The Temple of the Earth and I

It is a cold day with gales today in Beijing. A beautiful day, as it is sunny and the Beijingers are enjoying the clearness after a day of rain washing out, and then strong winds blowing away the haze. The Hutongs are filled with golden leaves, and live their anachronistic slowness and quietness in the middle of the capital city. 

After dinner, before going to bed, I still went to my favorite place in this city, which is The Temple of the Earth. There is no God in the centre of this temple. It is an open space to worship the Earth itself, pray for luck, harvest, and ask for forgiveness. There is no "person" on the other side - nobody you can make a deal with. I love this temple and the park around it. I spend as much time there as I can. Even I am not religious at all, and last prayed in a German kindergarden (when you got beaten up if you did not follow instructions), today I felt like asking for a few things. Of course, I am aware that I can only ask myself, and no supreme being. And then, I can hope for luck.

I regret, that I cannot read Shi Tiesheng's "The Temple of Earth and I" in Chinese. I have to rely on translations and found one on Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping . The book is the description of the Temple of the Earth Park through the eyes a man who has been crippled in young age and spends all his free time there. Even I am handicapped only having the translation to rely on, it is a beautiful record of the place I like most in Beijing.

It begins like this:

"In a number of my stories, I’ve referred to an antiquated park: in fact, this is the Temple of Earth Park. Some years ago, before tourism had developed much, it was as desolate and neglected as a wasteland. People seldom gave it a thought. 

       The Temple of Earth wasn’t far from my home, or perhaps it’s better to say my home wasn’t far from it. All in all, I felt I was related to it by fate. It had reposed there for four hundred years before my birth, and ever since, when my grandmother was a young woman, she had taken my father to live in Beijing, my family had lived near it: in more than fifty years, my family had moved several times, but always to a place in its vicinity. Each time, we moved closer to it. I often felt this was something foreordained—as if this old park were waiting especially for me: it seemed it had been waiting for four hundred years—through all the tumultuous changes of those centuries ..."

Getting rough

The weather changed seriously in Jeju this night. Rain kept falling until noon time and the sea became rough. All mountains were covered in clouds and only in the afternoon it was possible to walk up to a few of the smaller volcanoes without being washed away or blinded by fog. This trip was a nice weekend escape from Beijing and tomorrow I will have to go back.

Bootcamp

These are my new hiking boots, taken on the black volcanic beaches of Jeju Island. It is good to have a few days away from the hectic and polluted Beijing, in a small guesthouse between the volcanos and the sea. It is a good time to think. After about a year back in a corporate environment, I am still often asked how it is. Well, not that bad. Sure, many engineers around and they are not what I would call "inspired". But they are nice people. Some of them are even quite funny. And our corporate culture is actually simple: "Achtung, Currywurst - Stillgestanden! Mahlzeit. Jahwoll! Ruehrt Euch!"

Beside my corporate endeavors, I am doing research on "Microcities" and "Urban Villages", puzzle around with mobility concepts, smart grids and energy mixes. I am slowly picking up on writing, photography and still do a little bit of University teaching. My whole stay in Jeju is like a bootcamp, reviewing everything and ramping up for things to come. Just a year ago I was about to embark on the Russian Research Vessel "Academic Ioffe" to head for Antarctica, as one of the earliest ships breaking though the ice of the upcoming Antarctic summer. Yes, times have changed. And they will again.

Mount Hallasan

Mount Hallasan is a shield volcano which builds the centre of Jeju Island (Korea). It is 1950 meters high and holds up impressive basalt formations. The Mount Hallasan National Park is UN Natural National World Heritage and a very well managed site. Access is free. I approached it from the West and could not cross the summit into the crater as this region is protected, which I of course respect. Tried my new hiking boots here the first time: Vibram sole, tight grip and hard edges as always. Perfect. Asking for more.

Autum in Beijing

The weather forecast says that in the next few days the night temperature will fall below zero the first time for the end of this year. Today was still a mild and sunny day, and I enjoyed it in the awareness that it could be one of the last ones. Many trees now really have golden or red leaves and strangely many Persimmon fruits are still unharvested on the trees, already too late to be picked.

Hide Away

Under the handicap of being a bit sick today, I found a place in Beijing to hide away. Not far from home, but in a different world. It is a place where mainly Beijing Ren go for their entertainment. They sing, dance, do exercise, play ball games and perform a Judo-like way of wrestling, which is a kind of Kung Fu. It is a really beautiful place which only charges 2 Renminbi entrance. I will go there often from now on. Enjoyed the autumn color sun rays before the fierce Beijing winter will commence.

Mo Yan wins Literature Nobel Prize

Today Mo Yan was awarded the Literature Nobel Prize. How I wish that I could ever read Chinese at that level in my lifetime. But luckily the translations of his works are said to be excellent, so that I went shopping to Amazon strait away to find out more. All I know from Mo Yan ​is his novel Red Sorghum and I have to confess I only saw the movie. I liked it very much. It is from the time when Zhang Yimou was not a propagandist, but an artist. Now of course, I am eager to find out more and this will keep me busy reading Mo Yan's books which are available in translation. 

First Autumn Leaves

The last week, was called Golden Week and it is a week's public holiday ​around the Mid Autumn Festival and the National Day. This is why many people are on the way to their home towns and families, take the opportunity to do short trip and decorate their houses with some extra National flags (everything is National here anyways). Beijing was a very calm city during this week. Only the obvious tourist places were crowded. First I was annoyed by not being able to go to Japan (another one of these National things), but then I enjoyed having a quiet week and looking into corners of the city which I did not explore yet.

Yesterday before sunset, I also got aware what else "Golden Week" meant this year. The first autumn leaves were changing color. When I walked along the river back home, I could even hear some rustling around my feet. Not the deep rustle and crackle of walking through a forest, but the little one of strolling through a park in fall.​

Che Fotografo

​The Beijing Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Caochangdi showed photos taken by Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara: 232 pictures by the Guerrilero Heroico, in black and white and color. This was again a very well set up and high quality exhibition by Three Shadows which runs until October 10th. The exhibition is a station of the "Che Photographer" exhibition which is hosted since 1990 in 16 cities across 13 countries.

When I was a boy, I read Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries" and he was somehow a fascinating figure, as the prototype of the revolutionary and driving force in the Cuban revolution. Of course this blended in with my reading of Hemingway at that time, and a general sentiment which was positive to regions becoming independent from imperial rulers. Che Guevara travelled a lot and did not only contain his activities into South America, but also to Africa. He also visited China, with a "mandate of friendship". I tried to imagine how the meeting with Chairman Mao must have been. Che Guevara was of course far more idealistic, better educated and more traveled than Mao. For him Communism was a model for liberation, while for Mao it became way of suppression and terror against his own people. But also the Cuban regime took a way Che Guevara might not have anticipated. Perhaps this is why, instead of becoming a government minister, he headed off for the next revolution in a different country, which costed him lis life.

Before visiting this exhibition today, I was not aware that Che Guevara was a good photographer. I liked many his photos , not because of technical quality, but because they are like a freeze of what he saw and how he saw it. In a way, I found his photography very "journalistic" and "documentary". Also, because he seems to have been always with a camera, he caught many private moments, which shed a light hearted light on the Guerellia fighter. Perhaps this is what photography of this kind is about: less about the perfection of photos, but of the choices of what the photographer sees and the choice of the life he lives. Che Guevara took a very extreme choice and he left the world not just with the prototype of an idealistic young man, but also with hundreds of excellent photos. 

Lamma Island Ferry Disaster

I am terrified to hear and read that the most wonderful an peaceful commute I had for five years from Lamma Island to the University turned into a disaster on October 1st with two ferries colliding out of which one capsized within 10 minutes and the other making it back to the Yung Shue Wan ferry pier taking water. 38 passengers died and over 100 were injured. My thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones, friends and neighbors.​ Yung Shue Wan is a small village community under shock of the largest marine accident since the hand over of Hong Kong. I can barely believe that the window of my former home, at which I stood for years to watch the beautiful scenes of boats passing bye, was just facing the site of the accident. 

Penghao Theatre & Cafe

A nice place to either drop by for a meal or coffee in Beijing is the Penghao Theatre & Cafe. It is located along a foot alley in 35 Dong Mian Hua Hutong in a traditional courtyard house. Performances are not only in Chinese, so that this is one of the few drama performance places in Beijing which also is a place for non / or no good Chinese speakers. The theatre itself can host an audience of about 130 and is just beside the restaurant. The location is very close to the film school and these few blocks of Hutongs are exceptionally picturesque and have a quite special cultural atmosphere. 

Where have all the cars gone?

Exploring the streets and parks of Beijing, I am wondering these days where all the cars have gone. It is a National Holiday week in which many have left the city. And others seem not to have the urge to drive. On normal days Beijing suffocates in traffic and people suffocate in pollution. These days in Beijing are a very nice reminder how nice the city actually could be, if it would not be swamped with cars and rude drivers. And also the rudeness and aggression is dissolved in the holiday mood. This week must be one of the nicest ones staying in Beijing, and I am quite happy that Air China messed up my planned trip to Japan.

One Cylinder, Two Stroke

Yesterday to my big surprise I saw an old Velosolex engine mounted on a tricycle's front wheel in Beijing. The lady who brought it from the suburbs to the city center for repair said that the young man sitting on the floor between his tools was one of the few left who can still handle repairs like that. Just a few weeks ago, I published a blogpost in memory Velosolex, when I bought my electric bicycle. I thought though the orgininal Volosolex engine must have disappeared. But it has not.

Sonja's report

"Miss Werner was a woman of leisure, well-spoken, and had been given a good education by her middle-class parents. For her new masters, all this counted in her favour. They were short of posh ladies" (The Economist, July 13th 2000). Ruth Werner joined the Communist Party as a teenager in Berlin, in the believe that Communism would change the society for a better. Undiscovered, she lived in Shanghai, Manchuria, Switzerland and Great Britain and in the end East Berlin, as a spy of Stalin's regime. The poverty she saw in China, strengthened her believe that a revolution was needed and that Communism was the social model that could make the world a better place. She was a courier of Klaus Fuchs, the scientist who delivered secret and critical information from building the first nuclear bomb. She was following the traces of her idol Rosa Luxemburg, the German communist revolutionary who was executed in 1919. But Ruth Werner, code named "Sonja", was never discovered and lived a long life of 93 years. She died in Berlin in the year 2000, in a re-unified Germany and a time when people in Germany literally celebrated what they called the "Collapse of Communism". She must have felt that her life's mission has failed.

Having dinner with friends yesterday, I was recommended to have a closer look at Ruth Werner's biography. She was a convicted Communist all her life, but I found the turning point interesting in which she got aware of the crimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other Communist leaders. I was wondering what the thoughts could be of somebody who finds out at the end of her life, that she has been fighting with best intentions all her life potentially on the wrong side. Of course, the discussion yesterday sparked on trying to understand Chinese Communists today, and what their comprehension might be standing at the edge from a Communist state to something nobody has really seen before. Or has it? Is it just another form of a fascist state? Or not even another form? I guess the next few years will be the most interesting ones to watch in China. It will be the years in which it will make it or break it.

Cargo Cults

In his book Surely, you are joking Mr. Feynman, the physicist Richard P. Feynman refers to his commancement speeches at Caltech in 1974. Here he coined the term "Cargo Cult Science", referring to cults which appreared in indigenous island societies in the Pacific after the second World War. Here, mostly around Samoa, where American Naval Bases were supplied by air, also the local tribes had direct or indirect access to the goods flown in. They knew they were coming by plane, but they never really understood the process. So when the US Military closed the base, no more planes were coming and all the nice things did not drop from sky anymore. The indigenous people though realised the connection between the supplies and the planes and started to build own planes made of bamboo, simulates landing strips light with fires and also built wooden control towers in which people were sitting with headsets made of coconut shells shaking their heads and chanting prayers to please the plane god to come back. The point Feynman wanted to make back then, was that scientific publishing which is not referring to true experiment and understanding, is like a Cargo Cult, missing actually the point. 

Once you start looking for such "Cargo Cults" around you, the list does not seem to end. Last time I was in Changchun for example, people were wearing suits and mobile phones, because they saw the people who have been bringing them cars and technologies for the last 20 years look like that. They never really thought about how these technologies have been developed and invented and they think all these just have been brought into their country by pale men with suits and beer bellies. As a result they try to look the same. Some of them go a bit further and understand that there must be "holy documents" behind this. So, they secretly copy all documents they find on their USB flash disk and store them in a department which keeps them as a holy grale. When they see that this does not help, they also copy the rituals and put them into PowerPoint slides and have meetings to worship them. But no cars are falling out of the sky and the "self development capabilities" are as far away as they have been a decade ago. It must have something to do with the education of the pale men. So, the members of the cult also go out to Universities and obtain academic degrees. But they don't really learn much there, because they think the academic title makes the difference. They would also wear coconuts and shake their heads, no doubt. 

But this is just one example. Just look around you how many people have coconuts on their ears and try to become "successful" or "creative" or "rich" or just go to heaven instead of hell. I always enjoy reading Feynman, for his view more than for his science. This is more owed to the fact that I do not understand his science, but really appreciate his view.

"Soweit die Füße tragen" (As far as my feet will carry me)

These are the shoes in which I went around the whole world last year. Of course, I did not walk around the world, but this was the only pair. These days they really turned out to be too worn out and damaged. But this is not an item just to throw away for me. It was a farewell.

Ever since I read as a child Martin Bauer's novel Soweit die Fuesse tragen (As far as my feet will carry me), I felt special about the walking long distances. There is also a movie based on this material, telling the true story of the German Prisoner Of War Clemens Forell who escaped from a Soviet labor camp and walks though Siberia driven by the willpower to return to his loves ones. My grandfather called walking "the only reliable form of transportation, when all goes wrong". He must have known, as he also returned on foot from the Eastern Front. Consequently, I learned about shoes by experience of walking. But I also learned about the crafts of making and repairing them. 

Air Quality Index (AQI)

I received the feedback that my recent Blogpost called Smog as a Romamce  was too romantic and that I either protect the interest of the Automobile Industry or just don't know what I talk about. Well, I think I know about smog as well as about romance, but I prefer only to follow up on the science part of smog here.

Further, I found that there are very strong opinions on smog which reach from "we have to move out because my child has asthma" to "when I was a child it was even worse and see how strong I am today". Many of them are much less founded than my attempt to see smog romantically. I do not want to promote smog of course. Blue sky can be romantic too. And think how beautiful a clear spring day is. I am just making the best out of it, and I feel I personally do more against smog (not just in this city) than many others who complain a lot more than me.

In pubs and coffee shops I found that emotions can get very high on the Air Quality Index number published via various internet channels for Beijing. And no matter how strong the opinions are on the numbers published on Beijing's air quality, I found that many people do not know what the AQI (Air Quality Index) actually represents. It is a pleasure for me to spend my Saturday night, trying to bring a bit of light into this haze.

There are currently in Beijing two two public data sources: one is the Air Pollution Monitor in the American Embassy and the second is a network of measuring stations provided by the Beijing Environmental Department. Both are measuring about the same critical components in a slightly different manner and different locations. After a heated (and silly) debate whether particles should be measured according to 10 micrometers (PM 10) or the size which actually more likely to penetrate the deeper breathing system PM 2.5, now also the Beijing government measures PM 2.5.

The AQI (Air Quality Index) as defined by the USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) is a composite index of five air pollutants: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.

Ground level ozone, also called Tropospheric Ozone to distinguish it from the Stratospheric Ozone, is the product of photochemical reactions of NOX, CO or VOC (Volatile Organic Components). By the dependence on sunlight, it means that the concentrations are highest during daytime and in summer. As the process needs time, it also means that the high concentrations of ozone might be quite a distance downwind the actual emission source of NOX. This is why you often observe botanical damages caused by ozone not in the cities itself, but in the suburbs, where the air should be "cleaner".

The production of ozone includes two steps. First a peroxyl radical is formed by oxidizing carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide:

OH + CO → H + CO2

H + O2 → HO2

Then NO2 goes in photolysis to provide atomic oxygen for the formation of ozone:

HO2 + NO → OH + NO2

NO2 + hν → NO + O

O + O2 + N2 → O3 + N2

The resulting net reaction is: CO + 2O2 → CO2 + O3

Ozone is known positively for example as a disinfectant for drinking water, and for protecting us from harmful ultraviolet radiation by absorbing it in the Stratosphere. But in direct exposure of the respiration system and eyes it is causing irritations and also more serious long term health effects.

There are also other photochemical substances which are built by similar but more complex processes from primary pollutants. An example are the Peroxyacetylnitrates (PAN). They are more toxic than ozone, but hard to measure. However, as the process and the primary pollutants are similar, you can see ozone as a good tracer for the existence of PAN and its derivatives.

The next component which is contained in the AQI is Particulate Matter (PM). The kind of health effects which are caused by particles is mainly determined by their size and what they actually are. While most particles at around 10 micrometer diameter (PM 10) do not penetrate the lungs, particles smaller 2.5 micrometer (PM 2.5) might even cross into the blood stream via the alveoli, where they can cause cardiovascular diseases. Particles smaller than 0.1 micrometer even can penetrate cells, including those of the brain, where they cause damages leading to brain diseases similar to Alzheimer's Disease. A major source of such small particles are fumes and smokes, for example also emitted by low quality Diesel engines.

The next two components of the AQI we already met as primary pollutants: CO and NOX.

CO is toxic by itself and is the gas which you might know from being used to commit suicide in a garage where somebody keeps the engine running in an enclosed environment while writing a farewell letter - until he/she falls asleep and dies. Of course the concentrations we find in an open environment are much less and in open air CO coming from an exhaust pipe is unlikely to be lethal, but it may modify the oxygen household in the body. Eventually, CO turns into CO2 and by this is less a local problem but adds to the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses which are driving climate change.

NOX again are a primary pollutant for photo-oxydants like Ozone or PAN but also in the end form gases which dissolve in water, similar to sulfur dioxide and have a negative impact on vegetation. Sulfur dioxide even forms acids in rain water which can dissolve limestone and damage buildings. This is less an issue in Beijing with modern buildings, as they are made of the good "old" brutalist concrete. But for some historical buildings this is still a disaster, not to talk about soil and vegetation.

So, these are the component for the AQI, which is an additive index of linear concentration functions. This means, if ozone is low at night and the AQI still high, you can imagine how bad particulate matter or sulfur dioxide is - specially in winter when cheap sulfur rich coal it doing its job to keep us warm. Isn't that romantic again? But this time I won't go down that road of argument.

Chinese Summer

The temperature differences between day and night are getting larger in Beijing and this is a first indicator of fall to come. I really enjoy that my office is located in the embassy and diplomatic area in Beijing's Chaoyang District and my commute is a short bicycle ride or walk along a canal fringed with large willow trees. People are fishing and doing gymnastics every morning there and somehow I also became part of this "river community". I will follow the change of seasons from summer to autumn and then to winter very carefully. And then it is time again to sharpen my ice skates and commute where there is never a traffic jam: on the river itself. There is the term "Indian Summer" which describes the mild late summer days. The "Chinese Summer", in Beijing, is not less beautiful. I am looking forward to the leaves turning red and golden.

Time travel

The dinosaurs, I was told, were extinct because they had a small brain in a big body and they could not adjust to the change of environment. The exhibit below I have seen in Beijing 798 - and unfortunately did not take down the artist's name. Strategy, I was told, is to put yourself in a future perspective on the present and look back at the present to decide options for action. Looking for the time machine these days.

Silk Road

In times of chemical fibers, shipping and air freight it seems incredible that a textile once was of such value that it justified the terrifying hardship to transport and trade it from China to Europe, crossing Central Asia. For me silk has always been a beautiful material and it is a metaphor of romance, grace and elegance. In ancient China only Emperors had access to it. During times of pests, healthy silk worms were still contained in Japan. This is the setting in which Alecandro Barico's novel Silk is narrated, which is the story of a French Silk worm smuggler. It is a very mystical book, which I liked a lot. There has also been a movie produced, which follows a pattern you often see when people work on this material: brilliant material and bad cut - applies in fashion as well as in directing this movie. I am frequently suprised why silk dresses actually are made so lousy. They count on the material to compensate for bad design and craftsmanship, I guess.

My own first contact with the Silk Road, was when I found Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen'sFuehrer fuer Forschungsreisende as a discounted reprint in my favorite hangout as a Geociences student in Cologne: the Goertz Map Shop. Ferdinand von Richthofen is not to be mistaken with Manfred von Richthofen, commonly known as The Red Baron. It was Ferdinand von Richthofen who first coined the name "Silk Road" for a system of trading paths which never were, nor are, one road.

The trigger to make a journey along the Chinese parts of the Silk Road came from Judy Bonavia's book The Silk Road from Xi'An to Kashgar which is published by my friend and former neighbor on Lamma Island Magnus Bartlett and is a brilliant historical and cultural guide. A very interesting account of the early explorers which found and took many mural paintings and treasures from Central Asia back to Europe, is Peter Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road. It is one of the constant allegations by Chinese that there were not explorers but robbers, and I have sympathy for that argument. On the other hand they are sometimes defended, saying that they actually secured the works from grave robbers and rescued them from the communists, who destroyed many art works and temples in the Cultural Revolution. The latter argument does not hold for the German collections though, as they have been to 40 % destroyed in the allied bombardment of Berlin at the end of World War II. The British Museum is more lucky, but keeps the collects at very low profile not to provoke anybody. Anyways, world cultural heritage is as the name says "world cultural heritage" and it does not really matter who is taking care of it, as long as everybody has access.

The better starting point for a journey along the Silk Road tough turned out to be not Xi'an but Loyang. This is a city south of Xi'An which states its claim to be included into the Silk Road and which was one of the four ancient capitals of China and the place where the legendary Journey to the West took its start. The famous Longmen Grottos are UNESCO world heritage site.

Xi'An is one of of the places of which people say you should go there once in a life time. I agree, in the sense of: if you happen to go there once, you will definitely not go there a second time. Xi'an holds one of the best known historical treasures of China: the Terracotta Soldiers. They are really very impressive individual art works and not mass production. However, not just that I have seen too many cheap replicas of them as garden decoration and flower pots all over the world - but I am also tired of these kind of tourists which fall in thousands into the site. Xi'An is a place where tour busses dump they human cargo. It is wise to start a Silk Road Journey not in Xi'An, but in Loyang. Otherwise your will change your mind, and strait away book a ticket to Thailand instead, because you already had enough.

The journey further West through the Hexi Corridor brings you to Jia Yu Guan, which are the remains of the most Western large Chinese fort and also has the last remains of the Western part of the Great Wall. It is here not a unified structure any more, but only blocks the valleys from potential ancient enemy penetration. Jia Yu Guan was also the place wehere many goods changed their ownership from Chinese hands into Central Asian tradesmen. The fort it really impressive, but unfortunately surrounded by a heavy industrial environment. The mountains in the background inspire the imagination, but the reality on the ground is that of a historical marvel in a complete trash environment. Also Jia Yu Guan is still in the reach of tour busses and their load, and a useless management of the site ruins the rest. This experience will stay when traveling further West through the Gobi desert, where all kinds of industries received cheap land to do anything (which they do) with no or only few laws implemented. 

When you arrive Dunghuang, you see a marvellous landscape of large sand dunes, which is entirely spoiled by tourist development. The Dunghuang Grottos are wonderful though and it is a very well managed site. You can only join guided tours, and as a positive surprise the guides are really knowledgeable and of course necessary to stop our neocommunist comrades to pi on the mural paintings or scratch them off as a souvenir. As Tulufan (Turpan) is also still in the range of organized tourism, it is just a stop over. But as soon as you leave from here further to the West, things slowly become interesting until you finally arrive in Kashgar. Even the Han Chinese behave better, as if they would bully people here, I guess three brothers will take care of them. Seeing the livestock market on a Sunday in Kashgar is really a must.

Even more interesting becomes the journey further West to Tashkogan and along the Pakistan border. The Tashiks are, like the Uyigurs, very nice and friendly people. The landscape is one of the most beautiful I have seen in China too. From Tashkogan you can drive to Hetain in two days and from there cross the world's second largest desert, the Taklamakan. The Western, and new, desert highway is going along some river beds and here the desert is not that arid. I enjoyed learning about the trees changing their shape when they have more water available and the geomorphological spots which allow them to survive under such hard conditions.

On the way to Urumchi, do not miss to drive through a part of Northern Xingjian. Here are again, where scenic spots, and wonderful grassland, populated by utmost friendly Kasak nomads.

It is really not easy for me to draw a conclusion on this Silk Road Journey. There are places which become even more mystical when you see them and your interest grows. These are actually most places I visited. The Silk Road is not one of these. Seeing the places along the Silk Road, de-mystifies the whole concept very solemnly. Yes, there are beautiful landscapes and wonderful people with minority cultures which are very appealing and interesting. But up to Dunghuang and Turpan, they are just covered by a landscape of industrial trash. It is really hard to ignore that the "factory of the world" is turning them into the world's trash can. And further there are cities like Kuche and Aksu, which are purely functional places, some of them set up by former army units. These cities easily compete at the low end of urban appeal and cultural heritage. Last but not least, I would recommend to avoid even some of the most famous sites, and sites which are convenient to reach.

Once again, what is right for the Terracotta Soldiers, might be right for the whole Chinese section of the Silk Road (North and South): you might want to see it once in a lifetime, but in the sense of that you will not go there a second time. However, I am personally curious how the further Central Asian section up to Turkey looks like. So, my personal Silk Road exploration is not over yet.