Original subtitles

As a reporter

I've traveled the Middle East for many years.

It's an area that's always fascinated me

but in my work I've mainly covered it's war zones,

it's crises and it's tragedies.

This journey, which takes me down the Silk Road

in the footsteps of Marco Polo,

gives me the opportunity of exploring

the great historical and cultural significance

of this part of the world.

Its ancient melting pot of peoples and civilizations

that have contributed so much to our own.

(mysterious music)

(mysterious music)

I've reached the Turpan Depression

which descends to 154 meters below sea level.

It's the second lowest point on Earth after the Dead Sea.

On the edge of this trough are the Sandstone Fire

or Flaming Mountains, one of the world's hottest spots.

The temperature frequently reaches 50 Celsius

or higher in summer and dips to minus 20 in winter.

This causes extremely strong winds ranking 8 to 12

on the Beaufort scale for four months a year.

The oasis city of Gaochang was an important trade center

on the northern branch of the Silk Road

which skirts around the Taklamakan Desert

linking Kashgar to Dunhuang,

the starting point of the Great Wall of China.

Despite the extreme climate on the edge of the Gobi Desert,

the Turpan Depression has been known

for its agriculture for millennia.

Since ancient times the main crop has been grapes.

This area is home to China's Uyghur ethnic minority,

a Muslim people descended

from the ancient Turkic tribes of the Steppe.

This is my neighbor

and she is the mistress of the house.

Ah dumplings.

Are the raisins up there?

That's the loft up there.

Let's go and see.

Wow,

that's a whole lot of raisins.

(light piano music)

Can I take one?

These raisins are almost ready to be bagged.

So there's a system of ventilation through the bricks.

Okay, right.

And these are the grapes drying in the sun.

And those are the vines?

It's huge, the entire valley.

These grapes must be very sweet

because if it's 50 degrees Celsius in the shade

with the sun.

The grape vine is a type of yana

that thrives in difficult conditions.

As any wine grower knows,

poor soil and a burning hot sun

produce the very best grapes.

But here in Gaochang the farmers have to cut the vine

very high up, two meters from the ground.

Otherwise the ground reflects so much heat

back into the canopy that the grapes burn.

Even though the Silk Road caravaneers

filled their bags with raisins,

another Uyghur speciality spread around the world.

China invented gun powder, writing, paper and silk.

But of all their finds what I like best is pasta.

Spaghetti, ravioli, tagliatelle.

We know them by their Italian names,

and yet pasta was invented in China 2,000 years ago.

The traveler who pinched these women's ancestral recipe

and took it all the way back to Venice

after exploring the Silk Road was of course,

Marco Polo.

We often associate Chinese cuisine with rice

but here in China's great northwest we are in wheat country.

And the local cuisine clearly reflects the Uyghur's

Turkic Mongol roots.

(laughing)

Lift your head up high.

From their Nomadic origins, the Uyghurs have kept

their incredible sense of hospitality.

(speaking foreign language)

Sit down and eat quietly.

There's ginger in it.

(speaking foreign language)

There are slices of ginger.

Wow, it's outstanding.

(speaking foreign language)

Bolognese, Italia.

(speaking foreign language)

Incredibly good, really delicious.

(laughing)

(speaking foreign language)

Oh, you do it like that.

(all laughing)

(speaking foreign language)

Ah Genghis Kahn is having another.

Go on Genghis Kahn, eat it!

He's devouring it as if he was

going to conquer half of Asia.

(speaking foreign language)

He's strong this kid.

(speaking foreign language)

Very strong.

Where the villages vines now grow there once stood,

in the days of the ancient Silk Road

a very imposing city nicknamed the

Brilliant Pearl of the Caravans.

(calm mysterious music)

Marco Polo described the city of Gaochang

as the capital of Uyghurstan,

the land of the Uyghurs,

vassals of the emperor Kublai Kahn,

grandson of Genghis Kahn who conquered China

and made Beijing his capital.

But neither Kublai's protection nor it's imposing walls

prevented Gaochang from being sacked

by wild a Mongol horde in the late 13th century,

just after Marco Polo's sojourn.

To retake Gaochang a Chinese general diverted the channels

supplying the city.

Deprived of water the survivors decided

to abandon Gaochang for good.

All that remains of these vast ruins,

preserved over the centuries by the aridity of the desert.

Gaochang was not only a stopping point for traders

traveling the Silk Road,

it was also renowned as a center of learning.

Buddhist pilgrims spread their faith here

on arriving from India.

The Nestorian Christians erected churches

and the Persian influence is still very much in evidence.

(mysterious somber music)

Huge Manikian frescoes have been found here.

Founded by the Iranian prophet Mani,

Manichaeism saw the universe

as a struggle between good and evil.

At the time when Manichaeism was flourishing here in China

it was stamped out in France around Albi

with the suppression of the Cathars.

On the outskirts of Gaochang stands a new temple

built 15 years ago to highlight today's dominant culture

in the Gobi Desert.

Sign of the Dragon, the Rabbit or the Monkey

the Zodiac of the Han Chinese succeeded the Zoroastrianism

of the Persians.

The statue of Nu-gua, Creator Goddess of the Hand

watches over the site.

Like her brother and husband Fu Xi,

she has a human head and a serpent's body.

The Mother Goddess of Chinese mythology is in fact,

guarding the entrance of a huge cemetery.

Over the course of 15 centuries,

the inhabitants of Gaochang dug a vast necropolis here.

The complex covers 10 square kilometers

and contains over 1,000 tombs and vaults.

The climate is so dry in the Turpan Basin,

the corpses have been naturally mummified.

The remains are often those of Han settlers.

Evidence of 2,000 years of Chinese efforts

to include the Gobi in the Middle Kingdom.

But the oldest bodies which date from the Iron Age

reveal faces of a people close to the Europeans,

lost very far to the east since the dawn of history.

Unlike the mummies of the Egyptian pharaohs,

these men and women were not embalmed.

They never asked to appear immortal.

Maybe it's better to let them rest in peace.

A few kilometers north of the ancient city of Gaochang

lies the oasis city of Turpan.

This caravan stop as regained a degree of prosperity

thanks to oil drilling.

It's evident at first glance

that the central government in Beijing

is investing massively in the region.

And yet traditional China is still very much in evidence

in the city's backstreets.

Among other things, the bizarre sells Manti,

the Asian dumplings found all over the Steppe

from Ukraine to Mongolia.

Turpan may owe a lot to oil but it's real wealth

comes from an even more previous resource: water.

Even though the city is in the middle of the desert,

there's a plentiful supply of water here.

It isn't naturally occurring though.

Instead it flows through the city

thanks to a complex network of channels and tunnels

which take advantage of the fact

that Turpan is the second lowest place on Earth.

This water conveyance system is believed

to have originated in Persia,

where channels are still used in arid areas

to irrigate farmland.

The technology spread throughout Arab Muslim world

and is still found today in Andalusia and Morocco.

In Turpan the tunnels or channels are known as karez.

Some are over 100 meters underground.

They form a fast 5,000 meter long network.

Gotta make the best of things.

Great!

According to custom each street clubs together

to pay for maintenance work.

When work starts, the owner of the house

closest to the site treats everyone to roast sheep.

(intense suspenseful music)

Very agile and very far from claustrophobic

the karez clan have to constantly repair

and dredge kilometers and kilometers of shafts,

tunnels and pipes.

Armed with only shovels, pickaxes

and the knowledge of their boss

the old Hagi Anduneas.

It's really impressive because this technology

is over three thousand years old.

This system is known as a qanat in Iran.

It's spread across the Middle East,

Central Asia as far as here on the edge of the Gobi.

The Uyghur call it karez,

the system that taps into subterranean water

here at the foot of the mountains

and conveys it to the Turpan Depression

creating the oasis.

(speaking foreign language)

Hagi, how do you become a karez digger?

Is it a tradition from father to son

or is it a choice?

(speaking foreign language)

We are the fourth generation to work in the karez.

Our grandparents worked here before us.

This karez is seven kilometers long

and I've been working in it for 20 years.

The galleries seem pretty fragile,

there are no frames.

Are you ever afraid the earth will fall on you?

It falls on us sometimes but we're not scared.

We carry right on.

It occasionally falls on our heads but we keep on working.

We're not scared, we're used to it.

(speaking foreign language)

What are you and your team actually doing?

Why are you digging in this tunnel full of earth?

We are hard at work, the water is blocked.

They have to remove all this mud

so the water can flow again.

It's a long and complicated process.

They have to draw the water down there

and make it flow.

So the stream was so clogged up

the water was actually passing under the concrete pipe

that you've installed here?

You're clearing all that earth that we can see here

to raise the level of the stream so it flows

through the pipe again.

Is that right?

Yes, that's right.

Okay, I understand.

Ah that's it!

The water is starting to flow on the right there.

(water flowing)

(speaking foreign language)

Ah, the karez diggers.

Oh yes, I can see the stream clearly now.

(simple flute music)

Mm, tastes good.

It's spring water.

There's a second hole here.

Thousands of shafts provide access to the channels.

Built in the courtyards of people's homes

they serve as wells.

(simple flute music)

Turpan's water made it possible to farm the land

and build a civilization.

These days though,

China is trying to harness the wind.

Turpan is home to one of the largest

wind farms in the world.

The ancient city of Yar illustrates

the persistence of China's activities in the region.

The Han established a garrison here as early as

the second century CE.

Built on the spur-like plateau

between the two arms of a river,

the origins of Yar, or Jiaohe date back to ancient times

and no one knows who it's first inhabitants were.

Like the other major stops along the Silk Road,

Yar was a focal point for Asia's cultures,

ideas and religions as archeologist

Su Jeong Yang explains.

What was the period of occupation

of this impressive city of Yar

and how many people lived here in it's heyday?

The maximum population was about 17 thousand households.

That was in the time of the Tang dynasty.

(mysterious somber music)

Almost two-thirds of Yar are troglodyte dwellings

and yet at the same time,

the entire city is made of this sort of very porous earth.

Is there a link between the two?

The architecture of Yar is made of earth.

There are sandstorms throughout the year.

Sand is deposited in the Depression

and it forms a layer of sediment or soil known as loas.

This loas is very compact and easy to dig and build with.

Turpan has always been a very hot region

and it's obviously cooler underground

so the people of the time began to carve out this city

resulting in this very distinctive architecture.

The particularity of dwellings carved out of

this type of soil is the deeper they are,

the more recent they are,

while those closer to the surface are older.

It's very different to archeological layers.

The city's architecture results from

these different factors: that is the climate conditions,

the search for coolness

and the existence of a geological depression.

For the Chinese authorities

Yar is an important archeological and tourist site

as it highlights the centuries old presence of the Han

in some parts of the autonomous region of Xinjiang

alongside the Uyghur's and vast Tibetan kingdoms.

The city is also a Buddhist treasure trove.

This 15 meter high brick cone

is one of China's oldest stupors.

Yar was a major center on the Silk Road

particularly for the propagation of Buddhism.

How did it reach here and why?

In the fourth century,

there were already many temples here.

Buddhism reached Turpan through trade related activities.

East to west and west to east communication

did not only concern trade,

but also the dissemination of cultures and religions.

In it's heyday, roughly how many monks live on this site?

In the great pagoda on this square

there must have been over 1,000 monks.

It was large enough to accommodate monks

from many different countries at the same time

so there were a lot.

In the north of the city,

there's the necropolis and the stupors.

Here in the center,

there's the huge Buddhist monastery

and the monk's quarters.

In the south there's the royal palace

and the royal family's residencies.

So where did mere mortals live?

Yar was the country's capital city

so it's inhabitants were mainly nobles,

kings and monks and most of the common people

lived outside the city.

If you look at the layout of the citadel

you can make out the residences of a few important families.

Between them there were streets connecting the houses

to one another but at each crossroads,

there was always a pagoda.

This means one pagoda would be used for worship

by several families.

The hightest ranking families also owned Buddha statues

for home worship.

When you walk around Yar you get the impression

time suddenly stopped from one day to the next.

As if a natural disaster had struck the city

like in Pompeii.

But actually happened?

Why is everything disappeared?

Around the 13th century during the Mongol conquests,

Yar was destroyed by war.

And after the war the city's old wells,

about 300 wells were practically all abandoned

because they'd either dried up

or were full of corpses and it was impossible

to go on living here.

Outside the city water was still accessible

and so the inhabitants chose to move there.

As a result the city was gradually abandoned.

Yar may have been swallowed up by the desert

but Xinjiang's present capital is booming.

Urumqi has a population of two million.

By Chinese standards it's pretty small

but this city on the edge of the desert

sees itself as a cosmopolitan metropolis.

(upbeat techno music)

The imposing one child policy was never imposed

on Xinjiang's national minorities

and Urumqi's colorful youth very definitely reflect

the face of modern China.

A dynamic, confident society with it's sights set

firmly on the future.

A country set to take over as the worlds largest economy

which borrows from the west whatever it wants.

Including sometimes, from France.

What do you call this sport and how long you been doing it?

This sport is called Parkour.

Ah, from the French Parkour.

Yes.

How long you been doing it?

I started eight years ago.

As in the days of the ancient Silk Road

that park is a meeting place for different peoples.

Young Uyghurs, Mongols and Hans united

by a shared passion that has it's roots in Chinese Kung Fu.

What made you want to try Parkour?

I loved running around as a kid.

I really enjoyed weaving in and out of people.

When I was older I saw a French movie

called Bon Trieze

and I learned all the moves I'd seen in it.

Looks as though, as I understand it,

Parkour or free running combines Chinese martial arts

and French or rather western influences.

I think the very swift, abrupt movements

probably came from the Chinese tradition.

Bruce Lee said "Be water."

Our course is like water,

it's fluid, it flows.

And in western culture they probably have that too.

Frenchman David Bell said that Parkour

and Chinese philosophy was an obvious match.

I don't think Parkour is a combination of Chinese

and western cultures but an obvious step

in the evolution of humankind,

in my mind anyways.

From Kung Fu to the Yamakasi of the Paris suburbs,

the sport of Parkour is a wonderful,

contemporary example of the dialogue with the west,

which has always characterized the Gobi Desert region.

(upbeat techno music)

(laughing)

Does this sport, which combines different influences

reflect your own cultural mix?

Uyghur, Han, Mongol, everything you are in the city?

As it's an internationally recognized sport,

it's been adopted by every ethnic group blacks,

whites, Asians.

Practicing this sport is a real pleasure.

It brings you joy.

Everyone wants to be happy,

that's why practitioners of Parkour

form a collective naturally.

Freedom is what we want.

Prosperity versus freedom.

That's the premise of the People's Republic of China.

The regime wants to ease separatists tensions

in Xinjiang at all costs.

Beijing is investing massively in the region's development

and plans to improve its connections

with the rest of the country.

In particular thanks to this brand new,

high-speed rail station.

The high-speed rail line is part of a

multi-billion yuan project.

A project aptly named The New Silk Road.

(mellow Chinese music)