China | Xinjiang Province | Khotan | Rawak Stupa

On March 6, 1925, the Roerich Expedition led by mystic painter, occultist, alleged spy, Shambhalist, and all-around intriguer Nicholas Roerich left Darjeeling, India on what would be a three-year journey through Central Asia and Tibet, with stops in Kashmir in India, Xinjiang Province in China, the Russian Altai Mountains in Siberia, Ulaan Baatar and Amarbuyant Khiid in Mongolia, the Tibetan Plateau, and numerous places in between.

Nicholas Roerich

Nicholas Roerich claimed he was looking for inspiration for his paintings, and his son George, Harvard-educated and world-class Tibetan translator (see Blue Annals), was supposedly engaged in various ethnological and linguistical researches. From the three books churned out by Nicholas Roerich about the expedition it is pretty clear however that they were actually looking for Shambhala.

From Kashmir the expedition crossed the 18,694-foot Karakorum Pass and descended into the Tarim Basin. On October 14, 1925 they reached Khotan, where the Chinese governor would retain them under virtual house arrest for the next four months. Even here in Khotan they heard of Shambhala and far off Mongolia. Roerich Senior says:

The pilgrims are passing on their way bringing new messages. In Urga [Ulaan Baatar] will be set a place for the temple of Shambhala. When the image of Rigden-japo (presumably the 25th Kalkin King of Shambhala] will reach Urga, then will flash the first light of the New Era—Truth. Then will the renaissance of Mongolia arrive. In Kucha [oasis town on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin], in the bazaars, recently two arriving lamas distributed images and a prayer of Shambhala. Here, also, the nuclei of revivified Buddhism have found shelter. The celebrated Suburgan near Khotan must be the place of one of the manifestations of the New Era. Khotan is the path of Buddha. . .

In his book Heart of Asia Roerich Senior adds,

Not far from Khotan are many ruins of old Buddhist temples and stupas. One of these stupas is identified with the legend: That in the time of Shambhala, a mysterious light wll shine from it. It is said this light has already been seen.

George Roerich’s book Trails to Innermost Asia mentions that while in Khotan they visited various ruins, but mentions by name only the Rawak Stupa, then as now the most conspicuous stupa in the area. Therefore I assumed that the “celebrated Suburgan” mentioned by Roerich Sr. was in fact the Rawak Stupa. Naturally I wanted to see it.

On my first day at Khotan I had been unable to find the Khotan Regional Museum. I had walked up and down the street where according to my guidebook the museum was supposed to be four or five times and had seen nothing resembling a museum. I had asked numerous passers-by in both Chinese and Uighur where the museum was and got no reply except for blank stares or outright hostile glares. I invariably visit all museums wherever I am at, but especially in China museums are good sources of otherwise hard-to-find information about local history and often a good place to find someone who speaks at least a little English. But here I struck out completely. Not only couldn’t I find the museum, but I had been in Khotan for almost a full day and had not encountered a single English speaker nor heard an English word, unless you count “Bush.” I bought some Uighur flat bread—nan—and retreated to my room for a dinner of bread and tea. In order to lift my spirits I treated myself to some forty-two year old Puerh tea from Yunnan Province in China. This stuff costs 7000 yuan ($845) a kilo, but the woman who owns a tea shop I frequent in Beijing had given me thirty grams as a free sample.

I appeared to be the only guest in the cavernous hotel, which my guidebook had touted as Khotan’s best, complete with a restaurant and travel agency. I had seen no sign of either a restaurant or a travel agency. Except for the two lugubrious Uighur women at the reception desk who had automatically discounted my room to less than half the listed price without me even asking—an indication of how hard up for they were for business—I had not seen another soul in the place.

Then about eleven o’clock a noisy group of eight or so middle-aged Uighur businessmen with a passel of young women in tow appeared and took over three or four rooms at the end of the hall. A lot of stomping up and down the creaky floorboards of the hall ensued, along with raucous shouting and laughter and blaring pop music, both Chinese and Uighur. By three in the morning things had quieted down, the silence broken only by an occasional female moan or shriek, whether from pleasure, pain, or a combination of both it was hard to tell.

The next morning I breakfasted on green tea (Lung Ching from Zhejiang Province: 1200 yuan [$144] a kilo) and the now cardboard-like nan I had bought the evening before. At eight I ventured out of my room. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew I had to do something or this trip to Khotan was going to be a total bust. By the entrance to the hotel was a small gift shop which has been closed the day before. Now the door was open and inside was a Chinese girl perhaps sixteen years old. “Hello, please come in.” she said in English. Striking up a rudimentary conservation as she showed me a selection of silk scarves I discovered that she had studied a bit of English in school and liked to listen to English-language pop music. She was big on Britney Spears and Whitney Huston. I tried to find out if it was possible to hire a car at the hotel, as there were some trips I would like to make, but she didn’t seem to understand. “Sorry, my English very poor,” she kept saying. Finally she called someone on her cell phone. “My friend—she speak English. She come now.” Her friend, a Uighur woman in her mid-twenties, arrived in ten minutes. She was the proprietor of another nearby gift shop which sold carpets. As she tried her best to sell me a carpet I grilled her in English. She spoke a little more than the Chinese girl, but not much. She did understood that I needed someone to guide me around Khotan. She called a friend of hers on her cell phone.

Her friend, another Uighur woman in her early-twenties, arrived in five minutes. She also spoke only a little bit of English. She explained that she did speak fairly fluent Japanese, which she had learned at a language institute in Urumqi, and that she worked as a guide for Japanese tourist groups who came through Khotan. Japanese were by far the most numerous of the foreign visitors to Khotan, she said. They were big buyers of silk carpets and were not afraid to spend their money. She could not help but wonder what I was doing here by myself. No foreigners ever came to Khotan by themselves, she claimed. She kept apologizing for her poor English, which wasn’t all that bad, but added that she knew a young man who was going to a university in Urumqi but was home for the summer and that he spoke very good English and sometimes worked as a guide.

She called him and he arrived ten minutes later. His name was Anwar. He was tall and thin, with shoulder-length black hair, long moustache, and aviator sunglasses. He did indeed speak pretty good English. I explained that I wanted to go to some places in the countryside outside of Khotan, one of them being the Rawak Stupa. “Ah,” he said, “that is a problem. The Rawak Stupa is a Class A historical monument and no one is allowed to there without a guide from the local museum to make sure they don’t damage or steal anything.” And where is the museum I wondered, explaining that I had been unable to find it. The museum, it turns out, had just moved to a brand-new building in a different part of town from the old museum. Anyhow, I wanted to visit Rawak Stupa. Could he arrange it? Anwar called the museum, talked to the curator, who also serves as the guide to restricted sites, and found out that he was free at the moment and would be able to accompany me to Rawak Stupa this morning, for a fee of course. He could also arrange for a four-wheel drive vehicle to drive to the site, which he said was in the Taklamakan Desert about forty kilometers north of Khotan city. He added that we would have to walk the final three or four kilometers to the stupa.

The curator was in his mid-thirties. He had studied for several years in Canada and spoke almost perfect English. He even had a valid USA visa but was not able to use it because he had to return to Khotan to look after his ailing father. As we drive northward from Khotan I discovered that he had read in English the accounts of all the great Western explorers of the region, including Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin. He added his museum was very interested in organizing trips to places of historical or cultural interest in the Khotan region, either by jeep, horse, or camel.

Location of Rawak Stupa. See Enlargement of Map

About ten miles north of the city center the Khotan oasis, lush fields of corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and melons divided by rows of poplar trees abruptly ends. After a couple of miles of gravelly flats the sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert begin. A mile or so into the desert is a checkpoint with a chain across the road to stop unauthorized access to the stupa site. The curator has a key to the lock.

After five or so more miles the sand trail ends and we set off on foot around the sand dunes. After about two miles we come to the stupa. The curator says that it was built circa 150 A.D. It was probably abandoned before the arrival of the Islamic Turks in the late tenth century. The Hungarian-born archeologist Aurel Stein rediscovered the stupa half buried in the drifting sands in 1901, as he describes in his Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan.

Dunes of the Taklamakan Desert on the way to the stupa

Dunes . . .

The Rawak Stupa

Another view of the Rawak Stupa

Some of the holes in the side of the stupa have been made by treasure-hunters in the last five years or so, despite the efforts of local officials to guard the site.

Ancient streambed near the stupa. This river, which flowed north from the Kun Lun Mountains, no doubt provided the water for the inhabitants of the stupa complex. The curator has no idea when the river went dry.

See More Photos of Rawak

China | Xinjiang Province | Khotan | Shambhala

The Tarim Basin as Shambhala. See Enlargement of Map

Edwin Bernbaum, in his book The Way to Shambhala, states:

Of all the regions of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin southwest of Turpan . . . comes closest in size and shape to Tibetan descriptions of Shambhala. A huge oval-shaped area enclosed by the Kunlun, Pamir, and Tien Shan ranges, it could be viewed as an enormous lotus blossom surrounded by a ring of snow mountains. The small kingdoms that have existed side by side in the numerous oases sprinkled around the fringes of the basin may well have provided the model for the ninety-six principalities of the outer region of Shambhala. Until shortly before the Kalachakra reached India and Tibet, Buddhism had been flourishing in the Tarim Basin for nearly eight hundred years. During part of that time, caravans following the silk route to China had brought the outside influences of Manicheism and Nestorian Christianity to bear on the development of Buddhist art thought in the area.

Shambhala may have corresponded historically to the Tarim Basin as a whole or to one the major oases such as Yarkand, Kashgar, or Khotan. Some scholars have singled out Khotan the largest and most fertile oasis on the southern rim of the basin. Watered by melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains, it supported a thriving center of Buddhist learning, a people who loved music and culture, and a school of painting that impressed the Chinese and influenced Tibetan art. According to an old Khotanese tradition, an Indian prince of the third century B.C., who was blinded by rivals, fled his homeland to cross the intervening mountains and found a local dynasty in Khotan. Archeological finds show that Indians did, in fact, colonize the oasis around that time. According to a Tibetan legend about the founding of Shambhala, a member of Buddha’s clan, called Shakya Shambha, was forced by enemies to flee north from India. After crossing many mountains, he came to a land that the conquered and that later became known after him as “Shambhala.” Because of its similarity, the Tibetan legend may have come from the Khotanese tradition, suggesting a possible link between the hidden kingdom and Khotan.

Read more of Edwin Bernbaum’s The Way to Shambhala:

According to another legend Buddhism reached Khotan during the reign of Indian emperor Ashoka (r. ca. 268¬239 B.C.). Historical and archeological evidence would seem to indicate the first century A.D., however. In any case, Khotan may well be the first place that Buddhism was introduced into what is now the country of China. The first Buddhists probably reached Khotan by two different routes; eastward across the Hindu Kush and Pamirs mountains from what is now Afghanistan, and the more direct route northward from Kashmir in India across the Karakorum and Kun Lun Mountains. At first the Sarvastivadin school of Buddhism took hold here; by the fourth Mahayana Buddhism was prevalent. The Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien, who arrived here in the early fifth century, noted:

Yu-teen [Yutian, the old Chinese name for Khotan] is a pleasant and prosperous kingdom, with a numerous and flourishing population. The inhabitants all profess our Law [Buddhism], and join together in its religious music for their enjoyment. The monks amount to several myriads, most of whom are students of the Mahayana. They all receive their food from the common store . . . They make (in the monasteries) rooms for monks from all quarters, the use of which is given to traveling monks who may arrive, and who are provided with whatever else they may require.

Fa-Hien stayed at Gomati Monastery, which was home to 3000 monks. He also says:

Seven or eight li to the west of the city there is what is called the King’s New Monastery, the building of which took eighty years, and extended over three reigns. It may be 250 cubits in height, rich in elegant carving and inlaid work covered with gold and silver, and finished throughout with a combination of all the precious substances. Behind the tope there has been built a Hall of Buddha, doors, and windows being overlaid with gold-leaf. Besides this, the apartments for the monks are imposingly and elegantly decorated, beyond the power of words to express. Of whatever things of highest value and preciousness the kings of the six countries on the east of the (Ts’ung) range of mountains are possessed, they contribute the greater portion (to this monastery), using but a small portion of them themselves.

As already noted, Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang also visited Khotan in 644.

Vajrayana Buddhism was introduced into Khotan in the seventh century. The use of Sanskrit was also prevalent in Khotan. Thus Khotan has been posited by some commentators as the possible source of the Kalachakra Tantra, which was originally written in Sanskit. According to tradition the Kalachakra was brought to India from Shambhala in 966 A.D. In the 980s and 990s Khotan was overran by Turkish Moslem armies who destroyed the Buddhist temples and converted the area to Islam. According to one scenario the Kalachakra Tantra was brought to India by monks from who were escaping the Moslem onslaught on Khotan. Thus Khotan was synonymous with Shambhala, the realm were the Kalachakra was originally practiced.

China | Xinjiang Province | Khotan | Melikawat

On his way back from India to China the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang passed through Kashmir and then entered the Pamir Mountains. He would have went right by 24,388-foot Muztagh-Ata, the second highest peak in the Pamirs. In 1999 I traced his path from Muztagh-Ata to Kashgar.

24,388-foot Muztagh-Ata

Xuanzang claimed that there was a stupa on the top of Muztagh-Ata built in memory of an arhat who had lived in a trance since the time of the Buddha. This was almost certainly a legend only.

The River Gez where it debouches into the Tarim Basin

From the plateau around Muztagh-Ata he dropped down into the Tarim Basin via the canyon of the Gez River and moved on to Kashgar, where at that time, in 644 A.D., there were still hundreds of monasteries, most of them followers of the Hinayana school.

The Pamirs from the road to Kashgar

Two weeks after leaving Kashgar by camel he arrived in Khotan. Xuanzang:

This country is renowned for its music; the men love the song and dance. Few of them wear garments of skin and wool; most wear taffeta and white linen. Their external behavior is full of urbanity; their customs are properly regulated. Their written characters and their mode of forming their sentences resemble the Indian model; the forms of the letters differ somewhat; the differences, however, are slight. The spoken language also differs from that of other countries. They greatly esteem the law of the Buddha. There are about a hundred sangharamas with some 5000 followers, who all study the doctrince of the Great Vehicle.

Xuanzang mentions that about 10 li south of the city there was a monastery built in honor of Vairochana. In Xuanzang’s time the city of Khotan itself was located at a place now known as Yoktan, about ten kilometers south of the current city. This old city is now completely covered with cultivated fields and no ruins remain. About 25 kilometers south of the modern city are found the ruins of a monastery now known to Uighurs as Melikawat. Thus is it possible that Melikawat are the ruins of the monastery mentioned by Xuanzang. Although I was warned that only a few broken down walls remained of the Melikawat monastery I hired a cab and went out to take a look. The dirt road follows the Khotan, or White Jade River, as it is also known, south. The Khotan River begins in the Kun Lun Mountains on the border between Tibet and Xinjiang and flows north across the Taklamakan Desert to the Tarim River, although it often dries up completely before actually reaching the Tarim. The river supplies most of the water for the very extensive irrigation system around the Khotan oasis (some water comes from wells).

People have been searching for jade in the Khotan River for at the very least the last two thousand years and continue to do so today. Reportedly only a few kilos of top-quality jewelry-grade jade are found a year, although low grade jade, not good enough for jewelry, is sold rather cheaply. I bought two hen’s egg-sized chunks of jade, one black and one white, from jade hunters on the river bank for ten yuan a piece.

The Khotan River can just be seen on the upper left hand corner of the photo. To the right can be seen the spoil from 2000 years of digging through the river gravels in the search for jade.

Jade hunter on the Khotan River
Ruins of Melikawat Monastery

Ruins of Melikawat Monastery

Ruins of Melikawat Monastery

The monastery was probably destroyed around 980-1000 A.D. when the area was invaded by Turkish Moslems.

See More Photos of Melikawat and a brief History of Buddhism in Khotan

China | Xinjiang Province | Khotan | Carpet Factory

After my visit to the silk factory I decided to have lunch. Right near my hotel was a small restaurant which seemed to be doing a lot of business. I went in, took a seat, and when the waitress came I ordered laghman, perhaps of the most famous dish in the Uighur culinary repertoire. Laghman consists of long spaghetti-like hand-pulled noodles, usually made on the premises, covered with a thick tomato-based stew of vegetables and mutton. I always order laghman because it is like ordering a hamburger in the States. Any ordinary restaurant is bound to have it. After the waitress took my order and left for the kitchen a woman sitting at a table across the room starting talking to me in Uighur, which I did not understand, but I did recognize the word “American.” Then she asked me in Chinese if I was an American. I said I was, and she then announced this in a loud voice to the whole room. When the waitress came out of the kitchen she also told her that I was American. The waitress had a pot of tea in her hand, presumably for me, but instead of serving it just glared at me and sat the pot on another table. So I was left without tea, usually something you are served automatically in Uighur restaurants. Some people came in, sat down near me, and also ordered laghman. The waitress went into the kitchen and brought out their orders of laghman immediately. After about ten minutes I called her over and asked, “laghman?” She just glared at me and walked away. Another group came in and ordered laghman. Again the waitress went into the kitchen and immediately brought them out their orders. I sat for another twenty minutes, during which time I was studiously ignored by all the other diners, and still I got no laghman. Obviously I was not going to be served, not even tea, so I got up and left.

A hundred yards down the road was another small restaurant. I went in and sat down and a big, beefy Uighur guy with a shaved head and skullcap came over and sat down a pot of tea. Again I ordered laghman. He gave me a hard stare and asked in Chinese where I was from. I said America. He shouted, “America? Bush! Pakistan! Bush! Pakistan! Bush! Pakistan!” Every time he said the word “Bush” he made a cutting gesture across his throat. Finally he shouted something and pointed to the door. He was clearly ordered me out of his restaurant.

Here I must backtrack a little. When I had arrived at the airport I went outside and got a taxi driven by a local Uighur man. It was clear he did not speak any English, but I indicated by sign language—the universal rubbing of fingers together to indicate “how much?” that I wanted to know the fare and he answered in what I thought was the Chinese sign language for ten. That seemed reasonable, as it was only about four or five kilometers to town. As soon was we pulled away from the curb he started talking in Uighur but when I did not answer switched to Chinese. He named a couple of European countries, and then America, clearing asking where I was from. I said America. He started shouting “Bush! Pakistan! Bush! Pakistan” over and over again. Each time he said the word “Bush” he also made a cutting gesture across his throat. He got more and more irate and for a moment I thought he was going to dump me off by the side of the road. Finally we got to my hotel. I handed him a ten yuan note. He shouted something at me and tried to grab a hundred yuan note out of my wallet. He clearly wanted a hundred yuan for the 10 minute trip into town. This was an outrage. I handed him a twenty yuan note and started to walk away. He jumped in front of me and started shouting again. I handed him another ten, for a total of thirty yuan, and brushed by, leaving him ranting and hopping mad in front of the hotel. I later found out that the correct fare for a trip from the airport to my hotel was in fact ten or at most fifteen yuan .

So now I was in this restaurant and again a guy was yelling ”Bush! Pakistan!” over and over again. Since he was clearly showing me the door I left. Nearby was a small stand selling hot Uighur flat bread—nan—for half a yuan a piece. I bought two of these and went back to my hotel and had a lunch of nan and Dragon Well green tea which I had had the foresight to bring from Beijing.

So what, I wondered, was the deal with Pakistan? I could understand the local Uighurs, who are after all Moslems, ranting about Bush, but why where they singling out Pakistan and not the more obvious targets of Iraq and Afghanistan? I put this mystery out of my mind for the moment and headed for the carpet factory.

Here, it was clear, I was just a potential paying customer, my nationality not an issue. A friendly Uighur woman who spoke a little bit of English explained to me what was going on. Although they made the silk carpets here for which Khotan is so famous, at the moment they were making only wool carpets. They use both Chinese and Uighur designs. A 1.2 x 1.8 meter wool carpet takes two people two months to make. A 3.3 x 4 meter carpet takes five people two months to make. A mammoth 15 by 20 meter (50 by 65 feet) carpet, one of the largest ever made here, and now on the wall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, took fifteen people four months to make. In the sales room (where, curiously, photography was not allowed) I was shown a 4.3 by 6.8 meter (14 by 22 feet) carpet selling for 20,000 yuan ($2400). This was wool of course. Silk carpets are much, much more expensive. A four-by-six-foot silk carpet could easily sell for $6000-$8000 even here in the factory. Back in Urumqi, in the carpet store at the Provincial Museum, I was shown a 14 by 22 inch rug (that’s inches, mind you) that was selling for a whopping 48,000 yuan $5800). This was a 1200 knots per inch—the highest quality—with a very special design. Obviously this small piece was intended as a wall hanging, a work of art, and not a carpet to be trod on; it was barely big enough to serve as a door mat.

Women working in the carpet factory

Women working in the carpet factory

Woman working in the carpet factory

Woman working in the carpet factory

Even back in Beijing I had been informed by knowledgeable people that the women in Khotan are renowned all over Xinjiang for their beauty. My friend, a Uighur from Ili, in northern Xinjiang, could not keep a note of envy, even jealousy, out of her voice when talking about the women of Khotan. Such eyes! Like amber and obsidian! Such hair! Like Khotanese silk (of course)! Such eyebrows! Like young willow leaves! Such straight noses! Like carved from jade! Such lips! Like ripe pomegranates! Such breasts! Like Hami melons! she kept raving. All Xinjiang men want a woman from Khotan, she claimed. Xuanzang, the Chinese monk who visited here in 644, was noticeably silent on this issue, however. Marco Polo also visited Khotan, in the thirteenth century, and although he had much to say about the women of Hami—another town in Xinjiang—who were renowned for their unbridled sensuality, if not necessarily for their beauty, apparently none in Khotan caught his fancy, or at least none that he cared to write about. Hami is now more famous for its legendarily sweet, succulent, breast-like melons.

Khotanese beauty working in the carpet factory. Note the young-willow-leaf-like eyebrows and carved-from-jade-like nose.

Another Khotanese beauty working in the carpet factory. Note the amber-and-obsidian-like eyes.

China | Xinjiang Province | Khotan | Silk Factory

See Enlargement of Map

From Urumqi I winged southward across the Taklamakan Desert to Khotan, on the southern rim of the huge Tarim Basin. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim and inveterate gadabout Xuanzang visited Khotan in 644 A.D. during his 15-or-so-year sojourn from China to India and back and left the following account of what was then the kingdom of Khotan:

This country is about 4000 li in circuit; the greater part is nothing but sand and gravel; the arable portion is very contracted. What land there is, is suitable for regular cultivation, and produces an abundance of fruits. The manufactures are carpets, haircloth of the highest quality, and fine-woven silken fabrics. Moreover, it produces white and green jade. The climate is soft and agreeable, but there are tornadoes which bring with them clouds of flying gravel. They [the residents of the country] have a knowledge of politeness and justice. The men are naturally quiet and respectful. They love to study literature and the arts, in whch they make considerable advance. The people live in easy circumstances, and are contented with their lot.

To this day the products of Khotan have not changed much. Silk, carpets, and jade remain the city’s chief attractions. First I checked out the Silk Factory.

Silk worm cocoons.

Now about 40% of the raw silk cocoons are imported from Pakistan. Each cocoon, when unwound, contains about a one-kilometer-long length of silk filament.

Closer view of the silk cocoons.

The cocoons are heated over fires to kill the worm within, and then boiled to loosen the filaments. Then a mass of filaments are gathered together and twisted into one silk thread.

The silk thread runs from through the gadget in the middle to the foot-trundle powered spindle run by the woman on the left.

Spindle of pure silk thread

Pure silk thread

The main product of this factory is so-called atalas silk. The silk is tie-dyed using either chemical dyes or natural dyes made from local plants and minerals and then woven into four-meter-long lengths which can be used to make dresses, etc. The loom above is using chemically dyed thread.

Naturally dyed atalas silk

Silk loom run by resident gray-beard

Huge skeins of dyed silk in the factory showroom. The naturally dyed silk is much more expensive than the chemically dyed version. One four-meter-length of chemically dyed atalas silk costs about 250 yuan ($30), while the naturally dyed version cost about 600 yuan ($72). These are the prices at the factory. Even the stores in Khotan itself charge much more, and in Urumqi the price is typically doubled, although of course hard bargaining can knock the price down considerably.

See More Silk Factory Photos