A Silk Road legacy lies in the Hebei wilderness
About two hours’ drive from the city of Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, the signposts stop. A single-laned concrete road winds through shallow loess valleys on the southern edge of the Mongolian plateau. The horizon is empty save for a few small settlements scattered every two kilometers, the sole representatives of humanity.
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Alex Colville is the former culture editor at The World of Chinese. Blown to China by the tides of curiosity, then marooned here by the squalls of Covid, Alex used to write for 1843, The Economist, and the Spectator from the confines of a cold London flat. When he’s not writing for TWOC, he can be found researching his bi-weekly column for SupChina from the confines of his freezing Beijing hutong.
