to the monk. So the monkey uses his magic and turns himself into a tiny insect, gets into her stomach and makes trouble there. She is forced to give him a fan, but it is a fake one which shoots up flames almost engulfing the sky. He then pretends to be her husband and takes the fan from their marital bed, but without the right spell. A whirlwind blows him ten thousand miles away like a fallen leaf. He is lucky the third time, with the help of a host of celestial spirits. He puts out the fire and returns the fan to the princess, who now promises to use it for everyone’s good. The monkey gathers their packs, saddles the white horse for Xuanzang, and they cross the Flaming Mountain without flames.

The real Xuanzang could not have avoided the Flaming Mountain when he was in Gaochang. It was the most striking feature of this oasis kingdom and it was right on the Silk Road. Just as Fat Ma and I were discussing it, I saw spiky rocks on the horizon. They grew taller, rising inexorably. They almost seemed to throb with their curious red as we drove nearer. I had read about the Flaming Mountain so many times and seen many pictures of it, but still I was amazed at its grandeur. The steep sides are criss-crossed with deep gullies of dark red stone; the mountain-tops make hectic zigzags against the blue sky. Under the blazing sun, it really does seem ready to burst into flames. It made me realize why it was the perfect backdrop for one of the most dramatic episodes in The Monkey King, firing the author’s imagination, mine and that of everyone who has read the novel throughout the centuries.

I decided to have my photo taken with the Flaming Mountain in the background. I could not return empty-handed from the land of my childhood dream that had been burning in my head for the past thirty years. But Fat Ma said no. I thought he did not want to get out of the jeep in the scorching sun, so we drove on. After another fifteen minutes, we left the main road, cruising on the gravel towards the foot of the mountain. Suddenly we screeched to a stop. ‘Photo time now!’ he declared proudly. ‘I have searched the whole mountain from end to end: this is the ideal spot.’ I thought it was very considerate of him to do it just for me but it turned out to be a more serious business matter. In Turfan as in the rest of China in the reform era, everything is about money. Fat Ma said they were having a Flaming Mountain fever right now – half a million people had visited Turfan the year before. ‘We should put a billboard on the road, saying “Ideal Photo Spot for the Flaming Mountain”,’ he said excitedly. ‘We will have a guard and charge fifty pence per photo. We will make a fortune.’ He seemed to be intoxicated by his dream of riches – or maybe it was just the heat.

Before I read Xuanzang’s biography the only thing I knew of him in Turfan was the Flaming Mountain story – and this is still true for most Chinese. I had no idea that it was here in Turfan that the real Xuanzang, by his courage and determination, gave his pilgrimage a solid chance of success. He arrived here penniless, with a warrant over his head, far from certain that he could survive the journey. Now he could carry on with every hope of fulfilling his dream. The king of Gaochang provided him with everything he would need: clothes to suit all weathers, one hundred ounces of gold and three piles of silver pieces, and five hundred rolls of satin and taffeta as donations to major monasteries. He was also given thirty horses, twenty-four servants and five monks to look after him as far as India and back. But most important of all, the king wrote state letters to be presented to the twenty-four different kingdoms along the way. In particular, he asked the Great Khan of the Western Turks, who controlled the whole of Central Asia at the time, to protect the Chinese monk. Xuanzang wrote these words that expressed all the elegance of his mind and his depth of feeling:

For all these favours, I feel ashamed of myself and do not know how to express my gratitude. Even the overflow of the Jiaohe River does not compare with your kindness, and your favour is weightier than the Pamir Mountains. Now I have no more worries for my journey … If I succeed in my purpose, to what shall I owe my achievements? To nothing but the king’s favour.

The contrast between fiction and reality could not be greater.

The Monkey King has hidden the real Xuanzang, but the fiction has an important role to play. Life for most people in China had always been oppressive. They were subjugated by hardship and tyranny and The Monkey King was cathartic, not just as a rich and colourful fantasy world, but as the story of a maverick spirit who symbolized what we could only dream of: rebellion. It was sheer magic. The thrill of reading it for the first time is still with me.

But it had another significance: it carried any number of Buddhist messages. I remember Grandmother trying to explain some of them to me. She said although the monkey could fly up to Heaven and dive into hell, slay dragons and subdue demons, he could also be arrogant, jealous, angry, greedy, selfish and harmful. That was why Guanyin gave him another name, Wukong, meaning ‘Understanding Emptiness’. Guanyin hoped the monkey would come to appreciate the limits of his power and the vanity of life. We even had a saying: ‘Mighty the monkey may be, but even with his 180,000-league jump, he can never escape from the palm of the Buddha.’ The monk, on the other hand, was kind, loving, selfless and compassionate. He had the Way – that was the secret of his power over the mighty monkey whom he kept under control simply by reciting the Heart Sutra. It did not make sense to me at the time. Now I can see what Grandmother meant. In fact, the last sentences of The Monkey King