#63: Did Genghis Khan Lose His Organ (oops!) in China?
15 October 2002
Theme parks are not my taste and so I did none of that. I visited the Muslim quarter of Hohhot with its wonderful street food, and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region Museum with its interesting display of relics relating to the nomads of the Eurasian plains as well as ethnography of this region, which is not only inhabited by Hans and Mongols, but also a diverse range of desert and forest tribes, some of whom related to other smallish Shamanist groups in Siberia.
The museum was great, except that you have to get used to that ridiculous talk of class struggle (which is so ironical given China’s state of affairs today – a capitalist dictatorship pretending to be communist) among the nomads and farmers of Inner Mongolia and pictures of happy, contented “minority ethnic groups”, who seemed more interested in dancing and singing.
Relations between Han Chinese and other ethnic groups in China have often been mixed, rather than the happy images portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party, or necessarily the bloody oppressive colonial type relationship featured in Western minds. There are some exceptions, like Tibet and Xinjiang where opposition is met with brutal oppression, but even then the reality is often very complex.
China’s incorporation of border and ethnically diverse regions were hardly the friendly affairs as proclaimed by the CCP nor in many cases pure military conquests as regularly written in Western accounts, but more a confusing mixture of brutal military conquests, officially organized emigration of Han farmers, as well as unintended or even illegal emigration by landless farmers and refugees from wars and disasters, which the authorities did not anticipate and did not tolerate.
It was a process that did not merely take place in the last five decades of communist rule but a continuous trend over the past 3 millenniums of chronicled Chinese history. The southern Chinese today are the result of the human mix between settlers and refugees from northern China, whereas northern Chinese are the result of the original (whatever that means) Chinese inhabitants of the Yellow Valley and the many assimilated invaders – mostly nomadic tribes from the Eurasian plains and Central Asia – who have conquered China many times in Chinese history. Unlike other conquerors elsewhere, those that conquered China tend to witness the demise of their own culture and their subsequent assimilation into Chinese culture. Even the ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia are the result of this continuous process of emigration and assimilation.
Of course, if you have an entrenched preconception of something, everything you see will prove your theory. A Danish tourist I met in Hohhot asked if the uniformed guy who spoke to me at the entrance of the local mosque was a PSB (a kind of political and public order police) trying to prevent foreigners from visiting “oppressed minorities”. In reality, he was a security man who merely told me in a friendly fashion that I have to pay an entrance fee if I wasn’t Muslim. I am sure many tourists in China come across situations like that and simply see it as yet another example of what they have read in the press. The reality is often more complex.
I went on to Dongsheng to visit Genghis Khan’s Mausoleum. Genghis Khan’s actual burial place was a secret – the Mongols were anxious that no one should disturb the graves of their leaders, and all present at the funeral were slaughtered.
But the site of his death, where he died of fever after falling from a horse during his final expedition against the kingdom of Xixia, became a site of pilgrimage and annual ceremonies. Even after the fall of the Mongol-Yuan Dynasty of China, successive rulers of China, including the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as the Kuomintang Republican regime and even the Communists, gave official recognition and support to the founder of the Mongol Empire.
A massive complex stood at the site, with amazing frescoes on the life of Genghis Khan, complete with gers and a large ovoo. A little-known fact is that it was the Japanese invaders during WWII who first planned to build the mausoleum complex on the ceremonial site, which for hundreds of years contained merely 8 gers. They, too, wanted Mongolian support for their empire, but it was the Communists who finally invested in the enormous complex we see today.
I had lunch in a Mongolian restaurant at the site, and used the few Mongolian phrases I have learned in Ulaan Baatar. This earned me a free lunch – the Mongol owners of the restaurants could hardly expect any foreigner or ethnic Chinese to speak even a few words of their language.
From Dongsheng, I hopped onto a pathetic classless bus to Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The Hui people are actually Han Chinese Muslims, and many are also descendants of Arab traders who had settled in China and married local Han Chinese over the past two millennia. They are different from the 9 million Ugyurs, who are Turkic Muslims living in Xinjiang. There are almost 20 million Hui in China, and they have been Muslims even before Islam reached Southeast Asia.
It wasn’t for the Hui that I went to Yinchuan. In the far outskirts of this city – again another mini-Manhattan in what is also one of China’s poorest provinces – were the pyramidal mausoleums of the kings of Xixia. Xixia was a mysterious kingdom which once existed here a thousand years ago. This kingdom was founded by the Dangxiang tribe, which once came from what is today the borders of Tibet and Sichuan, but subsequently settled in this region as subjects of the Tang Dynasty.
During the Sung Dynasty, the chief of the now semi-Sinicised Dangxiang, who was also the local imperial governor, declared independence and founded the Xixia kingdom. The state lasted for 198 years during which arts and culture flourished (they created their own writing system, which borrowed some fundamental elements from the Chinese script, but with substantial modifications) together with some rather scandalous palace intrigue (for example, the founding king made his daughter-in-law his queen, and was then assassinated by his enraged son). The Xixia kings also built huge burial complexes, completed with pyramidal tombs.
Eventually, the state was destroyed by the Mongols, but only after nine expeditions, of which Genghis Khan was involved in six. It was during the last that Genghis Khan fell from his horse and caught a fatal fever. On his death bed, Genghis Khan decreed that his death should be kept a secret and that whether or not the Xixia surrendered, everybody in the kingdom should be put to the sword.
A month after his death, the Xixia king surrendered, not knowing that the great khan had died and had left the most genocidal instructions to his generals. The Xixia king was executed and all the cities and settlements of Xixia were burned and their inhabitants massacred. So much of Xixia culture was lost that even their script has not been fully understood today. I stood amongst the monumental pyramids of Xixia, desolate and lonely in the deserts of Ningxia, and mourned for the dead, as I did in August in the ruins of Genghis’s wrath.
There is, however, an alternative tale of Genghis Khan’s death which I read in Jasper Becker’s Lost Country: Mongolia Revealed. This version claimed that Genghis Khan craved after the legendary beauty of the Queen of Xixia and brought her to his imperial ger after capturing her. During the passionate session which followed, the humiliated queen suddenly brandished a hidden knife, severed the Khan’s penis and then killed herself. The khan then died from loss of blood, rather than a fever which resulted from his fall from a horse. So, which version do you believe?
I hired a taxi to explore the remote monasteries and ancient archaeological sites of Ningxia’s deserts and mountains. I climbed onto the crumbling mud-brick walls of the local stretch of the Great Wall. This is totally unrestored and untouristed. To the north lies the brown desert of the Gobi and to the south an unusual canyon with a surprisingly green valley in the midst of a dry plain. There is hardly a soul to be seen in this timeless corner of China. Here I heard the ghosts of warriors and adventurers of the past. Nations and tribes have come and gone. Empires have risen and fallen. Nothing is permanent.
Enough of emperors’ privates and palace scandals, I hopped onto a train for Xian. Since then, I have gone on to Chongqing and a cruise through the Three Gorges (Sanxia) of the Yangtse (or Changjiang). I am now in Wuhan, the metropolis in central China, and ready to go on to Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, not far from Shaoshan, hometown of Chairman Mao.
19 October 2002
In Kunming, Yunnan
I have arrived in Kunming, the beautiful capital of Yunnan, China’s southernmost province. I am nearer to Singapore than ever before! I am staying at Chahua Binguan, and will probably set off for Dali in western Yunnan in a few days’ time, followed by Lijiang and Zhongdian (“Shangri La”). Then back to Yunnan to apply for a Laotian visa. Then I will set off for Laos.
28 October 2002
Newsflash: In Shangri-La
I am now in Shangri-La, previously named Zhongdian. This is a small town in northwestern Yunnan Province in China, and site of the legendary paradise called Shangri La.
Over the last 2 weeks plus, I have been travelling Yunnan Province, passing through Dali, Lijiang, the spectacular Tiger Leaping Gorge and various other beautiful places. I have taken local buses to remote hamlets, chatting to local Bai, Naxi and Yi tribesmen of this racially diverse region – it’s wonderful that I am able to speak Mandarin and have had a wonderful time here.
Zhongdian is the capital of the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and stood right on the doorstep of Tibet. Here at 3000 m above sea level, I feel that I am in another world. I have lots of stories to tell but little time. I hope to write a proper report in due course.
