Notes from a Frontier Town: Some might say, secrets interred

By J. Miller: 

Standing atop the dunes of Echoing Sands Mountain (鸣沙山). At the dunes’ base sits Crescent Moon Lake (月牙泉), where some say that at some point in history flying dragons paraded around the shadowy pond where hidden dragons lurked in the depths. That nearby, a monk translated and hid thousands of religious documents. That it was at this geographical point where Christianity and Buddhism mixed. Some might say that it is speculation. 

Off into the distance, an ancient-looking portico unburdened by a building directs its gaze northward towards Dunhuang (敦煌). Camels jockey at the portico, and off-season 4x4s await riders that never come. Snow blankets the dunes. A narrow path leads up the tallest dune. A rope ladder, a staircase that lifts travelers and tourists up the dune. These dunes composed of grains of sand appear sturdy yet transient. The traveler, a temporary pause. A footfall compresses the sand, leaves an indefinite footshape, and sand granules tumble down the dune leaving sunken lanes.

Coming here from faraway I sink into thoughts that travelers’ desires shape their experiences, that experiences can become a form of folkloric experience, and that writing about these experiences is a chance to grasp dead time, or the past.

I find myself unaware that my feet were sinking into the shifting sands. I find myself imagining others that visited here before, who let their feet sink into the sand. Shifting like the sands, the landscape is recontextualized by a traveler’s desire. Wandering throughout the buildings attached to Crescent Moon Lake – a history museum that reminds the viewer of the lake’s impermanence – is a reminder that through these shifting sands the dunes act as a natural barrier for Dunhuang.

I am grateful that I have the museum and park mostly to myself, and that I can come from faraway to visit Dunhuang, if even for a moment.

It’s imaginable that some of the sand also came from far away. That sand was carried through the thin desert air, and it is imaginable that the crescent lake is always threatened. Most of the time the threat comes from some unknowable force. For a time, I tried to let the dunes speak for themselves. Some might say Echoing Sands’ name comes from the sand that whips across the dunes. What language can they speak, where human-language does not factor into the conversation? At one point in time, Dunhuang along with three other cities were frontier garrison towns. Jiuquan (酒泉), another of the garrison towns, is neighbor to a fortress called Jiayuguan (嘉峪关), which some point out has a gate where the exiled and the travelers passed through on their way into the Gobi Desert.

Exiles that passed through this gate carved a note as ritual commemoration, an attempt to internalize the place while at the same time casting it out from memory. The Gate of Demons or the Gate of Sighs. I could not find it. Some might say that it is the gate wishing not to speak with me; that it is an attempt of the fortress to maintain its secrets from an outsider. Checking every gate and tunnel for etched farewell notes, and desiring to interpret contemporary scrawlings for ones thousands of years old [1], I reached an impasse. As one of the travelers visiting a site and trying to create their own narrative to a place, I was a traveler attempting to navigate the fortress’s physical space: the building, arrangement of rooms and entertainment theatres, the angle and height of its ramparts and bastions, and the labyrinth of its corridors reconfigured for a tourist. At the same time, this fortress contained the secrets and shadows and imprints interred in the building.

Writing down my thoughts in a coffeeshop turned barbecue lamb restaurant, a sense of disquiet pervades me. Pictures aside, this written document is the only tactile item that I intend to bring back from this trip. Even then the pictures are just digital relics on a memory card. It’s proof, like a selfie posted on social media, that at one point in time I visited this place. 

I went to a place that on the map said coffeeshop, but instead it sold different variations of the popular Chinese grain spirit (白酒, baijiu) and the owner told me to turn the corner and walk 200 meters, and when I arrived at that location, the restaurant advertised barbecued lamb and served hot water infused with white sugar and soluble coffee-powder. At some point this document will be an attempt to reclaim something, to resuscitate my immediate present with an experience already passed.

Sitting in the barbecue restaurant, the religious grottoes and fortress’ architectural designs protect their secrets in different ways. Thinking about the material and imaginary facets of places: why do certain facets take precedence over others with some aspects of a place declared irrelevant [2]? What makes my search for coffee in a once-garrison town irrelevant compared to looking for scrawlings in stone by exiles? Each place and person is a relic grasping at the tendrils of dead time. In a time of mass consumption, it is imperative to remember that through consuming articles about place, the writing is an act of commemoration. That commemoration is an act of bidding farewell. That it is a ritual practice to forget, and to welcome that place in folkloric history. 

The tourist is not content to let things lie as they should. An imposition of personal narrative always shines through, where the tourist transforms their experiences into an experience that defies any process of linear time. Each traveler reorganizes geographical space and dead time to co mingle with a sense of commemorating the past and leaving with a sense of relevant story, to share with friends, family and other loved ones.

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J. Miller is a bicyclist and educator based in Wuhan, China. His writings can be found on A South Broadway Ghost Society (2019) and A Dozen Nothing (2019) with a broadside from Chax Press (2020). J. Miller is a lecturer at Central China Normal University, where he is constantly clipping branches from the Osmanthus trees. He is the founding editor of Osmanthus which has collective focus to publish reflexive poetry and prose chapbooks and related objects. As tea drinker and bicyclist, find him in the Osmanthus branches, or here on Twitter, @yawn_sea

Notes:

[1] Cable, Mildred. The Gobi Desert. London: Readers Union Limited, 1942. pp.13-14

[2] Mbembe, Achille. “The Power of the Archive and its Limits.” In Reconfiguring the Archive, eds. Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, et al. 19-26. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. pp.19-26.