Beijing China Tours

further kilometre to the main crossroads, identifiable by its larger buildings including anIslamicized department store, and turn right. 200m down, Beijing Sightseeing Placesagain on the right, the largebuilding with the gift shop next to the gate is the Yengisar Binguan, which has triples withbath for ￥25 ($3) per bed, no hot water, Norbulingkaand depressing bathrooms. Go past the hotel to thenext junction, turn left to get to the main bazaar, and left again to find the Daggers Factory.

Here you can see the entire process Beijing Walking Tourof manufacture by hand, from the hammering of glowingmetal and the flying sparks of grinders to the delicate process of decorating the handles.

From Yengisar it is 125km and 2V2 hours to Yarkand （Shache), reached by returning to thebus station and taking a bus(￥10/$1.20) or minibus(￥16/$2). China TravelThese leave when full. Justoutside Yengisar, a small lake appears on the west side, contrasting oddly with the barren mudand dunes to the east, and followed by the usually dry beds of meltwater rivers.
Yarkand, December 9th.How Long is The Great Wall of China-Congratulate me on being able to date aletter to you from Yarkand, where we arrived yesterday in perfect safety.
You who know how I had longed for that moment can realise the satisfaction with which I passed through the gate of the city, the firstEnglishman that has ever succeeded in doing so.


Robert Shaw, Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar, 1871So wrote Dharamsala tea planter Robert Shaw in 1868, on an expedition to meet Yakub BeginhisVisit Tibet capital Kashgar, following his formation of an independent Kashgaria. Shaw later returnedafter Yakub's demise to be a political agent for the government of India. Yarkand then had apopulation of about 60,000 and was a more important commercial town than Kashgar.

smoke. The binding process was less convincing, says Stein, 'for the coarse imitation ofEuropean volumes which is unmistakable in the case of most of the A Trip To Beijinglater products, aswell as the utter unsuitability of the fastenings employed {usually pegs of copper ortwists of paper), would a priori have justified grave suspicions as to theirChamdo genuineness.'

Either he is indulging in a little hindsight, or scholars should have spotted the forgeriesearlier. The final stage was to apply a liberal coating of sand, often so thickly that Beijing Land Touraclothes brush was needed to remove it by the excited collector.

Stein let Akhun off with a warning, taking some satisfaction in the thought that he hadalready received fairly brutal punishment for other crimes, admitting himself amused byAkhun's witty repartee, and describing him as a man of exceptional intelligence. For hispart Akhun Shanghai Transportationwas impressed to find that he was internationally famous, and fascinated bythe photogravure plates of his handiwork accompanying the text in Dr Hoernle's report.
‘How much more proud would he have felt,' commented Stein, 'if he could but haveseen, as I did a few months later, the fine morocco bindings with whichWhen Was The Great Wall of China Built a number ofhis block-printed Codices had been honoured in a great European library!'
It's not clear how things ever went that far. In addition to Stein's disquiet about bindings, there was already considerable scepticism about Akhun's general reliability. He .
had been denounced by Macartney for posing as his representative in the search forenslaved British Indian citizens, and been punished. In 1897 Deasy arranged for NamtsoAkhunto provide him with guides to see a promised ancient city not yet seen by otherforeigners. After only two days the 'guides' were lost, and one admitted that he hadnever been that far into the desert in his life.

century. He discovered Roman coins from the time of the Emperor Valens (AD 364-78) andpaintings of figures dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries showed strong Gandharan influences which were passed on to those at Datong's Yungang caves. Badaling Great Wall MapThe British Museum has acollection of wooden plaques and terracotta figures brought back by Stein. Larger sculptureswere left in place, Forbidden City Toursburied again in the sand. Five years later when Stein visited the site again,all the statues had been smashed by Chinese treasure hunters.

There are 24 rivers of various sizes in the Khotan area, many of them carrying Khotan's mostfamous product, jade, first mentioned in Chinese histories during the Han dynasty in the timeof the Emperor Wudi (140-86 Bc). A jade image of the Buddha was sent from Khotan toSuzhou Travel theimperial court in AD 541. Later Islamicized Turki groups were said to have had no interest inthe material but to have recognized the demand from theBeijing Airport Pickup east, and the Yum6n (Jade Gate)near Dunhuang was so named for the shipments that passed through it. Jade workers andhawkers alike today appear to be still mostly Han.

Like all the towns on the fringes ofHimalaya the Taklamakan, Khotan's greenness and its abundantcrops (it's particularly famous for honey peaches) have always depended upon careful watermanagement. Many early Western commentators put what they perceived as the laziness ofthe sedentary Turkis down to the ease of cultivation in the oasis towns:Beijing Travel Agency the seasonal meltwaters of the Kunlun Shan and Tian Shan offered far more predictable supplies of moisturethan the rainfall essential to success elsewhere.

Deasy ordered a return, not havingprepared for a lengthy stay and found that the only way to get back was to follow thetraces of their inward journey.Places of Interest in Beijing Upon his return, Akhun had disappeared, but at Deasy'srequest he was apprehended and brought to Khotan, where the Amban sentenced himto Tours to Tibetwear the cangue, 'a large, square board, weighing about 301bs, around his neck for amonth'.

Akhun had also previously been found to have forged a note to an Afganaksakal (commercial attache) purporting to be from Captain Deasy, and had thusobtained Beijing Airport Transportmoney from him.

But what is perhaps most astonishing is that in 1897 Deasy heard a detailedrumour of the book factory from one of the Swedish missionaries also known toMacartney, who had heard it from the servant of a Persian missionary, who hadbeen told it by the son of one of the conspirators.
Samples of Islam Akhun's handiwork are Silk Road Tour Chinastill preserved at the British Library.
Getting to and from Forbidden City BeijingKhotanby airThe airport is 10 kilometres from Khotan, and an airport bus (￥2) leaves the CAACticket office in Bositan Ninlu (a little north of the Hfti6n Hotel) at 2.30pm on Mon,Wed and Fri to catch the only flight, which goes to Urumqi for￥1250 ($150) at 5pm.
The ticket office, is open 10-1 and 4-7.
by busGoing east: there is one bus a day at 9.30amGreat Wall of China History to Keriya (Yutian, 177km,￥i2.so/$1.50, 4-5hrs) and to Niya (Minieng, 294km, A920.90/$2.50, about 10hrs), and there

The oases on both sides of the Taklamakan stillproduce vast quantities of fruit, but these days demand for water tends to exceed supply. 1965and 1993 were both drought Beijing Tourist Officeyears, and investigators on the Khotan River discovered thatwhile the current was the same or greater near the headwaters in the Kunlun, lower down inthe desert beyond Khotan the current in 1993 was only a quarter of what it had been in theearlier year. The annual volumes of meltwater rivers are unpredictable, and there is no properco-ordination of their use, or overall plan,himalayan toursso that new irrigation schemes at higher levels arestarving longer-established ones of needed water. The lessons of the lost cities further out inthe desert, many of which were abandoned for lack of water, have not been learned.

The Book FactoryAs important as the reports of ancient ruins in setting off the competitive archaeological free-for-all of the warly 20th century were the ancient documents in unknown scrips which, from around 1889,began accidentally to make their way into British andBeijing Backpackers other hands. The first was a document from a tower near Kuqa dug up instead of more obvious booty by disappointed treasure hunters, and which was bought by a passing Briton, Liental linguists, Dr Rudolph Hoernle, and declared to be one of the oldest written documents yet discoveredChina Tour Packages anywhere, As other material from the same source trickled out through the hands of the British and Russian consuls, it became source trickled out through the hands of the British and Russian consuls, it became Jinshanling Great Wallclear that, if relatively casual treasurehunting could turn up such riches, organized archaeological expeditions might turn up a great deal more.


Taklamakan treasure hunters learned quickly that good money could be had for mouldy scribbles on tree bark and other media, and the number of documents arriving atLhasa Tours Kashgar began to grow. Amongst them were scripts with wholly unknown characters, which were studied in detail, and became the pride of collections.

According to the account of Xuanzang, Khotan was the first place outside China to learn theart of silk-making, the seeds of mulberry trees and the silkwormsBeijing Bus Tours themselves being concealedin the head-dress of a Chinese princess coming to marry a Khotani king. A later 10th-centuryking is depicted on the walls of cave no.97 at Dunhuang.Mount Everest Xuanzang also mentions carpetmanufacture, so it's another point against supposedly sharp-eyed merchant Polo that hementions neither silk nor carpets, and dismisses Khotan in a single paragraph.

Rumours that earlier versions of Khotan still existed reached the Beijing China TourWest in 1855 from one of thepundits, Indians employed by the British government in India as secret agents to map theuncharted regions of Central Asia and Tibet using the equivalent of the secret radio pen:

surveying equipment hidden in walking sticks and prayer wheels. As pawns in the GreatGame, they were also to report on Russian activity in the regions they China Tours
surveyed, but oneMohamed-i-Hameed also mentioned having heard rumours of ruins near Khotan during a six-month stay in Yarkand. His report was followed up in 1866-7 without official permission byan Englishman called William Johnson, who thus became the first of a series The Forbidden City
of Westerners tovisit the Khotani ruins. At the time of Johnson's visit the population was a sizeable 40,000.

Heentered the city at the invitation of the Khan, who then kept him hostage for a short time inthe hope that that would bring British troops to help him against theGreat Wall of China
Russians. After theXinjiang-wide revolt of 1863 the area came under the rule of Habib-ullah, who was subsequently murdered by Yakub Beg in January 1867.

Stein made several visits to Khotani sites from 1901, naming Yotkan as the site of the ancientcapital of the region, occupied from the 1st century AD until the arrival of Islam in the 8th

Khotan is a compact fusion of a few overly-broad Chinese streets and the warrenof the Uighur old town, where dense throngs gather in the streetsBeijing Walking Tourfor Khotan'slively Sunday market. To the south the Kunlun Shan are at their most toothy, andinclude the 7282m Mt Muztag, but sight of even its immense bulk is hidden by the dusty airHistoryStein was cheered by his first arrival in KhotanFrom there [the firstTibet information Khotani villagel onwards there lay an unbrokensuccession of gardens, hamlets and carefully cultivated fields on bothsides.

The road itself is flanked by shady avenues of poplars and willowsfor almost its whole length. Autumn had just turned the leaves yellowand red on most of the trees, Places to See In Beijingand after the monotonous khaki of thedesert marches this display of colour was doubly cheerful.


Sir M.A.Stein, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, Lhasa tour
1903Khotan was once a major Buddhist centre, and the desert around is dotted with ruined andnow near-featureless cities, former capitals of the kingdom of Khotan (or Yuteen/Yutian), andmostly inaccessible. Faxi5n, here in about AD 401, "Yangtze">http://www.chinatoursaffordable.com/yangtze-river-travel"">Yangtze Travel"described a purely Buddhist population,with monks amounting to 'several myriads', all receiving their food from a common store.
Each house had a substantial tope (dagoba) in front, great wall pictures and Faxian in stayed in a monastery of 3000monks, one of several in the vicinity.
He was present for a two-week-long Buddhist festival,including a vast procession of images, at the feet of which the king abased himself.

Minibuses leave every 45 minutes or so from the bus station to Karghalik, 11/2 t0 2 hours and￥5 (60() away through 62km of almost consistent cultivation.

Shortly after leaving you cross the Yarkand River, followed by Aurel Stein in 1908 when hemade a 200km desert crossing from here to Bachu, Beijing Traveljust off the road from Kashgar to Aksu, infive days. The route is now paved and passes through the tiny town of Markit from where, in1895, TibetSven Hedin set off on his disastrous crossing that cost the lives of several men andcamels.

No wonder then, when the portentously named Joint British-Chinese TaklamakanDesert Crossing party also chose to set out from here in 1993,China Tourthat amidst the firecrackers,confetti, releasing of doves, speeches and gifts of the official send-off, many ordinary localpeople were in tears and begged them not to go.

It was also from near Markit that on his second trip in 1899, Sven Hedin began the unlikely-sounding project of exploring the desert by boat. Beijing Coach TourHe bought one in Yarkand, and built anothersmaller one for exploring shallow areas. He travelled down the river until it froze, playingStrauss on a portable gramophone and making an immense map.

The hotel at the bus station has basic triples from ￥24 ($3) per bed with sharedbath. Go out of the long-distance bus station and turn right to find a local busstation with minibuses for ￥92 to Arba, Forbidden Citywhich is the end of the run, just outsideKarghalik. Here is the main point to pick up trucks for the illegal journey to Tibet, and there isa guesthouse with beds for a negotiable ￥20 ($2.50). Karghalik is also the first base for Chineseexpeditions to K2.Great WallIf you are staying in Karghalik, continue past the local bus station for twoblocks and turn left onto W6nhua Lu to find the plain and simple Yacheng Binguan, with

iodine deficiency. Even now the disease has not vanished, and a few individuals can be seenwith huge pouches at their throats. The problem is not uniqueBeijing 2 Day Tour to the area, and in 1996 thegovernment began a campaign to supply 800,000 women and 2.5 million children with iodinesupplements in NorbulingkaShanxi province, after a partial head count revealed 300,000 goitre sufferersand 520,000 suffering from mental health problems caused by lack of iodine.

At Yarkand the bus turns right and then left into the bus station. Returning to the main roadand turning right brings you to the Yerkan Hotel (Shache Binguan) Beijing 3 Day Touron the left just before thetown's central crossroads. Doubles in the new wing are A9200 ($24) per bed, and there areantique dorms with a prison-like atmosphere in the neighbouring building for￥16 ($2) perbed.

In the same building you will find the Yerkan Travel Service, offering overpriced butconvenient tours around town, out to a silkworm breeding centre, and to an ancient watch-tower some 20km into the desert. There's also a basic ltish8 0pposite the bus station with bedsfrom ~15.China Tour Package The main sights in town you can easily walk to yourself. Go past the hotel, and oneblock beyond the next junction, turn left to find several impressive Islamic buildings includingthe Aminashahan Memorial Mausoleum (in honour of a 16th-century master of Uighurmusic), and the Aletun Mosque.


Behind the mosque is the substantial Aletun Graveyard-a wilderness of loaf-shaped tombs, mostly of mud brick, but some covered with blue and whitetiles. Go early map of great wall of china in the morning to find whole families kneeling and chanting at the graves oftheir ancestors, and women sweeping the dust from Himalaya Toursthe tombs of deceased relatives. This sideof the town is a warren of mud-brick walled courtyards with ornate doors occasionally ajaroffering glimpes of old men drinking tea and young men trying to start motorbikes.

Mosttravellers from India came through Yarkand on their way to Kashgar: the route from theKhunjerab and Mintaka passes went east from Beijing China ToursTashkurgan rather than north, and the moredirect route from Leh, now blocked due to disputes over the border, was more popular.
Theroad directly from Tashkurgan is also closed to foreigners, and there is no public transport.

Yarkand had a sizeable population of Hindu money-lenders, whose uneasy relationship withtheir clients was complicated by the fact that most of Mt Everestthese were Muslims. Since the Hinduswere British citizens they were responsible to the consul in Kashgar or his agents rather thanto anyBeijing Airport Car Rental Chinese amban (magistrate), and when religious rioting broke out in Yarkand in 1907 itwas the British consul Macartney who had to defuse the situation and punish them.

Many of the people in the area were Andijanis (from modern-day Kyrgyzstan andUzbekistan). Macartney's Russian opposite number, Petrovsky, China Tour Guideclaimed that since their hometerritories had been annexed by Russia earlier in the century, they were Russians and offeredRussian nationality and passports to all who would take them, in the hope that Chineseharassment of these new citizens would give him theForbidden City China excuse to bring Cossacks to Kashgarand beyond to 'protect' them.

This was not in fact managed until the time of his successor,Sokov, around 1912.
Marco Polo, explorer Sven Hedin, and Sir Percy and Ella Sykes (who covered for Macartneywhile he was in England in 1915) all commented on the prevalence of The Great Wall of Chinagoitre amongstYarkand's Turki population, putting the cause down to bad water. The Chinese were thoughtto escape the disease because they boiled all their drinking water, although goitre is caused by