A five hour bus ride took us to Dunhuang. The strict Chinese parenting that I’m familiar with has seemingly vanished in one generation, replaced by coddling parents and grandparents who are completely afraid of standing up to their little emperors. On our commuter bus, a three year old dominated everything. He ran up and down the aisles and then complained it was hot. He ran up and down the aisles and then complained it was cold. He ran up and down the aisles and then complained he was thirsty. He ran up and down the aisles and then complained he was bored. What he needed to do was run up and down the aisles and get punted through the window.

We arrived in Dunhuang at about 2 PM. Our taxi driver asked why we were staying so far outside of the city. Truthfully, we didn’t even know we were staying outside the city. One turn later, however, and we saw we were headed towards what looked like endless desert. It was a dramatic sight and I told our driver that’s why we wanted to stay outside of the city.

He pointed ahead and said, “What? That? The sand? I see that crap everyday.”

“Yeah, but we don’t. That’s the point.”

“That makes sense. You probably see things in Tangshan every day that I really want to see. What do you see in Tangshan everyday?”

“Pollution.”

<pause>

“Maybe I don’t want to see that.”

After dumping our stuff at the hostel, it was pretty obvious what we were going to do with the rest of our day. Walk into that desert! Dunhuang, we learned, is literally an oasis in the desert, which is why it became a popular Silk Road town. Today, it’s still a traveler’s oasis, though a modernized one. The clear line between desert and city is now a tourist attraction. Entering the desert costs money, which is probably hilarious to ancient travelers who couldn’t wait to get out of it. At the mouth of the desert are sand dunes and an endless line of vendors offering different ways to play in the desert. There was camel ride guy, sand boarding guy, dune buggy guy, paragliding guy, and motorized glider guy. For the unlazy, there were vendors who sold shoe covers that would prevent sand from entering one’s shoes.

Cindy and I opted for none of the above and started hoofing it up the first dune with the goal of watching the sunset and then the stars. Along the way, we met Corey, an American make up artist currently working on a project in Beijing. Among the individuals whose faces he’s touched are everyone from Breaking Bad, the Incredible Hulk, and Samuel L. Jackson, whom Corey calls “Sam.” Apparently Corey once lost a cell phone on set, only to find it later, and was constantly berated by Sam for it for the next two days. Corey should have recorded some of those slams and used it as his voicemail greeting.

Our stargazing was made challenging by a bright moon, so we headed down at around 9 PM to eat dinner. Corey introduced us to Dunhuang’s night market. It was bustling, but without the crush of people that we saw in Xi’an. We saw that a lot of vendors were desperate to get rid of their wares due to the declining number of tourists and made a mental note to buy some souvenirs the next day. After dinner, we headed back to our hostel while Corey went to get his ass kicked by 14 year old boys in a League of Legends arcade.

Pagoda at oasis at night

Night market