Hotan

However, the longer range, smaller capacity capability of the 737 Max perfectly suits this mission.

That allowed Chinese airlines to set up, in an economical manner, flights like Jinan to Singapore, Guangzhou to Lahore, Urumqi to Bangkok, or Hangzhou to Hotan, all five or six-hour flights with minimal demand.

The 737 Max was an aircraft perfectly suited for China, and Boeing knew it.

This suitability and focus was demonstrated by Boeing's decision to set up an aircraft completion center in Zhoushan, China.

Between 632 and 640, the Tang army, along with their Turkic allies, had steamrolled into Xinjiang and began warring with the Western Turks for control of the cities and kingdoms out that way.

One of the Tang forces, chock full of these Turkic soldiers in 632, took the cities of Kashgar and Khotan, then Yarkand in 635 and Gaochang in 640.

Gaochang, up in the Turpan Basin, became an administrative center for the Tang Protectorate of the Western Regions.

You could still visit the ruins of Gaochang and the Astana Cemetery where all these Han Chinese settlers and administrators had their final resting place.

And like all these ancient cities over the eighth and ninth centuries, started to become less and less Indo-European and more Turkic in their makeup.

And like I said, after the tenth century, it was hardly recognizable to how this region had once been prior to the Tang dynasty.

Over in Khotan, on the other side of the Taklamakan Desert, they got so frightened after hearing what happened in Kucha, they sent a representative post haste to Chang'an to show fealty and beg not to be laid waste by Ashina She'ar's troops.

A temporary setback had hit the Tang a few years before in six forty-five, when some more muscular leadership emerged up in the former Eastern Khaganate, and they began to push back hard against Tang dominance over their affairs.

in lands that from the perspective of indian and early tibetan writers were both real and remote some descriptions point in a general way toward what we'd now call central asia they speak of great northern plains ringed by mountains They mention powerful kingdoms beyond Kashmir, beyond the passes that lead toward what is now Xinjiang, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan.

You can feel the gravitational pull of real places, ancient trade hubs like Khotan, Kashgar, Bork, Samarkand, regions where Buddhism once flourished, then shifted, then disappeared.

Other texts narrow it down in different ways.

A few give numbers, so many Yojanas from a certain landmark or a certain number of days' journey beyond a known city.

It's also a place where texts arrive in one language and are turned into another.

Sanskrit becomes Tibetan.

Khotanese becomes Chinese.

Oral explanations in one dialect are paraphrased into another for local students.