From the gate of Shapotou Resort, you can overlook the Yellow River.
A single raft with 14 sheep skins can carry one ton of cargo.
The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China has scenery worthy of a wilderness wonderland as Lu Rong finds when she floats down the Yellow River on a sheep-skin raft and ventures into the Tengger Desert on a camel.
When I told my foreign friends that I was going to Ningxia Hui Automous Region for holiday, the reply was: "Oh, that's great! But where is it?"
So I had to clarify first that I was not going to the moon and that Ningxia is actually a spindle-shaped region in Northwest China, bordering Inner Mongolia. What you can expect to find there is desert, the Yellow River, steep cordillera, mosques and other scenes that are beyond the imagination of a southern city dweller.
At the end of August, my parents and I took a flight of three hours from Shanghai to Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia. The trip was also to make a family visit to my aunt who 50 years ago left home at the age of 18 and like many people of her age had settled in Ningxia in answer to Chairman Mao Zedong's call to give support to China's western regions that were considered barren and remote. Since then great changes have taken place there and tourism has started to bring prosperity to the once wastelands.
Coming from a megacity filled with people, high-rises and cars, we found everything totally different. The air was extremely dry, smelling of earth. On the street, there were often men wearing white skullcaps, indicating they were Hui minority people.
As one of China's five autonomous regions for minorities, Ningxia is home to more than two million Hui people, accounting for 35.57 percent of the region's total population. The Muslim religion is also why you will never be served any pork in your meals but it is not a disaster for meat lovers, since the beef and mutton in Ningxia is supposed to be the best in China.
Our first stop was definitely Shapotou, a resort three hours away from Yinchuan by bus. There, we would be able to see the upper reaches of the Yellow River as it crossed the southeastern border of the Tengger Desert, the fourth-largest desert in China.
It would also be worth our while to stay in Shapotou overnight to see the tremendous sunset and sunrise over the desert.
As the bus rolled out of Yinchuan, we soon became fascinated by the scenery. A vast plain of loess opened before us, stretching on all sides as far as the eye could see. Decorated by thin clumps of weeds, golden plots of sunflowers and small groups of donkeys or sheep, the ground in a color of light yellow showed us the force of nature with wide, yawning cracks and dry riverbeds.
No skyline, no vehicles, no people, the plain was completely empty and it seemed we had reached another planet.
Three hours later, we arrived at the resort. Stepping through the gate, we found ourselves on the top of a gigantic dune overlooking the Yellow River surrounded by yellow sand and a belt of reclaimed greenery.
The dune was about several hundred meters high, but it took only one minute to reach the bottom coasting down the steepest slope sitting on a skate board. Smooth, efficient and safe, even my mother tried it and found it really cool.
Our next adventure was to drift down the Yellow River on a sheep-skin raft, a form of river transport which has been used in this region since ancient times. I was a bit scared when I saw the inflated sheep skins bound under the bamboo raft. It seemed too risky to get on a boat kept afloat by inflated animal corpses.
But imagining how our ancestors drifted on these wobbling rafts along the Yellow River thousand of years ago to seek their unknowable fortunes, we just couldn't refuse.
Floating on the muddy water of the mother river, I felt as if I were a figure in a legend. Carrying much silt, the Yellow River flows quite slowly here. And actually the rafts were very safe. Our oarsman told us that a single raft with 14 sheep skins can carry one ton of cargo. How clever were the ancient people!
Back to the bank, we went further into the northern part of the resort. It was a bit strange and we found ourselves in another world in just 10 minutes. The Yellow River had disappeared without trace and all we could see now was sand, sand and more sand. The sand blown in the air made visibility rather low.
The color was not the yellow I had seen in movies. It was more white or silver, especially in the sun light.
The silver dunes looked like a huge silk carpet, but walking on them was not comfortable at all. Your legs become heavier and the temperature of the sand is terribly high in the day. You can feel the heat on your feet even when wearing thick shoes.
But you do have other choices to move in the desert apart from walking. Camels, known as the "ships of the desert," solve all transport problems. They not only make good vehicles but are also nice friends for their passengers.
I was really enchanted by a group of camels resting peacefully in a circle. Some of them were especially beautiful with their fluffy pale hair and rounded humps. They gazed around softly with their beautiful eyes, chewing lazily like elegant young ladies.
We decided immediately to take a 30-minute round-trip ride into the desert. Since the camels sat calmly on their folded legs, it was quite easy to get onto the saddle between two humps. We were a bit frightened when the camel tilted its back to stand up but we soon found there was no danger of being bucked off. The animal is mild in nature and well trained for riding.
As our guide walked in advance jingling a bell, we set out - a line of camels and travelers riding into the deep desert. The scene we presented gave the illusion that we were a real caravan traveling along the ancient Silk Road.
Although the maximum speed of a camel can reach 60 kilometers per hour, it normally moves at a relaxing pace that might be a good antidote to the impatience of city people.
And I told myself that next time I would take a whole week off and I would set out to ride right across the Tengger Desert.
(Shanghai Daily September 10, 2007)
