China | Gansu Province | Ja Lama

As I mentioned earlier, while standing on the top of the Ruayuan Gate of the Jiayuguan Fort I could see the black ridges of the Mazong (Horse’s Mane) Mountains on the horizon far off to the north. This is not the first time I have seen the Mazong Shan. A few years ago I made a ten-day camel trip from near the town of Shinjinst in Bayankhongor Aimag of Mongolia to Segs Tsagaan Bogd Uul, the most sacred mountain of the central Gobi, From the summit 7101-foot summit of Segs Tsagaan Bogd Uul, seventeen miles north of the Chinese border, we could see straight across the so-called Black Gobi to ridges of the Mazong Shan on the horizon almost a hundred miles away. Actually, it was at that time that I decided that I must someday try to visit the Mazong Shan here in Gansu Province.

On the northern side of the Mazong Shan was located the fortress of the legendary Adventurer-Visionary-Bandit Dambijantsan, a.k.a., the Ja Lama, Dambija, Toushegoun Lama, False Lama, Avenger Lama, etc.

Ja Lama

It was here that the Ja Lama was killed by Bolshevik assassins in late 1923 or early 1924. We had already heard much about the Ja Lama on our journey to Segs Tsagaan Bogd Uul. Two days earlier we had passed through the Oasis of Ekhin Gol which he had once made his headquarters while extracting tribute from camel caravans on the nearby Shar Zam, the Yellow Road to Beijing and Lhasa. A elderly woman living now at the oasis is the daughter of one of the Ja Lama’s lieutenants. Locals say that when he first came to this oasis he found Chinese from Gansu province growing opium poppies in the fertile soil around the oasis’s numerous springs (the oasis is now famous throughout Mongolian for its tomatoes; it is probably the only place in Mongolia where you are served tomato juice instead of milk tea when visiting a ger). The Ja Lama hated both drugs and Chinese, and he promptly killed all the opium growers and destroyed their opium poppies.

Later forced out of Mongolia he moved his headquarters to just north of the Mazong Shan in Gansu Province, where he built an elaborate fortress. In the late 1920s and early 1930, after the False Lama’s death, several Western travelers visited the ruins of the fortress, including Owen Lattimore, Henning Haslund, Sven Hedin, and the Roerichs, père and fils. Perhaps the most detailed account is given by Owen Lattimore in his classic The Desert Road to Turkestan.
In 1926 Lattimore traveled by camel caravan from Hohhot in Inner Mongolia to Qitai on the northern side of the Tian Shan in Xinjiang. The usual southern caravan routes through the Gansu Corridor to Xinjiang were almost impossible to travel on at the time because of both the civil war then raging between various armies in the area and an infestation of bandits due to the breakdown of law and order. The northern caravan routes through Mongolia were also blocked either by the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia or marauding tribesmen who had not yet recognized communist rule. Lattimore was forced to take the so-called Winding Road through the heart of the Black Gobi, north of the regular Gansu corridor routes and south of the Mongolian routes, a region so barren and waterless that armies and even bandits shunned it. The Ja Lama was of course right at home in such surroundings. The Winding Road passed right his fortress.Wrote Lattimore:

The way I followed is in the main an ancient road to which the caravans have turned again only in latter years, because they have been barred from other roads by the troubles that increasingly possess Central and Eastern Asia. It is also one of the very few of the ancient roads that are not likely to change with the shifting world, because of the deserts in which it is hid, the lack of water that fends off campaigning armies, and the huge sands that debar the approach of carts and motor cars. The new world in its time will travel by its new railways and motor roads; but the Winding Road, as it is called, will not be shaped by their use. It will pass out of its own immemorial use into honorable oblivion, guarded by the wilderness.

Lattimore’s Chinese caravan left Hohhot on August 20, 1926 and at first followed the Small Mongolian Road, one of the main caravan routes to Xinjiang. On September 10 they turned off onto the Winding Road. They crossed the western branch of the Etsin Gol on October 10 and entered the notorious Black Gobi, the most desolate stretch of the entire Gobi Desert. This is the area I had seen from the top of Segs Tsagaan Bogd Uul in Bayankhongor Aimag.

On October 21 they reached Ho-shao Ching, or Well of the Hoshun, where the east-west running Winding Road was met by a north-south route from what Lattimore calls Yen Beise Monastery in Mongolia. This is actually Amarbuyant Monastery in what is now Bayankhongor Aimag of Mongolia. The year after I visited Segs Saikhan Bogd Uul I followed this Caravan Route by Camel from Amarbuyant Khiid 105 miles South to Shar Khuls Oasis, which at one time had also been one of the Ja Lama’s camps. This is also the route taken by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1904 when he came to Mongolia after the Younghusband invasion of Tibet in 1904. The Roerichs took the same route south in the late 1920s. This is still an exceeding remote area. In the six days we took to cover the 105 miles from Amarbuyant Khiid to Shar Khuls Oasis by camel we—three Bayankhongor camel men, one of the camel men’s wife as cook, a Translator, and myself—did not see another human being or a single head of livestock. The Roerichs continued on from Shar Khuls Oasis and crossed the Black Gobi, probably joining the Winding Road at Ho-shao Ching Well.

A day later, on October 22, Lattimore’s caravan entered an east-west trending depression. Lattimore wrote:

In the depths of it is an unknown oasis, and there, on a knot of reddish rubbly hills, looking to Outer Mongolia over the yellow reed beds of the largest mere, are the strangest ruins I ever saw. They might in all seeming be ‘half as old as time,’ yet many who had a hand in their building are still alive. This deserted citadel in the vacant domain . . . is all that stands, except the confused story that is on the tongues of a few men who spend their lives tramping up and down the desert, of the works of the Ja Lama. It is from these ruins that the mere is called Kung-p’o Ch’üan—the Spring of the Hillside of the Duke.

Written Pinyin-style Kung-p’o Ch’üan would be Gongpoquan. A quick look at a map of Gansu Province revealed a town north of the Mazong Shan named Gongpoquan linked by a secondary road to the main road from Jiayuguan to Hami. Another secondary road continued west from Gongpoquan, linking up again with the main Jiayuguan road inside of Xinjiang. I seriously doubted if there was any public transportation to a place as far off the beaten path as this, and given its proximity to the Mongolian border I suspected that foreigners might need some kind of permit to go there. In my experience, only travel agents, and not individuals, especially foreign individuals, can get these kind of permits. Jiayuguan’s only travel agent was, conveniently, located in a rather dingy building right behind the Jiayuguan hotel. The woman in charge was in her thirties, spoke very good English, and seemed quite eager to help me. Actually she herself had never even heard of Gongpoquan, but she made a few phone calls and located a driver who had been there. He said the road from Qiamen, on the main Jiayuquan-Hami highway north to the town of Mazong Shan—not indicated on any map I had—was good, but for the next thirty miles or so to Gongpoquan the road was unpaved and a jeep or land cruiser might be needed. He himself had a four-wheel drive jeep and was willing to go. He added, however, that there were several checkpoints on the road maintained by the border police, and he was not sure foreigners were allowed to go there. He did agree to come and pick me and take me to the Border Police headquarters for the region, which was not in Jiayuguan but in the city of Jinquan, ten miles to the east. The woman at the travel agency wrote out a request for a permit on her company letterhead and the driver and I took proceeded to Jinquan. We were led into an office where we presented our papers to the officer in charge. He took one look at the letter from the travel agent and pronounced, “This is a closed area. No foreigners are allowed to go to Gongpoquan.” The driver, seeing a lucrative jeep trip slipping away (I had promised him 1800 yuan if we could do the trip), tried to argue with him, but from the stony look on the officer’s face I could see he was not going to get anywhere. He called the travel agent on his mobile and had her speak with the officer but the result was the same. It was clear we were not going to get a permit. Neither the driver or the travel agent would speculate on why this area was closed.

Thus the current state of the Ja Lama’s fortress remains a mystery, and we must make do with the descriptions from the 1920s and 30s provided by Lattimore and others. According to Lattiimore:

The fortified quarter is built partly of mud bricks, partly of mud and stone, and partly of uncemented boulders and slabs of rocks. On the easy hillside just under it are the foundations of a temple, because men do not build in a wilderness without making a houses either for the spirit of the place or for the gods they bring with them. This temple was been utterly razed, because it would never have done to allow the ghost of so dangerous a man as the Ja Lama to come back to a house already prepared and the converse of assembled powers. The main gate of the fortress is entered sideways by a ramp, and opens into a wide lower court with stabling, or rather shelter yards, and garrison quarters. This is overlooked by one of the side walls by a tower which, with a gallery connecting it with the upper works and the keep, was designed for the central defense. The crown of the knoll is a rats’ delight of a place, a maze of passages like tunnels and stairways like wells, and rooms and cells locked and piled and nested one within the other without any regularity or plan. From the looks of things the man who planned this place was a Mongol, with no idea of how to go about the making of walls and roofs.

The core of the whole is the keep where lived the False Lama himself. This room, which was furnished with the luxury of a sleeping k’ang heated by flues, has been wildly knocked about, even the brick and stone k’ang having been pulled to pieces in the search for the tyrant’s treasure. All the buildings have been unroofed and most of the floors in buildings of more than one story have been destroyed, partly in the search for treasure and partly to free any spirits that might have gathered in the living places of men . . . In the fortress itself there is a cramped and sinister feeling. I did not feel happy. Withered in the light of the noonday sun almost to the dingy color of the hill on which they stood, and lying so empty and quiet in that utter emptiness of marsh and hill, brief patches of living land and long stretches of desolation, the rifled ruins seem to be oppressed by something uncanny. I did not wonder that the few frequenters of the wilderness should avoid them and whatever ghost they harbor.

There is a persistent legend that the House of the Ja Lama, as Lattimore calls the fort is cursed. Other Western travelers who visited the site in the decade after the Ja Lama’s death also hinted at the haunted nature of the place. And now the fort is in a restricted area where foreigners can no longer go. Is the Curse still in effect?

While most Chinese-produced tourist ephemera about the area maintains that the word mazong in Mazong Shan mean “horses mane,” the Chinese camel men with Lattimore in 1926 said that it meant “horse’s hoof” (Lattimore himself spoke Chinese like a native). In a later edition of The Desert Road to Turkestan he speculated that mazong was in fact a corruption of the Mongolian word metsin, which he claims means a kind of ape. There were indeed many legends of wild hairy apemen living in these mountains. The more familiar Mongolian word for these legendary creatures is almas. “In other words,” concludes Lattimore, “what we have here is an extension . . . of the folklore world of the Fabulous Abominable Snowman of Tibet.” As soon as I get back to Mongolia I will ask my Mongolian Language Expert about the derivation of the world metsin. In the meantime one must wonder if almas still haunt this areas and if this is the real reason the area is closed to foreigners . . .

China | Gansu Province | Jiayuguan | Ming Fort

Jiayuguan Fort is located on a terrace between the Wenshu Mountains on the south and the Heishan (Mountains) on the north, 4.2 miles from the Overhanging Wall.

Wall from the Overhanging Wall to the Fort

The fort was built in 1362 under the command of Ming General Feng Sheng. The craftsman in charge of construction, Yi Kaizhan, ordered all the material needed in advance, and according to legend his planning was so meticulous that when the fort was completed there was only one brick left over. During Ming times the fort marked the westernmost point of Celestial Kingdom, and because many of the various branches of the Silk Road funneled through here the location became known as the “Greatest Pass Under Heaven.”

Jiayuguan FortThe walls of the fort are thirty-five feet high and 3406 feet around the perimeter.
View from instead the Fort

On the eastern side of the fort is the three-storied Guang-hua Men Gate (Gate of Enlightenment). On the western side is the 56-foot-high Rouyuan Men (Gate of Reconciliation), added to the fort in 1506 by General Duanroheng. Those who passed through this gate were leaving China and entering the desolate land of the barbarians. Traders and adventurers who went voluntarily hoped to gain fortune or fame, but for those who went involuntarily passing through the Rouyuan Gate was their worst nightmare.

The Rouyuan Gate

Disgraced officials sent into exile, condemned criminals, fugitives, desperados, and homeless drifters all crossed here into the empty desert beyond. It was the custom for those leaving to write on the walls of the Gate poems expressing their feelings as they left the familiar world of China for the Unknown. Many were the heart-rending tales told here. Also, after passing through the Rouyuan Gate it as a custom for travelers to throw a stone at the western wall of the fort. According to legend, if the stone bounced off the wall the traveler would someday return to China. If the stone hitting the wall also made an echo one’s affair would prosper. If the stone simply fell noiselessly to the ground after hitting the wall one was destined to die in the wilderness beyond.

From the top of the Rouyuan Gate, beyond the much lower Wenshu Mountains in the foreground, can be seen the glacier-capped 18,000 foot-plus Qilian Mountains. To the north, beyond the Heishan, are the black ridges of the Mazong (Horse’s Mane) Mountains, with peaks up to 7500 feet-high.

Another view of the Great Wall from the Fort to the Wenshu Mountain in the near distance.

China | Gansu Province | Jiayuguan | Great Wall

From Beijing I took one of the morning planes to Lanzhou, on the Yellow River in eastern Gansu, 704 miles to the west, and then caught the afternoon puddle-jumper on to Jiayuguan, 369 miles still farther west.

Lanzhou, on the Yellow River

In Jiayuguan I wanted to check out the possibility of making a trip to the Mazong (Horse’s Mane) Mountains to the north and Gobi Desert beyond.

The bus from the airport was not running—there were only about thirty people on the small plane and most of them seemed to be locals who were met at the airport by acquaintances. I had to take a cab for the six-mile trip into town. The cab driver was a woman in her mid-twenties. She delivered me to the Jiayuguan Hotel on the main city square and insisted on carrying my bag inside. I had read that the Jiayuguan Hotel was a dump and was going to stay there only because it was conveniently located. The accounts must have been written before a recent upgrade. The place now is quite up-scale and all the receptionists and even some of the waitresses in the restaurant speak English. The listed price reflected the upgrade—400 yuan for a standard room; more than the venerable Yong An, where I stay in Beijing—but this price was quickly lowered to 200 yuan when I showed signs of heading for the door. Mid-April is the off-season in Jiayuguan. All the while the cab driver was hovering by my elbow. Speaking through one of the receptionists she then offered to take me the next morning to the two most famous local sights—the westernmost extension of the Great Wall of China and the Jiayuguan Fort, on the western edge of town. A price was arrived at and we agreed to meet at nine the next morning.

There was some kind of settlement here in this wide corridor between the Qilian Mountains to the north and the Mazong Mountains to the north since at least Han times some two thousand years ago. More than a thousand tombs dating from the Wei (220-265) and Western Jin ((265-316) dynasties are scattered around the surrounding desert. During the Ming Dynasty the fort here marked the western limits of the Chinese Empire. The Great Wall, starting far to the east at Shanhaiguan on the Bohai Gulf, ended here, and in 1372 a fort was built to guard the border. The nearby town become knowns as “Jiayuguan,” which means “Barrier of the Pleasant Valley.” The city now has a population of some 115,000. Cement and fertilizer factories dominate the town, and iron ore and coking coal are mined in the nearby mountains. Although nowhere near as famous a tourist attraction as Dunhuang, some five hours by bus to the south, a fair amount of tourists stop by to see the Great Wall, the fort, and a smattering of other local sights. All serous Silk Roadies make an obligatory stop here because of its importance as a way-station on the Silk Road.

The day I arrived it had been very overcast and I was not able to be see much of the surrounding area either on the plane’s approach or on the drive into town. The next morning I was a bit startled when I drew back the curtains and beheld the glacier-capped 18,000 foot-plus Qilian Mountains dominating the entire southern horizon.

Qilian Mountains from Downtown Jaiyuguan

The town itself is at an elevation of 5385 feet. In the foreground to the south were in the much lower buckskin colored Wenshu Mountains. It was these mountains to the south and the Heishan to the immediate north and the Mazong beyond that funneled many of the various caravan routes of the Silk Road through this area. That is why during the Ming Dynasty this place was called “The Greatest Pass Under Heaven.”

The driver was right on time the next morning. Her name is Chan. She is in her late twenties I would say, very thin, with a finely chiseled face. I quickly discovered she did not speak a single word of English. For someone who works with the public she seemed intensely shy—or maybe she was just shy around foreigners. She would glance at me out of the corner of her eyes for a microsecond and than intently stare straight ahead, as if she had seen something she really shouldn't have. Our first stop is the so-called Overhanging Wall section of the Great Wall, 6.2 miles from the hotel on the city square. From the fort, 4.2 miles away, the Wall runs across flat desert and ends at the top of a high hill.

The Overhanging Wall

Beyond here the rugged ridges of the Heishan form a natural barrier. A wall was built here probably as early as the Han Dynasty some 2000 years ago but the current version dates from the Ming Dynasty.

The Overhanging Wall

After the fall of Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in 1368 a Ming army led by General Feng Sheng drove the last of the Mongol armies from the region. The existing wall was upgraded and new sections built in an attempt to prevent any further Mongol incursions. The pounded earth wall from the fort to the Overhanging Wall appears to be more-or-less the original version, but the brick section climbing up the spine of the mountain appears to have undergone extensive restoration.

The Overhanging Wall

Nearby is a newly installed suite of granite statues depicting various travelers, pilgrims, and generals who have filed through Jiayuguan over the ages.
Among the more notable is Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, who some sources claim made the first recorded trip through Jiayuguan in the fifth century BC. Lao Tzu was of course the author of record of the Dao De Qing, the seminal text of Taoism. Discouraged that so few people were willing to follow his teachings of The Way he mounted his black buffalo and rode westward. Here at Jiayuguan he left China proper and disappeared into the wilderness beyond and hence into legend. That he was supposedly between 160 and 200 years old when he made the trip brings the historicity of this whole account into question.

Lao Tzu

There is no doubt about the historicity of Xuanzang, the peripatetic pilgrim who passed this way around 630 on his way from Xian in Shaanxi Province to India. I have visited numerous places in Xuanzang’s itinerary, including Lanzhou in eastern Gansu Province; Turpan and Khotan in Xinjiang, Bodhgaya, site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, nearby Vulture's Peak, where the Buddha taught, and the great Buddhist university of Nalanda, all in India; the Big Goose Pagoda in Xian where the Buddhist texts he brought back from India were stored, and his tomb at Xingjiao Temple near Xian.

Peripatetic Pilgrim Xuanzang with his panier of sutras brought back from India

Near the statue complex is Jiayuguan’s only Buddhist temple, which has recently been restored.

Temple

Nearby is another section of wall which is being restored and is not open to the public. When I expressed a desire to see it Ms. Chan took a dirt road to the base of the mountain and then led me up an extremely steep narrow foot path which ended at an opening in the wall where the workmen gained access. I had to admire her pluckiness. She was wearing street shoes and had to climb several of the steep sections of the trail on her hands and knees.

View of the Overhanging Wall, with Buddhist Temple at bottom left

We climbed onto the top of the wall, where several workmen were repairing the brick steps, and proceeded upwards. Ms. Chan really seemed to be enjoying herself. She whooped and hollered as we climbed higher and new vistas were presented to us.

The charming Ms. Chan taking a breather

I got the impression that she had been on the lower part of the wall where the workman were but had never before climbed to the top.

Climbing to the to Beacon Tower

From the tower we were presented with a sweeping view of the mountains to the north and south and the corridor between them which made this place so strategically important.

The Greatest Pass Under Heaven