Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud. Sun Shuyun

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ