I’ve never tasted Samarkand’s famed golden peaches, and Khwarazm no longer has its messengers. The first time I learned the name Samarkand was through Jin Yong’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes. Guo Jing and Chief Huang captured that mountain-like ancient city with what may have been history’s earliest airborne assault force. Later, when I read Wang Xiaobo’s The Problem of the Khwarazmian Messenger, that strange name still felt awkward on my tongue, and the line “as long as you eliminate the person who discovered the problem, the problem itself ceases to exist” added another touch of absurdity to this faraway land.

After graduating from college, I finally set out to travel truly on my own. Almost by accident, I chose Iran, ancient Persia, and became fascinated with the Middle East and Silk Road civilizations. After that came Ottoman Turkey and Canaanite Israel.

The Bosphorus, forever on my mind

The “-stans” of Central Asia were just as important to the Silk Road, but as former Soviet territory, they remained closed off until just a few years ago, with visa hassles nearly on par with North Korea. Starting the year before last, whether because they wanted to be model Belt and Road partners or simply because the winds of reform were blowing again, these countries gradually began opening their doors to travelers.

So one day in July last year, while still lounging by the sea, a close buddy and I somehow talked ourselves into going to Uzbekistan, one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. (Though later, he abandoned our cause for loftier ideals.)

And just like that: off to Central Asia.

Tashkent’s Plov

The first stop was Tashkent. Even though Uzbekistan sits on the Belt and Road, there were very few flights from Shanghai on Chinese carriers. Asiana and Korean Air, on the other hand, had plenty of daily flights on the Shanghai–Seoul–Tashkent route.

Asiana’s chili paste was delicious

By the time I landed in Tashkent, it was already nighttime. I had hoped to try the metro, famous for doubling as a nuclear shelter, but in the end I had to rely on a taxi to find the hostel I’d hastily booked right before the trip. I have to recommend Yandex, basically the Russian-language version of Didi. It was almost just as convenient and helped a first-time visitor efficiently win the battle against every traveler’s natural enemy: shady cab drivers.

Though it was the capital, I gave it less than a full day on the itinerary. The drizzly weather made it hard to feel like sightseeing at all. Looking back now, I do think it was a bit of a shame. I never really got to see the real Tashkent.

Aside from the disappointing national museum, where even children’s schoolbags were on display as exhibits, the true soul of Tashkent was the Central Asian Plov Center. I’d already heard about its reputation before departure and marveled that plov could be elevated to such strategic importance. In fact, that was simply the restaurant’s name; people in the Islamic world seem to have a natural gift for grand exaggeration. And a grand name naturally calls for a grand wok. I can say with confidence: it was the biggest fried-rice pan I had ever seen in my life.

Uzbek rice pilaf is called Plov, essentially the Russian-style version of pilaf. It’s a bit different from the Xinjiang-style polo we’re more used to: richer in color, with different toppings too, like this enormous egg.

During my trip in Uzbekistan, I was hardly ever away from plov for a single day. I tried the bare-bones street-stall version and also had plov in upscale Samarkand restaurants, but after comparing them all, the Tashkent version was still my favorite. Truly worthy of the title “heart of Central Asia”—or rather, the center of Central Asia.

I’m Bukhara pilaf, and I’m delicious

The one upstairs isn’t good. I’m Samarkand pilaf, and I’m refined

I’m Tashkent pilaf, and I’ve got the most eggs

While eating, I met a local guy named Ali. He used to run a restaurant in Urumqi with a few friends and spoke fluent Chinese. Later, when regulations in Xinjiang tightened and the restaurant could no longer operate, he had to return home and switch to import-export business. Ali traveled regularly between Tashkent and China. His younger sister was attending college in Tashkent, so the two of them rented a small apartment there together.

Using the excuse of charging my phone at Ali’s place, I got to see what an ordinary Uzbek home looked like. It was almost exactly like a Chinese apartment complex from twenty-odd years ago: the same two-bedroom layout, the same living room, except the rooms had no beds, which made them feel strangely empty. Sadly, I never did meet any beautiful Uzbek girls.

Charging my phone at Ali’s place

Not long after I returned home, I got a WeChat message from Ali. His younger brother wanted to come to China for college, but the visa process wasn’t going smoothly, so he asked whether I had any connections at the embassy in Tashkent. “I understand, you’ve got to grease the wheels a little. You help me, I help you. Next time you come to Uzbekistan, I’ll definitely treat you well.” Seeing an Uzbek type out Chinese slang that smoothly, I figured Ali’s import-export business must be thriving more and more every day.

Registan, the best in the world

When it comes to cities and architecture, the Islamic world and the Middle East take exaggeration to another level. “Isfahan is half the world”; “if there are ten parts of beauty in this world, nine remain in Jerusalem.” Count through a few major cities like that and you’re already well past one hundred percent. Still, Registan really does have three of the largest Islamic madrasas in the world. Standing in neat formation from left to right, they cast every visitor who walks into Registan under their immense shadow.

I’m the big brother, Ulugh Beg

The Ulugh Beg Madrasa on the left was the square’s earliest building, while the Sher-Dor Madrasa on the right and the Tilya-Kori Madrasa in the middle were completed later, in the 17th century. Every visitor to Registan is shown the two lion-like creatures with human faces on the Sher-Dor entrance portal. On Islamic architecture, where icon worship is strictly forbidden, finding decoration beyond geometric patterns feels nothing short of miraculous. No wonder Uzbeks say: we are not a Muslim country, we are a secularized Islamic country.

An old man out for morning exercise looks toward number two

An old woman hurries by—is she rushing home to make breakfast for him?

A tree stealing the scene

What interested me most inside the madrasas were the patterns on the exterior walls. Tile by tile, the mosaics came together into endlessly intricate designs. As I looked at them, I kept thinking these decorations could be an endless source of inspiration for fashion designers. If someone turned these patterns into T-shirts, they’d definitely become an internet sensation.

In the afternoon, happy newlyweds often came to Registan for wedding photos. The joy of a wedding is one of those moments when people let down their guard and welcome strangers most easily. Somehow, being a party crasher seems to work in any foreign land.

The next evening, I got lucky and caught Registan’s light show. I’d assumed that since Uzbekistan was still not especially developed, the show would just be some routine, decorative spectacle. Instead, it was surprisingly high-level. The country’s history slowly unfolded across the facades of the three madrasas. Compared with the light show beneath the Tower of David in Jerusalem, this one may even have been slightly better—perhaps because it was free.

This mood really works

During my three days in Samarkand, I stayed in a house down a small lane next to Registan. From time to time, I’d wander over, sit there in a daze, and watch the crowds come and go. The madrasas no longer held devout students; the rooms that once did were now filled with bustling vendors.

The kids of Samarkand seem improbably happy to be heading off to school.

The policemen patrolling the square no longer seem to extort foreign tourists the way the stories say they used to, but I still instinctively found a uniformed officer and slipped him a little tribute. That earned me the chance, before first light, to climb the narrow, pitch-dark staircase inside Sher-Dor with another fellow countryman who had also paid up, and from the minaret top—where you could barely turn around—watch the sun rise over Samarkand.

Sunrise over Samarkand

Tamerlane’s Samarkand          

Samarkand became the golden city and capital of Central Asia largely thanks to one man: Tamerlane. This brutal lame conqueror led his armies across the Central Asian continent, and even the proud Ottoman sultan was forced to bow before him. Tamerlane’s wars were not really about conquest or expanding territory, but about plunder—if anything, he outdid even Genghis Khan. He shipped enormous treasures seized through slaughter back to Samarkand, making the city unmatched for a time. By marrying a princess of the Chagatai Khanate, Tamerlane also inherited the brutality and ambition of the Golden Lineage.

What lies behind all that splendor?

Most of Uzbekistan’s grand historic buildings are concentrated in Samarkand. Northeast of the Registan stands the Bibi-Khanym Mosque. It is said that this mosque, once the largest in the Islamic world, was a gift from Tamerlane to one of his Chinese wives. What stands today is only a post-earthquake reconstruction of ruins; you really need the model in the Tashkent museum to imagine what it once looked like.

Not far away in Shahrisabz, they say, there was once the incomparable Ak-Saray Palace. Now only its massive surviving portal remains, like Tamerlane’s ambitions scattered to the wind.

Imagine that I once stood up there.

Perhaps that is also a fitting summary of Uzbekistan’s historic architecture as a whole. Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva were all once jewels of the Silk Road, but earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, along with Soviet-era restoration—or over-restoration—mean that, honestly speaking, Uzbekistan’s architectural appeal is fairly ordinary. Compared with the surviving Islamic architecture and Persian culture of Iran, it falls noticeably short.

Pushing open the door of history

Six hundred years later, Tamerlane has long since transformed from the giant dark shadow cast across Central Asia into a spiritual symbol of Uzbek national identity. Behind every victorious general lie countless bones, as in the history of every nation.

A street leading to Tamerlane Square

In 1404, the 70-year-old Tamerlane turned his gaze eastward and personally led an army of 200,000 on a campaign against China. Far away in Nanjing, the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di of Ming, fresh from sweeping across the northern steppe, stood ready for war. But in February of the following year, before spring had even arrived, Tamerlane fell suddenly ill and died while passing through what is now Kazakhstan. The destinies of two peoples brushed past each other.

Rest in peace, Tamerlane (Gur-e-Amir)

Earlier still, in 755, China’s fate was altered by two Sogdians whose ancestors came from Samarkand. The realm of the Son of Heaven turned from prosperity to decline, and the brilliance of the empire came to an abrupt end, like a stove with its firewood pulled out, going cold and silent. The name of one of them, Rokshan, meant “light” in Sogdian. Chinese readers know their Chinese names better: one was An Lushan, the other Shi Siming.

The Blue of Shah-i-Zinda          

A few hundred meters north of Bibi-Khanym is Shah-i-Zinda. In the old language, Shah-i-Zinda means “the Living King,” and it is also the royal necropolis of Tamerlane’s family and descendants. Travelers to Uzbekistan, after growing tired of endless earth-toned ruins, generally agree that it is the blue of Shah-i-Zinda that moves the heart most deeply. Thirteen mausoleums face one another across a winding passageway, and the tiles covering the outer walls make you feel immersed in an ocean of blue. The domes inside each chamber seem to compete in showing off ever more intricate patterns.

A soothing blue that clears the mind

Schoolgirls who “skipped class” to hang out at Shah-i-Zinda

On the hillside behind Shah-i-Zinda lies an even denser cemetery stretching across the slope. I had read in another travelogue before setting out that many Koreans were buried here, so I deliberately looked among the gravestones for familiar East Asian faces.

More than a hundred years ago, after the Russo-Japanese War, large numbers of Koreans living under Japanese colonial rule migrated to the Russian Far East. Later, Stalin worried that Koreans in the Far East might join Japan in threatening the Soviet Union, so he forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of them to Uzbekistan in Central Asia. No wonder transportation links between South Korea and Uzbekistan are relatively frequent today.

Apparently the later Timurid Empire no longer had the means to build entirely blue mausoleums.

The Korean graves face east, while the Uzbek graves face west. Some say each faces the place where their souls hope to return.

While waiting for sunset at Shah-i-Zinda, I unexpectedly ran into Mr. Zhang Ying from Matrix Partners China (I’ve apparently reached the age where I call anyone I catch “teacher”). He and a friend had ridden motorcycles all the way from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan to Samarkand. He reminded me of another, more famous investor, Jim Rogers, who also rode motorcycles around the world twice. The big names really do seem to have an adventurous streak. I can’t help wondering whether experiences like that also shape the way they see and think about investing.

Sunset at Shah-i-Zinda

Two Bukharas          

Before departure, I bought a high-speed rail ticket from Samarkand to Bukhara on the Russian Railways website. Uzbekistan’s high-speed train is called Afrosiyob, and it was quite comfortable—no match for China’s Fuxing trains, but roughly on par with the early Hexie models. I had assumed China Railway had a hand in it, but later found out Uzbekistan bought the trainsets and locomotives from Spain. So yes, the Belt and Road still has a long way to go.

I know Samarkand’s naan is world-famous, but brother, isn’t this a bit much?

Bukhara is a very old city. Within a radius of a few kilometers from the center are centuries-old houses, madrasas, and mosques. After some effort winding through long, twisting alleys, I found my guesthouse, itself an old historic home. I woke the sleepy young man inside, and by the time I finished checking in, it was already late at night. He brought me a pot of hot water, and I sat alone by the old well drinking black tea, contentedly enjoying the cool midnight breeze of Bukhara.

Late at night in the courtyard of Hotel Khurjin

The next morning, the courtyard was filled with Central Asian sunshine. I sat under the grape arbor eating breakfast, continuing to sip hot black tea and let the time pass, in no hurry at all to go out. I’m not really a tea drinker, but that morning, in that courtyard, with the old walls shutting out the noise beyond them, I suddenly found a sense of peace.

Dancing Travolta-style on the second-floor terrace of the guesthouse

Chatting with the owner, I learned that Bukhara still has many old houses like this, and the cultural heritage authorities do not allow them to be demolished. A few years ago, they put in a tremendous amount of effort to persuade the government to let them convert these old residences into hotels—breathing new life into the historic homes while also allowing more people to quite literally stay inside history. Even so, investing in and renovating a hotel like this locally still costs a great deal of money.

While wandering around Bukhara, I unexpectedly ran into a sandstorm. The gale swept into the old city from every direction like a desert caravan, and the sand began pelting pedestrians’ faces in an instant. I was grateful I had not yet left the city walls; otherwise I would have been far more uneasy. With no way to fight the storm, I had no choice but to duck into an astonishingly large ancient fortress.

Checking off the cover shot from the LP Central Asia edition—it somehow really reminds me of the eraser on a No. 2 pencil.

More than a thousand years ago, the merchants, monks, and bards traveling the Silk Road must have encountered the same blowing sand and violent wind. They too must have kept their heads down and hurried toward Bukhara. To them, Bukhara was both oasis and waystation, both shelter from the wind and the starting point for the next adventure.

When I returned to where I was staying, I saw a completely different Bukhara. The sandstorm came quickly and left just as quickly, leaving behind a blue sky and green trees. It was hard to believe these photos were taken less than two hours apart.

Can you believe these photos were taken just two hours apart?

Passing by the Kalon Minaret, I saw a team of workers busily building a stage below it. I grabbed someone nearby and tried to ask with gestures; the rough idea I got was that there would be a performance here that evening.

A little after 8 pm, the first sight of the illuminated minaret gave me a rush of excitement. I thought it might be something like Turandot staged at the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing. Instead, what hit me head-on was a rich, full-bodied “small-town variety show,” very much like going to the people’s square fair to watch a movie in China thirty years ago.

Welcome to the Bukhara Village Spring Festival Gala.

The program lineup was actually quite varied. It seemed that students from schools all across the city had been organized to come perform. The Chinese travelers with me were thrilled, happily giving the performers nicknames one by one: Bukhara Jacky Cheung, Bukhara Angelababy...

Backstage, taking photos with Bukhara Zheng Shuang, Bukhara Yang Mi, and Bukhara Dilraba.

I was told that Bukhara’s handicrafts are among the very best in Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, my frugal instincts got the better of me at the time. After returning home, I could not stop thinking about the Russian-style felt hat I did not buy—just like that silver flower in Kashan.

You Have Come from the Eastern Lands

During my days in Uzbekistan, taxi drivers and passersby often asked me, “Korea?” or said “Ko Ni Qi Wa,” which made me want to respond to everyone with, “This humble monk comes from Tang China in the East.” If I remember correctly, Xuanzang reached Shi State long before our East Asian contemporaries ever did. I did run into some Chinese travelers on the road, mainly because it happened to be China’s National Day holiday; I imagine there are even fewer at other times.

Large and small pomegranates dropping onto a jade plate.

In fact, the histories and cultures of China and Uzbekistan have long intersected and influenced each other. One local baked dumpling I especially enjoyed on this trip is called manty, which sounds a lot like our word mantou. And one fruit I love, the pomegranate: “shi” refers to Shi State, a kingdom that stood near present-day Tashkent more than a thousand years ago.

The steamed buns never arrived—I am the card daddy instead.

On the other hand, I could also feel Uzbek people’s growing curiosity about and understanding of China. There are modern Silk Road merchants traveling back and forth between China and Uzbekistan, just like Ali; the young man selling dried fruit whom I met at Shah-i-Zinda was actually a student at the Samarkand Confucius Institute and was heading to SISU this June to study; even the driver who took me to the train station knew Shanghai SIPG and Guangzhou Evergrande, because their best player, Akhmedov, was playing in the Chinese Super League.

Before the Lunar New Year, while I was laid up sick in bed, my thoughts drifted back to Uzbekistan thousands of miles away. Those few short days were only one small segment of the journey. There are still many places to go and many people to meet. Over the past two thousand years, travelers who passed through Uzbekistan likewise did not stop there. For people on the road, the Silk Road has always been a meeting point for understanding one another and the faraway world beyond.

I hope that someday I will have the time to go back and see this moving feast once again.

Postscript by ymlulu

This article came from a friend’s WeChat public account. Our friendship began in middle school. Although we only exchange a few words from time to time each year, there are still some things in my heart that have never faded away.

His WeChat public account

Whenever I see his Moments posts, he always seems to be “on business trips” somewhere around the world, experiencing all kinds of different lives. As a textbook homebody, I envy that kind of life, but I do not have the courage or energy to step outside my comfort zone. In my years in the US, I have traveled so little that I could count the trips on one hand. Toward the end, it even took expiring Free Night certificates to push me into planning trips—to New York, to California. In that sense, playing the credit card points game has also given me a bridge to the outside world. Beyond academic exchanges, it seems arguing with customer service has become my most frequent form of interaction with Americans.