4000 corpse better looking than us

My husband worked in China for a year lecturing in the University of Urumchi.  If your geography is as weak as mine, let me explain that Urumchi is in the west of China, below Mongolia and above Tibet.  It also has the rather dubious distinction of being, on our planet, the city furthest away from the sea. See: furthest from sea calculations 

I spent a month in Urumchi visiting my husband who lived on the campus of the university.  From the moment I entered the departure lounge in Beijing for Urumchi departures I felt I was the only westerner in the whole building.  My foreignness proclaimed by my blondness in a sea of dark hair.  Its amazing what you notice when you feel you are the only foreigner.  Suddenly, your senses heighten, you become more alert.  You are aware you stand out and that vulnerability brings out older hunter-gatherer instincts.  A similar feeling was experienced in one of the National Parks in the States when I was walking through a forest late at night after an eloquent talk in the nearby lodge on the bears that frequent these very woods.  The audience of campers nearly all claimed to have seen grizzles/brown bears galore during their stay.  While returning to my campervan I found in the silence of the dark woods all my senses on full alert for the snap of a twig, the rustle of the undergrowth or the grunt of an angry bear.  I was a foreigner who had strayed into dangerous zones unwittingly.

Once the plane landed in Urumchi I noticed that many of its inhabitants looked more Persian than Chinese.  In fact, my husband was by now accustomed to being assumed to be an Urgur by street traders who refused to believe he did not speak their language.  He has suffered the same fate in Greece and other parts of the world.  I always blamed Alexander the Great, who in conquering so much of the ancient world managed to mess up its proper genealogy.  Little did I realize this situation predated even the ancient Greeks by several millennium.

I really enjoyed the campus routine.  Early morning the elderly would gather on the beautiful green grounds and in the dawn fifty or so would do Tai Chi exercises with meditative slowness as the sun rose behind them.  Chinese students worked diligently and treated staff with exaggerated respect.  The campus official at the gate would salute lecturers as they entered adding to the formality.  These students worked from morning to 10pm at night.  Their day filled with activities including dancing, choir singing, sports and outing in Gers, peculiar nomad tents erected on the mountain lake shores.  Learning was taken extremely seriously.  The peer group message was if you weren’t working as hard as everyone else you were betraying your parents’ investment in your education.  Once a month the entire student body downed pens and spent the day cleaning the university buildings and grounds.  Desks were scrubbed/sanded, gardens weeded, windows shined etc.  I thought it a remarkably clever way to reduce graffiti/vandalism.  After all, if you knew you would have to remove/fix such writing/damage it would be like aversion therapy.  On every corner there were plagues with statements from Confucius none of which anyone could argue with.  Here are some of his words – I hope you feel as inspired by them as I do.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

One of the Urgur students was from an area on the border with Mongolia and her father worked with the wild horses which they all rode bareback.  Talk about a different life.  Here the Chinese rule about one child families does not hold and all came from large extended families.  Their manners were impeccable and kindness consistent.

While staying in the city I went round the museum.  Along with fascinating artefacts explaining the many indigenous tribes that make up this part of China there was also a room full of mummies.  These mummies were blond and red haired with European features.  They had intricately woven clothes and elegant footwear.  Most had headgear that resembled cone shaped magician hats.  The most startling thing was that some were over 4000 years old.  This was no trading party passing along the Silk Road, after all the Silk Road did not exist until the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).  More bodies were found in the remote Taklamakan desert and even early Bronze age settlements.  These tall blond/red haired Europeans had been perfectly preserved.  They had not been subjected to the brutal Egyptian brain out of the nose treatment with organs packaged nearby.  No, these blond ones, like the “Charchan man” who was six foot six inches tall had all their organs intact.  Their bodies had been preserved by the environment – salt/arid/dry conditions and by the skill of those that buried them.  Live oxen in some cases were slaughtered at the site and their wet skins used to wrap the coffins.  Once dried the hides were as tight as a drum sealing them from even one speck of sand.  Others were laid out in holes on hand made bricks with wood and sand above a space allowing air to circulate and in effect freeze drying the bodies. Oils were rubbed on to conserve the skin.  Such skill was not limited to their funeral crafts.  They had fine leather boots, woven clothes of usual precision.  Some even showed evidence of having undergone operations with neat incisions made in accordance with instructions found in later ancient Chinese texts.  They had wheeled carts, rode horses, made pottery and had knives and arrowheads.  One woman was buried alongside ephedra branches (a mildly psychoactive medicinal plant -  "herbal ecstasy.") which, if taken, could have eased the process of death.

It was strangely disheartening to wander around the 4000-year-old “Beauty of Loulan” who, with her long blond braids and fine bone structure and skin, was far more beautiful than all the many visitors that showed up that day.  It is an unsettling experience to be outshone by a 4000-year corpse!

It is now clear these Europeans were actually living in the Xinjang region of China and that they probably originated from eastern Europe Mesolithic or Neolithic cultures.  You do have to feel sorry for the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman who in 1934 explored the Xiaohe cemetery in the Taklimakan desert and reported his findings excitedly in 1939.   Who could have predicted that World War 2 would come along and subsequently China would be closed to foreigners.  Incredibly, It was not until the year 2000 when the Xinjing Archealogical Institute claimed to have “discovered it” the whole mystery re-emerged.  How frustrating for Bergman to stumble on such a find only to have it taken away from the world for 60 odd years.

What is even more amazing is that these blond/red haired European foreigners lived and survived in this far-flung part of the world so many millennium ago and became part of the complicated genetic crossroads that make up this corner of China.