Foreign Devils on the Silk Road Read online

  Just how many of these paintings, sculptures and manuscripts would have survived had they been left in situ and not been the victims of what Davidson calls ‘archaeological theft’, the reader must decide for himself. He must also judge for himself the morality of depriving a people permanently of their heritage, however sound the motives for ‘rescuing’ it may have seemed at the time. The question of why the Chinese allowed the treasures to be removed in the first place must likewise be considered. But that is not what this book is about. My purpose is to put together – for the first time – the story of these expeditions and to show what it was that drew such very different men to this remote and extremely inhospitable corner of China, at grave risk to their healths and frequently to their lives.

  At the time of writing, most of Chinese Central Asia, except (for a lucky few) Tun-huang, Urumchi and the Turfan region, is still closed to foreign visitors. But if the present thaw continues, and Sino-Soviet relations do not worsen, it may not be very long before the reader will be able to follow in the footsteps of Stein and Hedin, von Le Coq and Pelliot, Langdon Warner and the Japanese, and see many of the Silk Road oases and sites for himself. But in the meantime he must remain content with maps and photographs. So let us turn to the map of modern China and find the two adjoining regions of Sinkiang and Kansu. For it is there that virtually the whole of this story takes place.

  1. The Rise and Fall of the Silk Road

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  In Central Asia’s back of beyond, where China tests her nuclear weapons and keeps a wary eye on her Russian neighbours, lies a vast ocean of sand in which entire caravans have been known to vanish without trace. For well over a thousand years the Taklamakan desert has, with good reason, enjoyed an evil reputation among travellers. Apart from the handful of men who have crossed its treacherous dunes, some of which reach a height of three hundred feet, caravans throughout history have always skirted it, following the line of isolated oases along its perimeter. Even so, the ill-marked tracks frequently became obliterated by wind-blown sand, and over the centuries a sad procession of merchants, pilgrims, soldiers and others have left their bones in the desert after losing their way between oases.

  Surrounding the Taklamakan on three sides are some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth. Thus even the approaches to it are dangerous. Many travellers have perished on the icy passes which lead down to it from Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Russia, either by freezing to death or by missing their foothold and hurtling into a ravine below. In one disaster, in the winter of 1839, an entire caravan of forty men was wiped out by an avalanche, and even now men and beasts are lost each year.

  No traveller has a good word to say for the Taklamakan. Sven Hedin, one of the few Europeans to have crossed it, called it ‘the worst and most dangerous desert in the world’. Stein, who came to know it even better, considered the deserts of Arabia ‘tame’ by comparison. Sir Percy Sykes, the geographer, and one-time British Consul-General at Kashgar, called it ‘a Land of Death’, while his sister Ella, herself a veteran desert traveller, described it as ‘a very abomination of desolation’.

  Apart from the more obvious perils, such as losing one’s way and dying of thirst, the Taklamakan has special horrors to inflict on those who trespass there. In his book Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, von Le Coq describes the nightmare of being caught in that terror of all caravans, the kara-buran, or black hurricane.

  Quite suddenly the sky grows dark … a moment later the storm bursts with appalling violence upon the caravan. Enormous masses of sand, mixed with pebbles, are forcibly lifted up, whirled round, and dashed down on man and beast; the darkness increases and strange clashing noises mingle with the roar and howl of the storm … The whole happening is like hell let loose.… Any traveller overwhelmed by such a storm must, in spite of the heat, entirely envelop himself in felts to escape injury from the stones dashing around with such mad force. Men and horses must lie down and endure the rage of the hurricane, which often lasts for hours together.

  Several other European travellers, including Hedin, who lived through such storms left similar descriptions. The vital thing was to keep your head. A caravan of sixty horsemen escorting a consignment of silver ingots to the oasis of Turfan in 1905 perished when they were struck by a buran so powerful that it overturned the heavily laden carts. ‘The sixty Chinese horsemen’, von Le Coq relates, ‘galloped into the desert where some of the mummified bodies of men and beasts were found later on, while the others had utterly and entirely disappeared, for the sandstorm likes to bury its victims.’ Clearly it was a case of panic, by the horses if not also by the riders. But in Chinese minds such happenings were caused by the demons which they believed inhabited the desert and lured men to thirsty deaths.

  Hsuan-tsang, the great Chinese traveller, who passed through the Taklamakan on his way to India in the seventh century, describes these demons. ‘When these winds rise,’ he wrote, ‘both man and beast become confused and forgetful, and there they remain perfectly disabled. At times, sad and plaintive notes are heard and piteous cries, so that between the sights and sounds of the desert, men get confused and know not whither they go. Hence there are so many who perish on the journey. But it is all the work of demons and evil spirits.’

  Sir Clarmont Skrine, who served as British Consul-General at Kashgar in the 1920s, has left a vivid description of the desert’s appearance in his book Chinese Central Asia. ‘To the north in the clear dawn the view is inexpressively awe-inspiring and sinister. The yellow dunes of the Taklamakan, like the giant waves of a petrified ocean, extend in countless myriads to a far horizon with here and there an extra large sand-hill, a king dune as it were, towering above his fellows. They seem to clamour silently, those dunes, for travellers to engulf, for whole caravans to swallow up as they have swallowed up so many in the past.’

  Skrine, who for two and a half years manned this sensitive listening post where three empires met – those of China, Russia and Britain – recalled speaking with an old Chinese traveller who arrived in Kashgar from ‘China proper’ via the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. On one lonely stretch of this journey he had marched for fifty days, he told Skrine, without seeing a soul.

  Another traveller who, nearly forty years earlier, covered the three thousand five hundred miles from Peking to Kashgar was Colonel Mark Bell, V.C., Director of Military Intelligence of the Indian Army. His secret purpose in making the journey was to assess whether the Chinese would be able to resist an encroachment by the Russians through Central Asia towards India. He and a young companion, Lieutenant (later Sir Francis) Younghusband, raced one another from Peking to India by different routes, Bell winning by five weeks.

  Afterwards Bell wrote somewhat dismissively of the Gobi. ‘Water can be readily obtained and is often close to the surface,’ he reported. ‘Travellers like to make much of crossing the desert, but it has few hardships; and before we left Kashgaria we had reason to think the Gobi days pleasant in comparison with the Kashgarian desert hills and flats.…’ By the latter, of course, he meant the fringes of the Taklamakan which he, like most other travellers, carefully skirted.

  Over the years this little-known region of China has, on the maps of the day and in the memoirs of travellers, borne numerous different names. In vogue at various times were Chinese Tartary, High Tartary, Chinese Turkestan (sometimes spelt Turkistan), Eastern Turkestan, Chinese Central Asia, Kashgaria, Serindia and Sinkiang. The earlier their use, the vaguer were their boundaries, although all included the Taklamakan. Some Victorian travellers called it High Asia, though this appears to have included Tibet – ‘the most stupendous upheaval to be found on the face of our planet’, as Sven Hedin once described it.

  Ancient Han records show that two thousand years ago the Chinese knew the Taklamakan as the Liu Sha, or ‘Moving Sands’, for its yellow dunes are ever in motion, driven by the relentless winds that scour the desert. Present-day hydrographers and climatologists refer to
it more tamely as the Tarim basin after the glacier-fed river which flows eastwards across it to shallow Lop-nor lake, the mystery of whose apparent ‘wandering’ would finally be solved by Sven Hedin. On the map of modern China the Taklamakan (meaning, in Turki, ‘go in and you won’t come out’) is shown by a large egg-shaped blank in the heart of what is now officially termed the Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region.

  The Taklamakan and its oases are protected on all four sides from any but the most determined of intruders. To the north rise the majestic T’ien Shan. To the west lie the Pamir – ‘The Roof of the World’. To the south stretch the Karakoram and Kun Lun ranges. Only the east is free of mountains. But there nature has placed two further obstacles, the Lop and Gobi deserts. Most British travellers (Bell and Younghusband excepted) have approached Chinese Central Asia from India via the Karakoram passes which in places reach nineteen thousand feet. Hedin describes this bleak route as a ‘via dolorosa’ because of the many lives it has claimed, both human and animal. As recently as 1950 a traveller wrote: ‘Never once until we reached the plains were we out of sight of skeletons. The continuous line of bones and bodies acted as a gruesome guide whenever we were uncertain of the route.’ In The Lion River, a history of the exploration of the Indus river, Jean Fairley writes: ‘Nothing grows along the Karakoram route and the traveller must carry all the food he needs for himself and his beasts. Pack animals, overloaded with trading goods at the expense of fodder, have died in this pass in their millions.’ Sir Aurel Stein, on the other hand, dismisses the Karakoram route somewhat mischievously as ‘a tour for the ladies’.

  During the nineteenth century, however, there was one hazard which could not be shrugged off so lightly – the risk of being murdered. Any trespasser in this mountainous bad-land was regarded as fair game by local tribesmen (even in 1906 Stein took a small armoury with him). This lawlessness was to cost several European travellers, including Dalgleish, Hayward and Moorcroft, their lives. Not that this deterred anyone. Such perils were part of the challenge of Central Asia. Today, with the building of a new two-way highway across the Karakoram, the era of hiring mules and ponies, cooks and coolies, of clinging dizzily to mountain ledges, dodging rock-falls and bullets – the very stuff of Central Asian travel – is finally at an end.

  But the men whose exploits concern us here belonged to the earlier age (although Sven Hedin, the first of them, died only in 1952). To achieve their purpose they were willing to endure great hardship, frequent danger and, if necessary, death in this grim Asiatic backwater. What was it that drew them so powerfully to the Taklamakan with its cruel winters and sweltering summers ? To understand this it is necessary to turn back the pages of China’s history some two thousand years.

  A century before the birth of Christ an adventurous young Chinese traveller called Chang Ch’ien set out across China on a secret mission to the then remote and mysterious regions of the west. Although its immediate purpose ended in failure, it proved to be one of the most important journeys in history, for it was to lead to China discovering Europe and the birth of the Silk Road. Chang, who was renowned for his strength and daring, was sent on his trail-blazing journey by Wu-ti, the Han Emperor, who found himself facing increasing harassment from China’s ancient foes, the Hsiung-nu. These warlike people, Huns of Turkic stock, were eventually destined to appear in Europe as the ravaging Huns of our own history books. Their raids on China had begun during the period of the Warring States (476–206 BC) and in 221 BC the Emperor Shi Huang-ti had built the Great Wall in an effort to keep them out.

  Emperor Wu-ti, or the Son of Heaven as he was officially known, had learned from Hun captives that some years earlier they had defeated another Central Asiatic people, the Yueh-chih, made a drinking vessel from the skull of their vanquished leader and forced them to flee far to the west, beyond the Taklamakan desert. There, he was informed, they were waiting to avenge their defeat, but first sought an ally. Wu-ti immediately decided to make contact with the Yueh-chih with the aim of joining forces with them and making a simultaneous attack on the Hsiung-nu from both front and rear.

  He therefore sought a suitable volunteer for this dangerous mission – dangerous because an emissary from China to the Yueh-chih would first have to travel through Hun-held territory. Chang Ch’ien, an official of the imperial household, volunteered and was accepted by the Emperor. In the year 138 BC he set out with a caravan of one hundred men determined to run the Hun gauntlet. But in what is now Kansu they were attacked by the Hsiung-nu and the survivors taken prisoner, remaining captive for ten years. Chang was well treated, however, and even provided with a wife. With the aim of eventually making his escape and continuing his journey westwards, he managed to retain Wu-ti’s ambassadorial token – a yak’s tail – throughout his captivity. One day, after their captors had allowed them more and more liberty, Chang and the remnants of his party managed to slip away and set out once again on their mission.

  They finally reached the territory of the Yueh-chih (who later became the Indo-Scythian rulers of north-west India), only to discover that in the years that had passed since their defeat by the Huns they had become prosperous and settled and had lost all interest in avenging themselves on their former foes. Chang remained with them for a year, gathering as much information as possible about them and other tribes and countries of Central Asia. While journeying home through Hun territory he was again captured. As luck would have it, civil war broke out among his captors, and in the confusion he managed to escape once again. Finally, after thirteen years away, and long assumed to be dead, he reached Ch’ang-an, the Han capital, to report to the Emperor. Of his original party of one hundred men only one, besides himself, reached home alive.

  The intelligence that Chang Ch’ien brought back – military, political, economic and geographical – caused a sensation at the Han court. From his emissary the Emperor learned of the rich and previously unknown kingdoms of Ferghana, Samarkand, Bokhara (all now in Soviet Central Asia) and Balkh (now in Afghanistan). Also for the first time the Chinese learned of the existence of Persia and of another distant land called Li-jien. This, present-day scholars believe, was almost certainly Rome. But of more immediate importance was the discovery in Ferghana of an amazing new type of warhorse which, Chang reported, was bred from ‘heavenly’ stock. Fast, large and powerful, these were a revelation to the Chinese whose only horses at that time were the small, slow, local breed today known as Prejevalsky’s Horse, and now only to be found in zoos.

  Wu-ti, realising that the Ferghana horses would be ideal for cavalry warfare against the troublesome Huns, was determined to re-equip his army with them. He sent a mission to Ferghana to try to acquire some, but it was wiped out on the way there, as were successive missions. Finally a much larger force, accompanied by vets, was sent to lay siege to Ferghana. However, the inhabitants rounded up their horses and drove them into the walled city, threatening to kill themselves and the horses if the Chinese came any closer. Finally an honourable surrender was arranged and the Chinese left for home with their chargers. Although now long extinct, these ‘heavenly horses’ have been immortalised by Han and T’ang sculptors and artists. The most splendid example is the world-famous bronze ‘Flying Horse’ excavated by Chinese archaeologists on the Silk Road in 1969 near Sian, Wu-ti’s one-time capital, and cast by an unknown sculptor some two thousand years ago.

  Greatly pleased with his emissary who had shown such determination on this epoch-making journey, Emperor Wu-ti bestowed upon him the title ‘Great Traveller’. Many further expeditions followed, for Wu-ti was now determined to expand his empire westwards. One of these was again led by Chang, this time in 115 BC to the Wu-sun, a nomadic people who lived along the western frontier of the Hsiung-nu, whom Wu-ti hoped to gain as allies against the Huns. Again Chang failed to enlist their aid, for they were too afraid of their powerful neighbours and China seemed far off. Not long after his return from this mission, the Great Traveller died, greatly honoured by his emperor, and still rev
ered in China today. It was he who had blazed the trail westwards towards Europe which was ultimately to link the two superpowers of the day – Imperial China and Imperial Rome. He could fairly be described as the father of the Silk Road.

  Although one of the oldest of the world’s great highways, the Silk Road acquired this evocative name comparatively recently, the phrase being coined by a German scholar, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, in the last century. As a description, moreover, it is somewhat misleading. For not only did this great caravan route across China, Central Asia and the Middle East consist of a number of roads, but it also carried a good deal more than just silk. Advancing year by year as the Han emperors pushed China’s frontiers further westwards, it was ever at the mercy of marauding Huns, Tibetans and others. In order to maintain the free flow of goods along the newly opened highway, the Chinese were obliged to police it with garrisons and watchtowers. As part of this forward policy they built a westward extension to the Great Wall, rather like the Roman limes.

  The Silk Road (sometimes known as the Silk Route) started from Ch’ang-an, present-day Sian, and struck north-westwards, passing through the Kansu corridor to the oasis of Tun-huang in the Gobi desert, a frontier town destined to play a dramatic role in this story. Leaving Tun-huang, and passing through the famous Jade Gate, or Yu-men-kuan, it then divided, giving caravans a choice of two routes around the perimeter of the Taklamakan desert.