(Airdate: October 14, 2025) We’ve finally left the Gansu Province and entered Xinjiang. In a very real sense, we’ve left China. From here on out the Han Chinese would be in a minority. In fact they wouldn’t be here at all, had it not been for a tribe of rowdy barbarians…

(Airdate: October 7, 2025) We’ve finally left Gansu Province and Dunghuang behind and heading for Hami, the next oasis on the northern branch of the Silk Road. The size of the Oases along the Silk Road always surprised us. It took our bus almost 30 minutes to get past the fields and pastures, and then we were back in the desert again—this time along rolling black hills and sage brush flats.

(Airdate: September 30, 2025) We’re in Gansu Province, and we’ve just watched the secret of silk leave china in a woman’s hairdo through Jade Gate Pass. From there the secret traveled through the Lop Desert on the southern branch of the silk road to the kingdom of Khotan, and from there on to India. But most travelers avoided this branch of the Silk Road. Even today the road constantly gets lost among the constantly shifting desert sands. From Jade Gate Pass, most travelers took the route north, through the Malhuyen Desert, including the famous Chinese monk Xuanzang….

(Airdate: September 23, 2025) We’re viewing the surrounding desert from the summit of Yanguan Pass in Gansu Province. Somewhere beyond the northern horizon was a second outpost, Yumenguan, or Jade Gate Paas, through which some of China’s finest jade traveled from the kingdom of Khotan. The people of Khotan also had an equal passion for fine silk. As the story goes, it took a clever Princess to bring the secret of silk making from China to the rest of the world….

(Airdate: September 16, 2025) We’re at Gansu Province at Yanguan Pass. Until mondern times the Pass marked the westernmost outpost of the Chinese empire. One such attempt to further extend their dominion to the west was the establishment of Loulan, 400 kilometers to the west, in the middle of the forbidding waste of the Lop Desert. Two Buddhist travelers, as well as Marco Polo were successful in crossing this landscape, though all three were convinced the desert was haunted….

(Airdate: September 9. 2025) We’re at Yanguan Pass, 75 kilometers west of Danghuan. For centuries, the Chinese got their finest jade from the kingdom of Khotan, the capital of an oasis state on the southern branch of the Silk Road. The name of the place where the jade arrived became “Jade Gate Pass.”

(Airdate: September 2, 2025) We’re driving west from Dunhuang to the edge of the Chinese empire. We’ve visited the set built by the Japanese to film the movie “Dunhuang.” Fifteen kilometers later, we turned off the highway again and drove another two kilometers across the trackless Gobi to the edge of a rift valley. Steps led down to a series of caves overlooking the Dang River…..

(Airdate: August 26, 2025) In addition to the ancient Buddhist art of the Mogao Caves to the east, Dunhuang has a new attraction 20 kilometers to the west. It’s a model of an ancient Chinese city, built my a Japanese film company for use as a movie set. The Japanese never do anything halfway and they spent the equivalent of over a half million U.S. dollars making sure the set looked the part….

(Airdate: August 19, 2025) The town of Dunhuang was the fourth and westernmost of the major garrisons established along the Gansu Corridor 2100 years ago. In addition to guarding China’s western flank, Dunhuang was strategically located at the junction of the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road. Among the travelers arriving via the northern branch was the Buddhist translator Kumarajiva and his white horse….

(Airdate: 12, 2025) We’re still in Gansu Province and we’re visiting a lake in the Dunes south of Dunhuang. It’s called Crescent Lake, and the magical story behind its name goes like this….