| "Hsuan Tsang almost died in the desert, and was saved by his horse, which led him to water just before both he and the monk would have died. Outside of Hami are the ruins of an ancient Tang Dynasty city that the locals now call Mogui Cheng, meaning ghost town or demon city. The story is that an entire army was once lured to its death there by strange voices and we were therefore told not to go. But we did anyway, and found a gigantic mud-walled city. I call it 'an Ozymandian scene that could easily have inspired raptutous ninetheenth-century-type ruminations about the traces of perished grandeur.' The photograph shows Zhongmei posing in front of an ancient sculpture we found on the route. It was either a squatting camel or an enormous tortoise, we didn't know which." |
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