There are two smaller pools east and west of Heavenly Lake, where Xi Wang Mu washed her feet. She bathed her face in the big lake, which mirrors the solid blue sky and steep mountain peaks that frame it. The two small pools were nearly dry when I visited in the spring. They are located on steep ledges. Heavenly Lake was created from the tears. Wang Mu shed when her lover departed for the East.

It is possible to hike around the lake and into the mountains. Bogda Peak is the highest mountain at 5,359m (17,864 ft.), 3,300m (11,000 ft.) above Heavenly Lake. Kazakhs hire out their horses for mountain treks and act as guides. Higher up, where the snows remain even through summer, there are yurts that take in travelers.

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The highway up the valley is 74km (46 miles) south from Urumqi. It is a relief to leave the city. The suburbs are filled with shacks and small mosques. Huis (Chinese Muslims), Uighur, and Kazakhs wander through the unpaved lanes, donkey carts in tow. On the southern outskirts of Urumqi is the largest chemical factory in China. Smoke blots the landscape for miles. But the southern meadows are another world entirely. The mountain peaks are steep and green with tall spruces and pines. The river is clear and swift, tumbling by remote mud huts on the hillsides.

At the foot of the waterfall is a Kazakh village of huts and yurts open to tourists. Several of the yurts serve as cafes and souvenir shops. In the late summer, traditional riding games are held on the grassy steppes. Girls court boys in horseback races. Those they catch, they playfully whip.

The waterfall is at an elevation of 2,100m (7,000 ft.) in mountains that resemble the Swiss Alps. It plunges through a narrow chute, dropping 27m (90 ft.) into a stony streambed. A rainbow-colored steel arched bridge crosses the stream, but otherwise there is little mark of modernity here. Kazakhs search the mountainsides for ginseng roots.

The Kazakhs descended from the Turkic-speaking Wusun nomads who were pushed southward by the Huns into the foothills of the Heavenly Mountains nearly 2,000 years ago. Excellent horsemen, they rode with Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan as the Yudn Dynasty (1271-1368) swept north and east to conquer China. In 1958, the Chinese established pastoral communes in this region of Xinjiang, but many Kazakhs continue to follow a nomadic life in the grasslands and mountain valleys surrounding industrial Urumqi, sustained these days by revenues from tourism and government subsidies. In July, they gather for a 6-day nadam, a summer fair with horse racing, wrestling, and competitions involving the sheep and cattle they herd. More than a million Kazakhs live in Xinjiang, where they were now outnumbered by Han Chinese and Uighur.

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A touch of old China is supplied by two parks on the banks of the Urumqi River, which flows along the western edge of the city. In Hong Shan Park, the nine-story Pagoda to Suppress Dragons (Zhenglong Pagoda) atop Red Hill (Hong Shan) towers over Urumqi. It was erected on the “dragon’s head” in 1788 to prevent floods, and the hill became a Buddhist center until war Lords burned down the pavilions and temples. The Qing armies pastured their horses on Red Hill a century ago. Nearby People’s Park (Renmin Gongyuan), on the west bank of the river, has a lake and hall modeled after the Forbidden City in Beijing, both built in the early 20th century by one of the ruling warlords. This park is popular with locals, particularly on Sunday.

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Urumqi is the most Chinese of the Silk Road cities. Nearly 80% of its residents are Han Chinese, recent “economic immigrants” who were induced to move west, attracted by the higher wages and better opportunities available on the frontier. However, the Uighur, the nomadic Kazakha, and other minorities dominate the surrounding lands. Muslim rebels have ruled the city at times, both before and after Urumqi was declare was declared the capital of China’s New Territories Xinjiang) in 1884. At the beginning of the 20th century, the city maintained separate Muslim, Chinese, and Russian quarters. The influence of the three groups remains strong today, but the Han Chinese is firmly in control of Urumqi’s administration and factories.

The overriding truth about Urumqi, however, is that it is an ugly industrial monster set in one of the least appealing spots on the Silk Road-little more than a slag heap on which to heap more slag. On the other hand, the new Chinese workers and investors are planting greenways and replacing slums, making Urumqi the most modern city on the old Silk Road, a new crossroads for traders from China, Russia, and central Asia. For travelers, the chief attraction of Urumqi is not trade or industry, of course, but the “beautiful pastures” hinted at in Urumqi’s name, and those places are within reach. In the southern pastures of the Heavenly Mountains and at Heavenly Lake, where the Kazakhs roam on horseback, the alpine beauty of the Silk Road is at its grandest.

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Emin Minaret, a mile east of the city, the prettiest tower on the Silk Road, also called Sugong Tower, the minaret was built of blue brick and completed in 1778. The bricks of the circular, smoothly tapered tower are laid in various patterns: waves, pyramids, and flower petals. The architect was a Uighur named Ibrahim. Attached to the 43m (144-ft.) minaret is a white stone mosque, the largest in the region. Its interior is plain. The roof is of woven mats. The floor is covered in prayer rugs. The Iman’s seat is a humble, straw-woven chair.

The Emin Minaret is surrounded by grape arbors. Grape vines came into China on the Silk Road 2,000 years ago, and residents of Turpan planted them immediately. At the western base of the Flaming Mountains, there’s an entire valley called Grape Gorge (Putao Gou), a park or vineyards and fruit groves with trellised walkways and courtyard picnic tables. The grapes are dried in hundreds of ingenious outbuildings ventilated by the open brickwork of their walls, creating the sweet raisins for which Turpan is renowned.

The sine qua non for grapes-for all of life along the Silk Road-is water. Turpan’s source is locked up in the snows and glaciers of the Heavenly Mountains to the south. For the last 20 centuries, the mountain waters have reached Turpan through a massive undergronf network of tunnels, an irrigation system known as the karez. Karez wells (kan’er jing) are dug to tap the subterranean streams that originate at the foot of the mountain. Tunnels are hollowed out and elevated so that gravity pushes the well water across the desert to the canals of Turpan. More than 1,610 km (1,000 miles) of tunnels have been dug under the desert floor at Turpan, some stretching as far as 40km (25 miles). The karez system suffers from continual clogging. To maintain it, a man must frequently be slowed down a shaft into a tunnel. By the use of pulleys, his horse hauls up buckets of mud tethered to a rope until the passage is clear.

One karez well site has opened at an exhibition center in Turpan, complete with a museum offering displays and pictures. Visitors descend into several hand-dug tunnels for a look at the irrigating waters. The tunnels are spacious enough to stand up in, and they are cool, the coolest spots in town. Working in them must be like digging in a mine. The local people regard the karez wells as one of China’s three greatest ancient works, the other two being the Great Wall and the Grand Canal.

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The dry air and lack of rain have preserved the outlines, adobe outer walls (5km/3 miles in circumference) and inner buildings-its bell tower and a few of its many Buddhist temples.At the center of this city of sand, which is a nearly a mile across, there is a large temple, its platform and shrine still evident, and close by, a two-story circular pavilion surrounded by a square wall where the pilgrim Xuan Zang preached in A.D. 630 on is way to India.

The city is empty of human remains, of course, but the royal graveyard, a few miles away, is now receiving visitors. The Astana Tombs (Asitana Muqun) have been blessed with centuries of dry weather, meaning that the corpses, their silk wrappings, and even the foods buried with them have survived in fine fettle. The earliest of the 500 graves is dated A.D. 273; the latest, A.D. 782. The burial chambers are 5m (16 ft.) beneath the surface, Wall murals depict the pleasures of family life and the beauties of nature, particularly of birds. Among the 10,000 relics excavated at Astana is a pair of woven linen shoes and a fossilized jiaozi (steamed dumpling), both specimens from the Tang Dynasty.

Jiaohe, like so many Silk Road towns, began as a garrison during the Han Dynasty. It reached its peak under Uighur control in the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty. It has been abandoned for more than 5 centuries, but it has preserved its ancient cityscape in sand and brick. A Buddhist temple stands at city center, with Buddhas (heads now missing) carved into its niches. Streets and the courtyards of houses were dug into the ground.

Jiaohe looks like a life-sized model of a Tang Dynasty city, sculpted from a high sandstone column standing between river gorges, or like an oasis striped by a miraculous wind of every piece and particle that was not composed of sand or brick.

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The caves in the heart of these mountains, 56km (35 miles) northeast of Turpan, are a major Buddhist site. Beginning in the Southern and Northern dynasties (A.D. 420-589), caves were hewn into the Cliffside, and large murals, like those at Dunhuang, were painted on the walls and ceilings. The site is now known as the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves. In Uighur, Bezeklik means simply “place of paintings.”

Bezeklik is situated in absolutely stunning surroundings, high up a cliff in the Murtuk River gorge. From a distance, the caves cut into the ridge, and the brick temples, as well as the smooth mosque domes, look like a holy city chiseled out of a vertical mountainside. But close up, Bezeklik is nearly empty-worse, it has been looted and defaced. The painted walls of its 83 grottoes, with their arched ceilings, have nearly all been erased or stolen. The Buddhist statuary is also missing. It is a superb Buddhist grotto emptied as if by desert winds or stone-eating monsters.

In fact, Bezeklik has been emptied by men. The Uighur themselves, having converted to Islam in the 10th century, did not look favorably upon the Buddhist images in their midst. They defaced some murals, beheaded statues, sealed the caves in sand, and built domed mosques in place of the brick temple. Much of this took place in the 1870s, when Turpan and most of Xinjiang Province broke away from Chinese control and became Chinese Turkestan.

Greater destruction came from the West. The German Albert von Le Cop arrived in Turpan in 1902; he departed with 2 tons of treasures and relics. Two years later, he returned for more. Other expeditions from Europe arrived, crating off whatever remained. At Bezeklik, the German experts found Turpan’s treasure house: 1,000-year-old murals in perfect condition with bright portraits of Buddha over the centuries, yellow-robed monks from India, and even a red-haired traveler from the West. The best frescoes were removed and ship ped to the Museum for Indian Art in Berlin for safekeeping-beyond the reach of Uighur farmers and Islamic fanatics, it was argued at the time. Later, World War II bombing raibs destroyed some of the larger Bezeklik wall murals in Berlin, where only fragments remain on display.

A man with a key opened the doors to several caves. There are 83 grottoes here; about 40 retain frescoes, all in poor condition. The few defaced murals give strong hints of the vibrant reds that dominated the art here and of the glowing greens and blues the painters employed as trim. On one arched ceiling, you could make out a familiar motif, the Thousand Buddha in meditation, row after identical row, unrestored and crumbling.

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Xinjiang is foremost the land of the Uighur, who account for almost half of the province’s 13 million people. They are Turkic-speaking, fiercely Islamic, and decidedly non-Han Chinese. They look and dress like central Asian people of Turkish descent. Here, the Silk Road passes through a middle ground of history and race like no other land on earth, an Islamic culture under Chinese rule in a land of irrigated oases and bone-white heat.

A Uighur empire rose up in the Tarim Basin in the 8th century. Uighur controlled the Silk Road routes through Xinjiang. They first adopted Buddhism, then Islam as their faith. During the Qing Dynasty, they were swept up in the 1862 Muslim rebellion led by Yakub Beg. The Chinese did not regain control over Xinjiang, which had become known as Chinese Turkastan, until 1877. In this century, there has been an uneasy truce between the Chinese and the Uighur, sometimes broken by protests, even by violence.

At Turpan, in the heart of Xinjiang, the northern route of the Silk Road swept down into one of the deepest continental basins on Earth. Turpan is 78m (260 ft.) below sea level, while nearby Moon Lake (Aiding Hu) is 152m (505 ft.) below sea level. This low lake is encrusted in salt, freezing in winter, melting in summer. Two-thousand-year-old beacon towers still guard the lakeshore, where some of the salt factory workers, sent from coastal cities to labor here during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), have never returned to their homes.

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Roughly 30 of the 492 chambers are usually available to tourists, with the guide deciding which ones to visit. Some caves can be visited only by special advance permission and payment of extra fees; photography inside is forbidden except by special arrangements and fees. Since even the caves open for visitation are often locked and there are no signposts, a guide is useful, although you can crisscross the platforms on your own, dropping in at open doors and latching onto various guided groups. Many interesting caves are off-limits to ordinary visitors, including Caves 462 and 465, containing figures engaged in sexual union. This particular representation of divine enlighten is a frequent theme of Tantric Buddhism, which was popular during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), when these caves were painted.

The most dramatic sculpture is behind a nine-story wooden pagoda .Decorated with paintings of the zodiac and erected a century ago, the tower of soaring eaves rises to the summit of the sandstone ridge. Inside Cave 96 is a 34m (113-ft.) tall Buddha, carved from the sandstone cliffs during the High Tang Dynasty (A.D. 705-781). Seated, wearing the robes of an emperor, this Maitreya Buddha (Happy Buddha of the Future) is the fourth largest in the world and the largest single clay sculpture at Dunhuang. It was repainted in the 19th century and its left hand was repaired a decade ago.

Cave 16 is where Wang Yuailu stumbled onto the treasures of Dunhuang at the beginning of the 20th century. The nine Figures on the platform are a recent addition (Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911), but the tile floor is probably from the Late T4ng (848-906). The west wall is a Five Dynasty (907-960) mural depicting the holy mountain of Wutai Shan, its temple labeled, and the east wall contains portraits of a ruling family of the region from the same period, who sponsored the cave art. The ceiling is decorated in the Ten Thousand Buddha motif, the repeated pattern achieved by the use of block stamps or stencils that was painted in. The lotuses decorating the walls date from the 11th century. It was usual for artists of later dynasties to add to or even paint over existing shrines, as space for new caves was eventually exhausted.

Cave 17, linked to the passageway to Cave 16, is where Wang Yuanlu found the trove of scrolls, sutras, and paintings that Sir Aurel Atein and other Westerners bought and shipped to museums abroad, starting in 1907. Known as the C:ingjing Ku, this cave is where the oldest book in the world (A.D. 868), the Diamond Sutra, was discovered.

Caves 61, 62, and 63 date from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), when the Mongols seized control of China. The statues, presumably posed in the sexual positions favored by Tantric Buddhism at the time, were demolished by Moslems. The 12m (40-ft.) long wall mural of the holy mountain of Wutai Shan, its scores of temples labeled, is splendid and dates from the Northern Song (960-1127), when Dunhuang’s ruling family opened a painting academy devoted solely to artwork in the Mogao grottoes.

Cave 98 is from the Five Dynasties (907-960). The ceiling is funnel shaped. The Cao Yijing family, high officials of the period at Dunhuang, sponsored this and several other caves, notably Cave 427. The wall portraits are of the ruling family of Khotan, a city on the Silk Road. The king wears a beaded hat. There are also lively scenes of female musicians and a royal hunting party.

Cave 130 contains a magnificent Buddha, 26m (86 ft.) high, carved during the High Tang period (705-781). The platform and statue are original except for the Buddha’s right hand, which broke and was replaced during the Northern Song (960-1279). The murals on the side walls are also from the Northern Song. This is the second tallest statue at Dunhuang, and it can be appreciated from the ground or from the two upper galleries. The head measures 7m (22 ft.) high, the ears 2m (6 ft.)

Cave 148 contains the 16m (53-ft.) long, golden-faced Sleeping Buddha of Dunhuang. It was carved in 755 to portray Buddha about to enter Nirvana. Seventy-two disciples are in attendance. The east wall contains a painting of the Western Paradise, the Buddhist “heaven.”

Cave 152 features a passageway with tiles and ceiling paintings from the Northern Song (960-1127), with two Daoist Figures in the back chamber.

Cave 237 has a statue of Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy, in its center; Manjusri, God of War, riding a lion; and the God of Compassion atop the holy mountain of Em6i Shan. These Figures were added during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to a cave whose wall paintings of the Buddha and the Western Paradise were placed here in the Middle Tang Dynasty (781-848).

Cave 257, with a pillar in the center, contains unretouched paintings from the Northern Wei (A.D. 386-534), some of the oldest art at Dunhuang. The Figures are dressed in Indian clothing, and the facial features are not Chinese. The mural on the west wall portrays the story of a drowning man rescued by the Deer King, a representation of Buddha.

Cave 259, said to contain the oldest artwork at Dunhuang, holds several statues of Buddha carved during the Northern Wei (A.D. 386- 534). The figures are stiff, the heads squarish, the noses hooked, the lips curled (into a smile often compared to that of the Mona Lisa)-all characteristics of the Buddhist sculpture in India at the time.

Cave 427 was a gift from the Cao family, high officials at Dunhuang during the Northern Song (960-1279), who controlled the Silk Road routes for 120 years. Husband, wife, and family are portrayed on the front passage wall. A pillar holds up the gabled roof over the chamber at the back, which contains nine stately, long-bodied statues of Buddha, sculpted during the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618). The three Figures in the middle are “Buddhas of the Present”; the three on the left, “Buddhas of the Past”; and the three on the right, “Buddhas of the Future.”

Cave 428 is a lotus-and-peacock ceiling and stamped clay Figures of the Ten Thousand Buddhas on the walls, but its chief attraction is the picture given of courlife in the Northern Zhou Dynasty (A.D. 557-581), a brief period linking the Wei and Sui dynasties from which little survives. Over 4,000 royal contributors to the cave art are pictured on the east wall, along with the halls and pavilions of the time. There is also a panel depicting the story of three brothers who hunt a tiger. One brother unselfishly gives his life to the tiger so that she can feed her cubs, and he is reborn as Buddha. In 1922, Russians fleeing the revolution bivouacked in this and other caves (although, in fact, the Chinese local authorities locked them in there), which they blackened with Fires, damaged with bullers, and stripped of gold leaf.

Morning or afternoon tours generally take in just a dozen of these and other caves, hardly enough to gain a full appreciation of what exists at Dunhuang. Spend a second day, if possible, and by all means visit the museum at the entrance to the site, a joint venture between China and Japan. The Research and Exhibition Center contains lighted replicas of seven caves, copies of the missing manuscripts, and relics from the caves.

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The grottoes had as much to do with business and politics as religion. The rich merchant families and the rulers of Dunhuang sponsored the carving and painting of many of them. Such acts, no doubt, cast them in a favorable light to Buddhist believers who ran the rich caravan trade. The first cave was hewn in A.D. 366 by Lie Zun, a Buddhist monk who was inspired by the golden rays of the sun illuminating the cliff face. Lie Zun commissioned a fellow pilgrim to paint the walls with holy images, decorating a shrine where he could pray for his safe passage over the Silk Road. Thus the purpose of this desert gallery was set from the first-a divine insurance police for the caravans of the Silk Road. The grottoes functioned as shrines where traders and pilgrims could pray, but above all as a place where Silk Road travelers and merchants could petition for divine protection of their caravans, which faced daunting obstacles in crossing the deserts that loomed east and west of Dunhuang.

Over the centuries, the repute of Dunhuang increased. New dynasties often sent their best artists there to construct and decorate new grottoes to commemorate their rules and cement their commitment to the religious community. Over 45,000 murals and 2,000 statues, fashioned from stucco rather than the loose sandstone of the cliff, have survived, housed in almost 500 caves. The desert air has preserved the art for 15 centuries.

The chief dynasties represented are the Northern Wei (A.D. 386-534), the Western Wei (A.D. 535-557), the Su/ (A.D. 581-618), the Tang (A.D. 618-917), and the Five Dynasties (A.D. 907-960). The styles vary with the dynasties. The themes were all derived from the various schools of Buddhism as they arrived and were adapted in China.

The early figures of Buddha and his attendants retain a strong Indian influence, rendered in rigid, geometric poses, but the Chinese gradually added movement and realism to these Figures. They reached their zenith with the Tang artists, who created 213 of the 492 caves that survive. The backgrounds painted on the cave walls flow with cloud scrolls, floral patterns, fantastic landscapes, and architecture that almost from the First came from Chinese models. The main themes are derived from the life of Sakyamuni as he journeys to enlightenment and from the holy manuscripts (sutras) that preach the cosmic doctrines of karma and reincarnation and portray the mortal world as one of vanity, illusion, and suffering.

To heighten depictions of these themes, the Dunhuang painters plastered the walls and ceilings with mixtures of mud, dung, straw, animal hair, and a smooth coating of clay, to which they applied tempera (water-based) pigments of vivid blues, yellows, greens, reds, cinnabar vermilions, fleshy pinks, and powdered gold leaf. The statues are made either with plaster over wooden frames or with plaster over Figures cut from cave rock. The carves are squarish, often with a large Figure of Buddha on a dais at the back and attendants on both sides. The large chambers measure about 9m (30 ft.) wide deep and 5m (16 ft.) high, while the smallest caves are barely the size of a tiny bedroom, with ceilings as low as 54 inches. The ceiling may be sharply pitched, lantern shaped, or domed in a series of taping, concentric squares.

For the casual observer, the main technical point to note is the evolution of the art from the rigid, narrow, representational figures in the early caves to the rounded, realistically rendered, more human figures portrayed in the later Sui and Tang Dynasty caves, as the gulf between the divine and the earthly all but disappeared.

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