I honestly had no interest in stargazing in Dunhuang. It wasn't even on my list. When you're at the edge of the Gobi Desert, in a city that was once the last stop before the vast unknown, your mind turns to history. You think about the Silk Road, the crumbling beacon towers, and the ghosts of soldiers who stared out at the same vast emptiness, wondering if they'd ever make it home. The stars? They felt like a distraction.

So when my driver, Mr. Hu, offered to find a good spot for stargazing as we set out for our tour of the Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark, I waved him off. "It's okay," I said. "Not a priority. Just make sure we get to the Yangguan Pass, Yumen Pass, and the Great Wall. The important stuff."

I had read about stargazing trips before the visit. The camping excursions deep in the desert, the specially-arranged itineraries. It all sounded like too much work. I didn't want to complicate things. My mind was set on history, on understanding how civilizations collided here when camel rides were the norm, not the comfortable BYD EV that was now whisking me as far as 180 kilometers from the city.

Mr. Hu was eager to make the day a success. He was the kind of private tour taxi driver who didn't just drop you off at the entrance; he came inside the museum with me to make sure I had the English translation device. He peppered our drive with bits of history, apologizing for his lack of "professional English". I told him he was doing great. He'd been down this stretch of the desert countless times, and his knowledge was the kind you can't get from a guidebook.

Poetry of loneliness

At the Yangguan Pass, he directed me for a photo on the wooden path a stone's throw away from the beacon tower. It's the original structure from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), jutting out from a reddish sandstone hill. They called it the "Ear and Eye" of the Pass because it commanded a dramatic view of the Gobi. As I waited for a senior citizen to stop photobombing my shot, I noticed the man was walking the path with an almost ceremonial slowness. In the dry, cold, wind-swept expanse, it seemed like a strange place for a leisurely stroll.

"Why is this spot so popular with local tourists?" Mr. Hu asked rhetorically, setting up my next photo.

I shrugged, expecting a history lesson about military communications or ancient defense strategies.

"Because of poetry," he said.

That made me glance back at the white-haired man. According to Mr. Hu, Chinese poetry had turned the beacon towers at Yangguan into symbols of desolate farewells. They were immortalized in literary masterpieces, places that perfectly captured the anguish of loneliness and the weight of goodbye. Standing there, looking out at the vast wilderness, I didn't need to know the poems by heart. I could feel it. Friendship and parting. It was written in the landscape itself.

The museum was a treasure trove of pottery, jade, and weapons, but it was Mr. Hu who pointed out the most intriguing artifact: a baby mummy in a small wooden casket, discovered near a beacon tower on the southern route.

A source of genuine amazement

Our next stop was Yumen Pass, the Jade Gate, about 80 kilometers northwest. It's a UNESCO site, the official checkpoint where caravans once brought jade from Central Asia into China. After touring the fortress, Mr. Hu quizzed me. "Did you see Hecang City?" he asked, referring to the ancient granary. He talked about how Yumen Pass, like Yangguan, was a symbol of the bitter, harsh life on the ancient frontier. Another literary icon of desolation.

To be honest, by then, I was starting to feel a little fatigued by the poetry of loneliness. My mind was more captivated by something else: the Great Wall itself. Not the brick version we all know, but the Han Dynasty wall, built with a layering method of sand, reeds, and willow branches. The fact that these remnants still stood after thousands of years of wind erosion was a source of genuine amazement.

Mr. Hu had a talent for weaving amazement into the everyday. Between stops, he told me he'd chosen not to marry, saving his money to help his parents rather than spending it on an expensive dowry and a house for a future family. I wanted to ask him about that, about how he dealt with being single in a city at the edge of the desert. But I was afraid of breaking the spell. I just wanted him to keep talking, to keep mixing the history of this desolate place with the quiet poetry of his own life.

An otherworldly personality

By the time we reached the Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark, I was exhausted. But the yardang landforms, sculpted by millennia of wind and flood, woke me right up. The park is called "Devil City" because of the eerie sound the wind makes as it passes through the geological wonders. The tour bus inside the park makes several stops, barricading you meters away from the formations so you can admire them from a distance. They look like a chorus line of geological sculptures, hauntingly beautiful. When the crimson sun hits the rocks, they take on an otherworldly personality.

The last stop in the geopark is the Portrait of a Great Man, where visitors are allowed to disperse and get as close as possible. You trudge through the sand, pick a pillar, and just stare. As the sun dipped toward the horizon, the colors shifted, and people began snapping out of their trances to take sunset selfies. There was a euphoria in the crowd as we emerged back at the exit, like we'd all just left a wildly enjoyable music festival. But the energy was spent. On the ride back, as the desert went dark, the only thing I wanted was a bed.

Stars in a mason jar

Mr. Hu started talking about his childhood in rural Gansu, spending evenings alone on the roof, gazing at the stars. Then, in the darkness, he slowed the car. He ignored my exhaustion, turned right, and pulled over to a pitch-black roadside.

"Just a minute," he said.

I stepped out of the BYD, which had begun to feel like a moving bed as I had been up more than 14 hours already. I was immediately hit by the cold. But I hardly had time to register the temperature.

I looked up.

It felt like I could reach out and pluck the stars from the sky, like unlucky fireflies I could trap in a mason jar. The clarity was blinding. It was the kind of sharpness that makes you feel like you could float right off the ground and drift into the universe.

Alone with the stars

Dunhuang, I realized, is a natural observatory. It's a premier stargazing destination on the planet. The absence of light pollution is its greatest advantage. The urban glow is confined to a small city center; minutes after leaving it, you're in an uninhabited expanse. The arid climate means cloudless nights, and the dry air means no hazy veil to dull the starlight. It all combines to make the stars look impossibly bright, impossibly close.

Standing there, I felt foolish for almost skipping this. It would have been a stupid thing to miss.

But as I stood in the cold, marveling at the celestial spectacle, I found my mind drifting back to 36-year-old Mr. Hu. I thought about his decision to forgo a family, his evenings on a Gansu rooftop as a lone child, and the way he so deeply understood the poetry of loneliness embedded in the ancient passes we'd visited.

I wondered how a man who had such a deep connection to this celestial grandeur could choose to experience it alone. How could he not want to share moments like this in Dunhuang, a window to the stars, with a future wife? It seemed like the greatest loneliness of all.