Kenneth E. Harker
1992 People's Republic of China

In the summer of 1992, I spent three months in the People's Republic of China. I was with a group of ten students and one professor in a Dartmouth College Foreign Study Program. We spent ten weeks living in the foreign student dormitory of Beijing Normal University and taking language and literature classes taught by Dartmouth Professor Mowry and several faculty that specialized in teaching Chinese as a second language. In late July, our group took a two week trip to Xinjiang, Gansu, and Shaanxi Provinces. In late August, after the academic term was complete, many of us took a two week trip on our own to the city of Shanghai, to Guangxi province, and finally to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, my camera was having problems that summer, so not all of the photos came out very well.

These photos are copyright © 1992-2003 Kenneth E. Harker. All rights reserved.

Beijing

We lived in Beijing for ten weeks, staying in the foreign student dormitory of Beijing Normal University. During the week, we spent part of the day in class, and often had part of the day on our own. We ate most of our meals in the cafeteria at the dorm, but we did explore a lot of the neighborhood restaurants. Most evenings were spent studying (most of the city, and even restaurants, closed by 8PM.) On the weekends, we had group trips to some of the local attractions. Even though we went to/through Tiananmen Square many times (it's kind of hard to avoid) our advisors at the University suggested we not take pictures there.

	The first weekend after we arrived in country, we went as a group to visit the Forbidden City in central Beijing. There were many, many buildings that all looked just like this one. It was a cloudy, hazy day a couple of weeks before the monsoons really cleared out the air.
	Some of our group: Ken Harker, Pete Joliceour, Anna Seto, Alpa Patel, Jenn Evers, and Kelly Bryson.
	Another one of the buildings in the Forbidden City. There were a lot of Japanese tourists. Often, a group of Japanese tourists would be wearing hats all of the same color, and led by a tour guide holding a flag of the same color. It was interesting watching mobs of red, blue, and yellow hats maneuvering in the large plazas.
	The Imperial Throne. The last emperor of China renounced the throne on February 12, 1912.
	The Forbidden City is one of the premier tourist sites in Beijing, and is maintained by the government as a national treasure.
	A pagoda in the Forbidden City.
	The rear entrance to the Forbidden City. The front entrance is on Tiananmen Square.
	One of the first things we did after we moved into the Foreign Student Dormitory was to go to a bicycle shop down the street and buy bicycles. We bought Flying Pigeon brand bicycles. They each weighed about forty pounds and had one gear. One of the staff at the University helped us get our driver's licenses and license plates. This was a typical intersection in the neighborhood near Beijing Normal University.
	Alpa and Pete goofing off. Pete and I shared a dorm room. It came furnished with a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a chair for each of us, and a large (extremely high quality) floor fan for us to share. At the time, air conditioning was just beginning to become the next big consumer durable good phenomenon, now that most household had televisions, refrigerators, and bicycles. Only the television lounge in the dormitory was air conditioned, but the fans in the rooms did an extremely good job.
	My desk in the dormitory. The desk light came with the room, as did the large thermos and water basin. A large boiler in a small building next to the dormitory provided boiled water on tap. It was not advisable to drink unboiled water. Most of us drank bottled water, about which we had no particular guarantee, but none of us got sick from the bottled water. The radio on the desk was my Realistic DX-440 shortwave receiver. Pete and I would sometimes listen to the BBC and VOA broadcasts while doing homework.
	Alpa Patel, hanging out in our room. You can see a bit of a towel hanging down from a clothesline that crossed the room. The dormitory had an electric clothes washing machine, but everything was air-dried in our rooms.

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

In late July, we boarded a China Northwest Airlines flight to Ürümqi, Xinjiang, to begin our Silk Road vacation. We visited two cities in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Ürümqi (Wulumuqi) and Turpan (Tulufan.)

	We took a tour bus up into the Tian Shan Mountains (the Heavenly Mountains,) to a lake called Tian Chi (the Heavenly Lake.) Tian Chi is two miles long, almost a mile wide, and is the second-highest body of water (at 6,494 feet above sea level) in the world. It is also about as far as you can get on the planet from an ocean. This was the view from a restaurant at the lake where we ate lunch.
	Tian Chi spills out of the mountains in a dramatic (but really hard to photograph) waterfall, and a small, seasonal village (where we ate lunch) is nearby. The local Uygur population migrates into the mountains in the summer to work the tourist trade in the village or to graze stock in the high meadows like this one.
	One of the local horses, grazing. I also wandered through a very steep mountain-side pasture of sheep, and hiked up to a smaller peak near this pasture.
	Central Asian horses, grazing. The mountains behind them are on the other side of the lake.
	A newborn calf greets me on the trail back into the village. You can make out some of the permanent structures in the village, including the dock and tour boat. We would later take a short cruise on the lake.
	A gorgeous sunset looking out over the gorge formed by the waterfall at the base of the lake. Our group spent the night at the lake in the only overnight guest accommodations available then, yurts. Each yurt slept six to eight people, so the men slept in one and the women in another.
	The next day, we spent visiting what there was to see in the city of Ürümqi (its Uygur name, in Chinese known as Wulumuqi.) About half of the population in Xinjiang are Uygur (a central Asian ethnicity, largely Muslim in faith) and half are Han Chinese, but most of the Han Chinese live in the cities, so the cities still feel mostly Chinese. I found this bilingual sign at a medical facility interesting. Uygur is a Turkic language, and written Uygur uses Reformed Arabic script.
	We visited Hongshan Park in the city of Ürümqi. Hongshan means "red mountain" and if you climb to the top, you can get a nice view of the city. Ürümqi is a city of several million, and is located at the base of the Tian Shan Mountains where they meet the Dzungarian Gobi (the "western Gobi") desert. It is a highly industrial city, with a lot of petro-industry. The tallest building in town when we were there was the Holiday Inn, where we stayed. It is the tower on the right with the round top. It had opened for business only a couple of weeks before we arrived.
	After a day in Ürümqi, we took a bus to Turpan (as it is known in Uygur - in Chinese, it is known as Tulufan.) Turpan is an ancient Uygur city on the southern side of the Tian Shan Mountains, where they meet the Taklamakan Desert. it was another important city on the Silk Road. The very barren landscape between the two cities often reminded me of what I imagine the moon must look like. The current road follows the ancient caravan route.
	There are three important historical Buddhist temple complexes in the vicinity of Turpan. We drove out to visit the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, which are located in the cliff side of a very remote river valley in the deep desert. The road to the grottoes traversed rough, barren, red rock, dirt, and sand. If anything on planet Earth most resembles Mars, it must be this part of the Taklamakan Desert.
	It was at least 100° Fahrenheit outside when we stopped briefly to take photos.
	The Bezeklik Grottoes are sixty-seven natural caves that have been carved into rooms with flat walls and ceilings. Every flat surface is covered in paintings of the Buddha and sacred Buddhist iconography. Painted Buddhist statuary can be found in the largest caves. The oldest religious works in the caves are nearly 1,500 years old. Photography inside was forbidden.
	The Buddhist monks lived in a small monastery by the river. Tourists were not allowed to go down there, and I assume that the personnel responsible for the site must use the buildings there as offices or residences.
	A large sand dune or mountain above the grottoes. Aside from this one little bend in the river, the surrounding desert was really quite barren.
	We visited the ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe near Turpan. The city was located on top of the cliffs between two rivers, which made an ideal location for both defense from invaders, and trade with those on the river. The city flourished during the Han Dynasty (202 B.C. - A.D. 220) when Jiaohe was the capital city of South Cheshi state, and was finally destroyed and abandoned in the thirteenth century.
	Not much is left, but you can get a sense of some of the more permanent structures, made from the local mud bricks and adobe.
	These caves could have been root cellars, sleeping quarters, or storage.
	This was apparently part of the outer city wall.
	The ruins stretch on and on. In its prime, Jiaohe was an important city on the Silk Road routes from east Asia to eastern Europe.
	Another segment of the outer city wall.
	Some shepherds and their flock traveling down a road that goes right through the middle of the ruins. I doubt this scene would have looked much different two or three hundred years ago. What on earth can the sheep actually eat out here?
	Another barren moon-scape in the Taklamakan Desert.
	We visited this mosque in Turpan. This is the Emin Tower, and was constructed in 1777 to commemorate a Uygur military victory by the Emin Khoja. The adjoining mosque is very large, and has been in continuous use for hundreds of years.
	The actual city of Turpan itself is covered in grapes. Even the sidewalks in the middle of the city had grape arbors like this growing over them (and signs in English, Chinese, and Uygur telling you not to eat the grapes!) An ancient, underground irrigation system brings melt-water from the Tian Shan Mountains down to the city, which would otherwise never have enough water to grow grapes and other crops. Most of the grapes are dried and sold as raisins throughout Asia.
	From Turpan, we took an overnight train to the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province. As foreigners, we were expected to purchase tickets in the "soft sleeper" cars. The other designations, in decreasing cost per ticket, were "hard sleepers," "soft bench," and "hard bench."
	In the "soft sleeper" cars, each cabin had four beds and a little table. Pete is sitting on a lower bunk, and I think the legs belong to Anna. Traveling by train in China wasn't too bad - it was a lot cheaper than airfare, and we saved the cost of a hotel room.

Gansu Province

Dunhuang is another city on the ancient Silk Road. To the north and east is the Gobi Desert, and the south and west is the Taklamakan Desert. The Gobi is very close, and hundred foot high sand dunes come literally to the very edge of town. We stayed in the Solar Energy Hotel Dunhuang, which was designed to generate all of its own electricity from photo-voltaic cells on the roof. We had at least eight power outages while we were physically in the hotel. We stopped using the elevators, and chose the stairs instead. In addition to the sites photographed here, we also visited the very famous Mogao Grottoes, another Buddhist Cave site, but one on a much grander scale.

	Literally right outside of town is the Crescent Lake and the Mingsha Shan. We took a quarter mile camel ride to the lake from the city gate at the end of the road. The lake is a natural spring oasis in the middle of huge sand dunes.
	The Gobi Desert goes on and on like this for hundreds of miles.
	We climbed to the top of the Mingsha Shan, or "Echoing-Sand Mountain." Not truly a mountain, the Mingsha Shan is really an 800 foot high sand dune. The walk up took well over an hour. Every three steps up, you slid two steps down. It was really exhausting. But the sunset view from the top was worth it.
	The endless Gobi Desert, as seen from the top of the Mingsha Shan. Coming back down to the Crescent Lake took almost no time at all. When we got to the bottom, I immediately found a bottled water vendor, bought three liters, and drank them all in about five minutes. I bought a fourth to take with me.
	The westernmost end of the Great Wall of China is located near Dunhuang at the very edge of the Taklamakan Desert. These ruins were once a fortress that was constructed during the Han Dynasty (202 B.C. - 220 A.D.) out of rammed earth and brush. The extremely dry desert conditions have preserved the larger earthen structures.
	The fortress was on top of a hill that overlooked the Taklamakan Desert. Invaders going around the westernmost end of the wall would face a formidable natural environment.
	Looking south over the Taklamakan Desert, the Tibetan Plateau rises abruptly hundreds of miles away.
	Near Dunhuang is a movie set built by the Chinese film industry for making historical films set in desert towns. It has become a local attraction, giving tourists an idea of what Dunhuang might have looked like hundreds of years ago.
	Another model building in the movie set.
	This building was not a part of the movie set, but was just a residence on one of the main streets in the modern town of Dunhuang. Architecturally, it reminds me very much of something you might see in New Mexico.
	After visiting the Mogao Grottoes, we also visited a modern, functioning Buddhist temple and monastery in Dunhuang. The amount of gold used in the architectural details, the paintings, and the statuary was truly astonishing.

Shaanxi Province

We ended up spending an extra day in Dunhuang when, upon arriving at the airport, a nice lady came out to meet our bus with the news "No airplane today - tomorrow, also none." After some discussion, it was learned that the airplane that flew between Dunhuang, Lanzhou, and Xi'an was having mechanical problems in Lanzhou, and that maybe it would be able to fly the next day. So, after a twenty-six hour delay, we finally made our way to Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. Xi'an is the ancient capital of China and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. During the Han Dynasty, 2000 years ago when the city was known as Chang'an, the population exceeded eleven million, the largest city population in the world. Today, only six million people live in Xi'an. We visited the archaeological dig of the terracotta warriors of Emperor Chin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor of China (where photography was not allowed) and several other sites.

	On the bus ride from the airport to the city, our friendly tour guide informed us that these were coal-burning power plants.
	The old city wall has been continuously maintained for over 2,000 years. Guard posts had been converted into gift shops and restaurants, but it was still an impressive thing to see. Four of us walked a couple of miles on the wall: Tae Kim, Anna Seto, Pete Joliceour, and Ken Harker.
	A view of the city from the City Wall shows a mix of traditional and modern architectural styles.
	We visited the Big Goose Pagoda, part of a Buddhist temple founded in 589 A.D. The pagoda itself was built in 652 A.D. It is now about 200 feet tall, and you can walk up to the top to get a good view of the city.
	A lesser known archaeological site in Xi'an is the Banpo Village. The remains are evidence of a neolithic people. It is a matter of intense national pride to the Chinese that their country is one of only a few places in the world where civilization independently began.
	We took another sleeper train to return to Beijing. One of the highlights of that train trip was crossing the Huang He (Yellow River,) one of the mighty rivers of the world. At one point near the center of the river, you could not see either bank.
	Finally we make it across to the far side of the river.

Beijing

After our Silk Road vacation, we returned to Beijing for another five weeks of classes and weekend field trips. We visited the Great Wall of China on two occasions, once at Badaling, and again at Mutianyu, both sites near Beijing that have been restored. Either I didn't take any photos at either location, or they were lost somehow.

	One of our weekend field trips was to the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Invasion. Much of the museum focused on the Nanjing Massacre of 1937. Outside the museum was a park with a long stone bridge over a river bed. This is Pete, standing next to a stone lion ornament on the bridge. Pete bought the hat at a Uygur market in Turpan.
	The ornamental lion is a really common motif in Chinese architecture and design.
	In the park was a collection of Korean War relics, including this MiG jet.
	The old warplane has seen better days.
	This was a two-seater trainer version of a combat jet, and almost certainly never actually flew anywhere near Korea.
	Graham McLaughlin, one of our group, standing on a 1950s Chinese tank.
	A pony grazing near the bridge.
	There was an astounding array of convertible currency in use in Beijing. Down the left side and across the bottom were paper renminbi notes, the normal paper currency used throughout the country. In the upper right were Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs,) paper currency in the same denominations as renminbi, and worth the same in stores. You could only get FEC by exchanging foreign hard currency at the Bank of China, and foreigners could use only FEC at certain stores and to buy travel tickets. There were a few coins in the country, but not widely used anywhere. The plastic strips were meal tickets for use in the dorm cafeterias, and of course American Express travelers checks and the U.S. dollar were also usable almost everywhere.

Shanghai

After finals, six of us had one or two weeks free before we had to catch departing flights from Hong Kong. We took a sleeper train to Shanghai, the largest city in China. It took some negotiation, but they finally let us buy "hard sleeper" tickets instead of "soft sleeper." In the "hard sleeper" cabins, there were six bunks instead of four, with thinner mattresses and less headroom. We spent two days in Shanghai, mostly marveling at how many people lived there.

	One of the more attractive places we visited in Shanghai was Yuyuan Garden. Built 400 years ago, during the Ming Dynasty, the five acre garden is now a national monument.
	The Yuyuan Garden has many little pagodas, and walled-off areas with different plants and flowers.

Guangxi Province

From Shanghai, we flew on Shanghai Airlines (they gave all of the passengers free T-shirts) to Guilin, in Guangxi province, in the south central part of the country. Guilin is located on the Li River, which has the most magnificent mountain scenery. We took the all-day river cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo, and had lunch on the boat.

	Not far from Guilin, the mountain scenery is already quite dramatic.
	There were towns located on the river wherever the land was flat enough to permit rice farming and the raising of cattle and water buffaloes.
	The river does not flow very rapidly, and there is a lot of commercial boat traffic.
	The mountains are covered in a tropical rain forest vegetation. We were pretty lucky - it was a partly cloudy day without rain.
	The mountain peaks rise up very abruptly. They have inspired many Chinese artists and poets.
	Palms trees grew near the edge of the river.
	The mountains were very picturesque.
	Closer to Yangshuo, the mountains became rougher, with more cliffs and jagged shapes.
	This was a really great river cruise.
	The river winds closer to Yangshuo.
	We took a bus back to our hotel after the river boat cruise. This rice paddy underneath the looming mountains at sunset was particularly attractive.
	Directly across the Li River from the city of Guilin is Seven Stars Park. The park gets its name from seven peaks on the range of hills in the center of the park. Our flight to Shenzhen was an evening flight, so I spent much of the day in the park.
	I climbed each of the "seven stars" peaks in the park, some of which involved scrambling up rocks, highly unusual in a country where almost every mountain peak has stone staircases to the top, either built by monks or built by national work programmes.

Guangdong Province

From Guilin, we flew to Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. We were the last arrival of the evening, arriving after 11PM, and our group was the only one with checked baggage. The lights in the main corridor were literally being turned off one by one behind us as we walked to the front door! After a long negotiation with about a hundred competing cab drivers, we got into a cab van that took us through the entry checkpoint where we officially entered the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (and had our passports examined again,) and to our wonderful, opulent, western-style hotel with air conditioning and satellite television.

The morning after we arrived in Shenzhen, we took a cab to the border crossing into the (then) British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. It took us over an hour to walk through the border crossing and over no-man's-land, mostly because Henry's bag had so many souvenirs in it that he could not carry it alone by himself, requiring us to walk in stages while someone went back to help Henry. Once across, we hopped on a commuter train into the city of Hong Kong.