Agnes Water is Queensland’s northern most surf beach and is last in a line of beautiful, unspoilt beaches that sweep up the coast from Bundaberg. Agnes Water and it’s sister township of 1770 offer a range of activities and holiday ideas – from relaxing at the beach, Four Wheel Driving through rugged coastal national parks, estuary, beach and deep sea fishing – to enjoying a soft adventure tour aboard an amphibious LARC vessel. Agnes Water and the Town of 1770 is also one of the closest points on the mainland to the outer Great Barrier Reef, with three tours departing to either Lady Musgrave Island or Fitzroy Reef. Agnes Water features accommodation, shops and eateries and services – all with a beachside atmosphere. The Agnes Water Museum house local history with interesting information of Cook and his voyage. Many beautiful architectural designed homes dots the cabbage palm covered hillsides all with a look reminiscent of the tropics of far north Queensland. The surfing fraternity have long visited Agnes Water and a major event on the longboard circuit – the 1770 Longboard Classic – is held in March at Agnes Water beach. From Agnes Water – Four Wheel Drive trails extend south into Deepwater National Park and north into Eurimbula National Park – opening up coastal wilderness for camping and fishing. The road to Agnes Water from Bundaberg is now completely sealed, with some unsealed and untarred sections between Agnes Water and Highway 1 at Miriam Vale.

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* Anyone familiar with Christianity is tempted to draw a parallel between the Maitreya-Gautama Buddha relationship and the relationship between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, or perhaps the relationship between the returning, triumphant Christ of the future and the Church would be the more appropriate parallel.

** Du Fu (alternatively, Tu Fu, CE 712–770) is considered as one of China’s greatest poets, if not the country’s greatest. Because of his broad range of styles, he has been called a Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo and Baudelaire, all rolled into one. Su Shi (alternatively, Su Dongpo, CE 1037–1101) was a writer, painter, calligrapher, pharmacologist and a statesman, as well as one of the major poets of the Song Dynasty.

*** This is surely a folkloric mix-up with – but perhaps not! – the likeness of “Lingbao” of Lingbao Peak/ Lingbao Pagoda of nearby Lingyun Mountain, one of the three mountains that make up Qingyi Mountain, to that of Lingbao, the religious school that synthesized Taoism and Buddhism shortly after Buddhism’s introduction into Taoist China in the 6th century CE (Lingbao Peak may well have gotten its name from the religious school). In Taoism, the labyrinth theme is common, labyrinths typically being present in holy places called “cave heavens”, a particularly celebrated example being that of Linwu dong tian, a cave in an island of Lake Taihu, once situated between the kingdoms of Wu and Yue (of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, non-Han Chinese interregnum between the Tang (CE 618-907) and Song (CE 960-1279) Dynasties). The island is called Dong ting (“salt cave”), and the sacred cave is nestled in a hill named Baeshan (alternatively, Baoshan), which can be interpreted as “mountain of the sorcerer”, or “mountain of the sorceress”.

The cave is related to a legend about some famous talismen that involves Yu the Great, to whom was revealed information concerning the “five talismen of the Lingbao” by a “holy man”, and which talismen enabled Yu to conquer the great flood (note that flooding, or turbulent waters in general, was a common problem necessitating “divine intervention”). Having used the talismen, Yu was required to hide them in a sacred mountain. Yu therefore hid the talismen in the cave of Baeshan. Later, King Helu of Wu, a contemporary of Confucius, ordered a hermit to enter the cave to learn more about it. Since the cave turned out to be a real labyrinth, the hermit traversed thousands of li (1 li = ½ km, though the distance has not been consistent through time) before he finally found a city from which a lunar light emerged, and there he found the sacred writings (the talismen) and brought them back to King Helu.
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It should also be pointed out that at the time of the digging of the Yungang Grottoes proper (the sculptures and other statues stem from the period CE 520-525, i.e., towards the end of the Northern Wei Dynasty), the city of Datong was the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty; the capital was moved to the city of Luoyang (home of the Longmen Grottoes) in CE 494.

Of the 53 original grottoes of the Yungang Grotto complex, only 45 remain intact. These remaining 45 grottoes contain some 250 niches and 51,000 statues, the latter ranging from a few centimeters in height to 17 meters high. Grottoes No. 5 and No. 6 are particularly impressive as they are very colorful and intricately detailed, compared to other grottoes here which contain few, but large, figures. At the other extreme, the 14-meter-high seated Buddha of Sakyamuni outside Grotto No. 20 commands respect not only for its size, but also for the face of the figure, which is characterized by soft lines and a pair of eyes that radiate intellectual and spiritual vigor.

Unfortunately, these precious grottoes have suffered severe and sustained degradation, both at the hand of nature (in the form of exposure to the elements, including driven sand) and at the hand of man, aka pollution, especially in the form of coal dust and and other industrial-produced grime which has marred the beauty of these fragile grottoes. In fact, the international community has begun to show an interest in the preservation of all of the old grottoes of China, including the Yungang Grottoes. For example, the Getty Conservation Institute has teamed up with the government of the PRC in an effort to halt the degradation of the Mogao and Yungang Grottoes, recognizing that these grottoes are part of world culture. In that regard, a word or two on the cultural signifance of the grottoes – or perhaps more properly, the cultural signifance of the contents of the grottoes – is in order…

The emergence of the art of the Yungang Grottoes (and the same applies even more emphatically to the Magao Grottoes) is intimately linked to the Silk Road that connected China to the outside world from the 1st century BCE to the 16th century CE. The Silk Road was of course primarily a trade route, but it was also a communications route in the broadest sense, i.e., ideas traversed from east to west and vice-versa (the very notion of East versus West surely stems from the geography of the overland Silk Road route*, which, from Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) in the east to Constantinople (Istanbul) in the west, very nearly describes a straight, horizontal, east-west line). One such idea that travelled from east to west during the era of the Silk Road was Buddhism. Indeed, the Magao Grottoes lie directly on the original, northern Silk Road route.

At the time of the interrior adornment of the Magao and Yungang Grottoes, Buddhism was in ascendance in China. Less than a century later another religious idea, which would prove to be pernicious to these Buddhist grottoes, would travel in the reverse direction: Islam. A number of the images of these grottoes, especially those representing the human form, would be effaced by zealous Muslims (though, in fairness, it must be said that much of the effacement seen on the buddha figures of Yungang Grottoes is due to unchecked natural erosion and manmade pollution).

The unique beauty of the Yungang Grottoes was recognized almost immediately upon their completion. Li Dao-Yuan (CE 466-527), a renowned geographer in China during the Northern Wei Dynasty, once said, “The 53 grottoes, carved out of cliffs, are vivid, grand and rarely seen elsewhere; the mountain shrines and waterside palaces co-exist so harmoniously here”. The most culturally significant figures in the Yungang Grottoes, after the Buddha figures, is perhaps the statues of the five Chinese emperors. These important works of art are among the few historical relics to survive the Northern Wei Dynasty. The international community has been somewhat tardy in recognizing the contribution of these grottoes to our common cultural heritage, but it has finally responded favorably. The invaluable work of the Ghetty Conservation Institute has already been mentioned above. In 2001, UNESCO officially recognized the cultural importance of the Yungang Grottoes by including them on UNESCO’s annual World Cultural Heritage List.

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* A second “Silk Road”, this one by sea, replaced the overland Silk Road when the cost of Arab “toll fees” (beginning with the Yuan (CE 1279-1368) Dynasty, trade along the Silk Road was increasingly controlled by Arabs, who exacted increasingly exorbitant transit fees) eventually made alternative transport by sea financially attractive, thus bringing an end to the era of camel caravans that had crossed the vast deserts of Central Asia ever since the 1st century BCE. The overland Silk Road route began to decline towards the end of the 15th century, and dried up to a trickle in the beginning of the 16th century. The demise of the overland route was, however, as much due to political instability along the route as it was due to increasing “toll fees”. Successful trade – at least of the legal sort – requires a certain degree of peaceful cooperation between local (and tribal), regional, and nationial entities. Where this is lacking, trade suffers.

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The ridges and peaks of Zuozi Mountain stand one behind the other, majestic and grand. Seen from far away, the highest top of the mountain is flat like a table, hence it gets the name-Zuozi Mountain. Numerous cliff paintings are remained on the high cliffs of valleys and limestone rocks by the valleys, which is called “Cliff Paintings in Zuozi Mountain”. There are five sites: cliff paintings in Zhaoshao Valley, cliff paintings in Kucai Valley, cliff paintings in Subanyinhou Valley and Houmoerman cliff paintings. Ancient nomads like Qiang, Wuheng, Xianbei, Tujue, Huihu, Dangxiang, Mongolia have lived and multiplied here alternatively and created splendid ancient civilization. Cliff paintings are on the sands of time, which have been left permanently. Cliff paintings are called the earliest canvas of human beings. The facial cliff painting is the biggest feature here because the most facial cliff paintings in the world are concentrated here. Wuhai city is also intensifying the protection to the cliff paintings. The total area of the cliff paintings is over 16,000 square meters and it was discovered by a herder in 1973 when he was looking after a herd of animals. The paintings mainly are: facial pictures of sun god, pictures of animals, pictures of hunting and some graphic symbols, etc. Each painting has a complete meaning, which is unusual in China. Cliff paintings in Zuozi Mountain were painted in the period of New Stone Age and each one was cut carefully, which are the historical relics of the nomads in the ancient northern China. The facial pictures here is the essence of facial pictures at home and abroad, reflecting the imaginative ideas and their beautiful wishes for life in the childhood of human beings.
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In the exhibition hall and the corridors of the east and west of the memorial, you can see the paintings and calligraphies of the eight eccentric painters as well as the representative works of other famous painters at that time. Still exhibited is the recovered site of Jinnong Room which displays the historical atmosphere where the Eight Eccentric Painters created their works. The Memorial also retains ancient trees of over a thousand years; now some artificial mounts and lakes as well as green grass are added to the quiet yard of the Memorial, developing it to be a unique tourist attraction in Yangzhou.

The broad and innovative creation style of the Eight Eccentric Painters has been inherited by later generations. Many successful painters in recent and modern history of China, such as Wang Xiaomei, Wu Rangzhi, Zhao Zhiqian, Wu Changshuo, Ren Bonian, Ren Weichang, Wang Mengbai, Wang Xuetao, Tang Yun, Wang Yiting, Cheng Shizeng, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Huang Binhong, and Pan Tianshou, etc. All of them have absorbed nutrition form the works of the Eight Eccentric Painters and established their own schools. Most of them have made high evaluation on the great creations of their ancestors in the painting circle. For instance, Xu Beihong, a famous painter in modern China, one made inscriptions on Orchid Bamboo, a painting of Zheng Xie. He wrote that “Zheng Banqiao is one of the most eminent and influential painters in the recent three hundred years; he has innovative ideas, inscriptions, and paintings; appreciating his great works, you will be deeply impressed by the combination of his propositions and his artistic techniques; it is rare to see in modern times”.
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– From Travels by Marco Polo

The ancient city of Khotan (sometimes written as Yutian), capital city of the Kingdom of Khotan, had been buried under centuries of sand when it was rediscovered by Aurel Stein (whose full name was Marc Aurel Stein, but who was later knighted as Sir Marc Aurel Stein), a Hungarian-born archaeologist (a real-life Indiana Jones figure, in fact) who was inspired by two men, one a contemporary and one from the ancient past. The latter was a Chinese Buddhist monk of the 7th century CE by the name of Xuanzang (“Hiuen-Tsiang”, in the writings of Stein) who had traversed the route from Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) in eastern China to Bactria in Central Asia, along the northern rim of the Tarim Basin, which route roughly corresponded to the southern route of the famous Silk Road. Bactria was a region of former Greater Iran that corresponds to the geographical nexus where present-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan all come together.

The other source of inspiration to Stein was the work of the Swedish explorer and geographer, Sven Hedin, who had done extensive, detailed mapping of large parts of Central Asia, including the routes of the famous Silk Road. Central Asia was an area that theretofore had not been mapped in great detail. Aurel Stein later became a British citizen, and it was as such that he made some of his most famous explorations, thanks in no small part to the excellent maps that Sven Hedin had drawn.

How Stein rediscovered the buried city of Khotan (also written as Yü-t’ien in Stein’s works) is quite interesting, for it rested not on excavations (that had already been done for him by greedy looters), but on a logical analysis, or a (Sherlock) Holmesian deduction, of, on the one hand, what had already been unearthed, plus, on the other hand, a careful observation of the terrain of the area. What had been unearthed was a large body of artifacts (statues, pottery, coins, etc.), including gold leaf (not raw gold, but worked gold), which indicated the existence of an older culture beneath the dust of the present-day city of Hetian (written as Yotkan in Stein’s works).

Stein’s true Holmesian observation lay in noting than the area, which consisted of agricultural land plots, had been irrigated for centuries with water that had been redirected via canals from the nearby rivers, including the Kara-kash River, and that these plots of land were much higher (more elevated) than the roads that crisscrossed them. The explanation – Stein’s deduction – was that the water that had been dumped onto the land plots over the decades contained large amounts of silt, or loess, which, over time, caused the farmed plots to rise higher and higher compared to the access roads, which had not been “irrigated” in this manner. Underneath the farmed plots of the present-day village of Hetian/ Yotkan lay then the ancient city of Khotan, reasoned Stein.

Stein also noted that the geographical area corresponding to present-day Hetian/ Yotkan matched the descriptions given in the “travel annals” of Xuanzang, the Buddhist monk who had traversed this area back when the city of Khotan existed. A more detailed examination of the archeological finds that had been unearthed in the area corroborated Stein’s theory regarding the link between Hetian/ Yotkan and Khotan, which, today, is accepted as fact.

Khotan was an important city on the southern route of the Silk Road as early as the Western Han (BCE 206 – CE 009) Dynasty, i.e., from the very beginning of the Silk Road trade. Agriculture played an important role in the commerce of Khotan from ancient times, as the Chinese had long since developed sophisticated methods of irrigation, including the art of digging canals to divert water from streams. But jade was also an important part of Khotan’s commerce, as there were rich finds of the material in the region.

Among the archaeological artifacts excavated in Hetian were the following: pottery figurines; vases; pottery tools; items in jade; beads (used in jewelry); statues in gold and in bronze (including Buddha figures); and various ancient coins. Many of these artifacts display a strong Persian or Greek style, indicating the far-reaching extent of the trade along the Silk Road, which trade went in both directions, of course, and included not only commodities, but also ideas such as Buddhism, and – later – Islam. The degree of sophistication of some of the excavated artifacts, such as a gold duckling that is similar to the gold duckling excavated in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottos (another site visited and catalogued by Stein – these grottoes have since been placed on the World Heritage List), bear witness to the wealth and glory of the ancient city of Khotan, and indeed, to the wealth and glory of the Kingdom of Khotan.

The Silk Road routes by land had developed relatively rapidly (i.e., relative to the times, where word of the exotic wares of the Orient, though they spread quickly, spread mainly by word of mouth in BCE 200), but when they declined, the trade along these routes dried up almost instantly to a mere trickle, since traders had discovered that sea passage was quicker, safer, and cheaper – all things considered – than transport via camel caravans across arid deserts and freezing mountain passes, where everyone seemed bent on exacting “toll fees” for the right of passage through their respective territories. The once-thriving cities along the Silk Road therefore quickly became ghost towns, with few inhabitants, as the “clientele” on which they had survived no longer arrived. It is for this reason that a city like Khotan could become buried in the dust without anyone noticing it – most of the city’s inhabitants had long since moved on.

In the wake of Aurel Stein, who had made several trips to Central Asia in search of the cities mentioned in the “travel annals” of Xuanzang, and who had unearthed many cultural treasures which he took with him, came a number of mercenary types looking for “buried treasure” in the form of gold and jade relics, etc., but other, more serious archaeologists came as well. For example, immediately after the news broke of the discoveries made by Stein on his first Central Asian expedition, German and Japanese archaeologists arrived in Central Asia to follow in Stein’s footsteps – or rather, in Xuanzang’s footsteps – in the hope of claiming precious cultural relics for their own national museums.

By the time of Stein’s third expedition, all such endeavors were looked upon by the Chinese government as hardly more than “treasure hunts”, and it therefore took steps to limit the traffic. Many came anyway, and the “treasure hunt” continued for a quarter of a century, and involved archaeologists from leading European nations as well as from the U.S. and Japan. Today, Silk Road treasures can be found in major museums all across Europe, in the U.S., in Russia, in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, including in China.

Present-day tourists who wish to see some of the marvels of the Silk Road trade that still remains to the Chinese people, most notably, that which remains locally of the artifacts unearthed from the ancient city of Khotan, can quench their thirst at the museum in Hetian.

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