Man Man Zou

I keep thinking something must be terribly wrong, because everything has been so right lately. I have had a smile on my face so much over the past couple weeks that it just doesn’t feel right anymore. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but in China, though I’m enjoying traveling, things don’t usually go so smoothly.

After Dunhuang, which was not so smooth, we took a terrible overnight hard-seat train to Turpan (Tulufan, in Chinese). All travelers advise against riding hard-seat on the train. We took hard-seats for a day train ride once and it was fine, but night time was completely different.

For the first few hours, the train was ok because there were quite a few extra seats. The seats were really uncomfortable, and worse than most buses I’ve been on, but at least I could put my legs up. Then, like a switch was turned on, we crossed into Xinjiang province, and hundreds of Uighur men piled on to the train. Uighur people are not Han-Chinese, they are of central-Asian descent. They speak a language similar to Turkish, are Muslim, and often look kind of similar to Caucasians. It was my first real introduction to these people, and immediately I was not impressed. The men were all very loud and pushy. It was around midnight when they piled on the train, and I thought they were all drunk because of how they were acting.

Sitting across from me were a 12-year old girl and her young mother. A few men kept trying to physically push the girl over so she could make room for one more person (it was only a two-seater). Eventually the girl did move over and we had three people sitting across from us in an already cramped space. Same went for the three-seaters on the other side, there were four people sitting on them because the Uighur men squeezed themselves in. The men stole other people’s seats who were off smoking or going to the bathroom (even though those people held a ticket with that seat number) and wouldn’t give it back when they returned. They left Mark and I alone, but the whole train was packed full of people and I knew it was going to be a long ride.

Then, as the night progressed, I totally regressed my quickly-formed opinion of the Uighur people. We ended up having a blast with them, and they really helped make the time fly by. They were so funny to watch, because they were just so blunt about things.

Across from us were 8 people (on seats for 6). The Chinese people who shared their seats with the newcomers were pretty easy-going about it. Three of the Chinese guys got up to go for a cigarette, and when they came back, an old Uighur guy was sleeping on their three seats. They laughed and woke him up, but the old man said “No! Just give me half an hour to sleep. Just half an hour.” So there were three Chinese guys, all with tickets assigned to those seats, but completely denied the privilege of sitting just because an old guy wanted to sleep for half an hour. But again, they were easy going about it and stood up in the packed aisle for 20 minutes or so.

Later in the night, I was still entertaining myself just by watching the funny men with their funny hats and beards talk in their very nice language, when they finally decided to turn the conversation towards us. I always dread being stuck on a bus or train with people who want to talk to us because our Chinese is not good and we have nothing interesting to say, but the conversation went well. The Uighur men had so many questions for us (such as “How long does it take you to drive to America?”). I think I shocked them when I told them that Mark’s t-shirt cost about $30 in Canada. I’m sure things like that are incomprehensible to them, since a plain t-shirt would be a couple of dollars here. They always asked their questions in Chinese, but we couldn’t understand their accent, so another Chinese guy had to re-ask in (in standard Chinese) every time. We showed them where Canada is on the map, and just about anything else we had to interest them. Our whole train car became one big happy family by the end, which was a big difference from the beginning. I was happy to be in Uyghur-land.

We finally arrived in Turpan (isn’t that a cool name?!) in the early morning. Turpan has an elevation of -154m and is the second lowest place in the world- also very cool in my opinion. Things continued to go abnormally perfectly in Turpan. After a great nap at our hotel, we went to the bus station to find out if there were any buses to the small village that we wanted to visit that day. Our stupid guide book (Lonely Planet) doesn’t mention any buses and suggests to go through a tour company (and spend 250 Yuan!) to get to the small village of Tuyoq. I still have the philosophy that in China, there are buses everywhere, so I decided to go to the bus station. Sure enough, there were several direct buses during the day, as well as more that stop nearby Tuyoq. The ticket lady was by far the most helpful ticket seller I’ve ever seen in China, and it was probably the first time that no one tried to budge while I was buying the tickets.

Soon after, we were on our bus to Tuyoq, watching music videos of lively, but very nerdy, Uighur music to keep us entertained. The style here seems to be similar to 70s/80s in North America, and all the happenin’ singers we saw on the VCD looked like perfect examples with their curly hair and geekish sweaters. Though geeky, some of the men here are quite handsome! And I’m sure guys would agree that the women are quite beautiful too. They have light skin, and often interesting eyes that are sometimes even blue! I’ve even seen children covered in freckles.

When our bus came to a road leading towards the village, the driver told us we had to walk the rest of the way because the bus wasn’t going directly to Tuyoq. The walk was perfect, since it was through small grape-producing neighborhoods and right now is grape season. The people were busy processing grapes and drying them into raisins.

The village of Tuyoq was great. It’s an important pilgrimage site for Muslims because the tomb of the first Uighur Muslim is there. It was a pretty little place nestled in a valley with adobe-walled houses and grape-drying houses everywhere. We had to pay to enter the village which was too bad, but in China, you have to pay for everything and this was one of the few places that was worth it.

On our way out, we met with a small Chinese tour group and asked them if we could catch a ride back to town with them. No problem, they said, and they happily drove us right back to our hotel! Crazy luck.

Then the next day, we teamed up with two sisters from Germany, named Mona and Claudia, and hired a taxi to take us out of town to see some sights. We went to the 2000-year old ruins of an old city called Jiaohe. Though ruins usually bore me, it was really neat walking through this city because the streets, walls, and buildings were still fairly intact and it was easy to imagine the city back then. We also went to see a karez, which is a 2000-year old water irrigation system that the Uighur people built to transport water underground in tunnels from the mountains all the way into the desert.

Across from our hotel was a bazaar. There were people selling bagels, yoghurt, and cookies- all things I hadn’t seen in a long time. I quite like the Uighur food. I always have laghman (lamien), which is almost identical to spaghetti, except the noodles are much thicker and yummier as they are handmade.

We only spent one night in Turpan, but because of overnight trains into and out of the town, it actually worked out to two full days. Our luck continued…

We would have rather flown than taken a hard seat on the train to our next town, Kashgar, but luckily we were able to get some hard sleeper train tickets. We got on the train and couldn’t believe how nice it was. Instead of having three beds stacked on top of each other, this train only had two, making it only four people to a compartment instead of 6.

When I saw that our beds weren’t in the same compartment, I thought hmph, typical, but then one guy readily volunteered to switch with us and I continued to be in denial of our good luck.

When I went to the bathroom and realized I forgot to bring toilet paper, I again thought hmph, typical, but then I looked over and there was toilet paper on the roll! Free toilet paper in China! Of course an hour later it wasn’t there anymore, and was never replaced, but it was a first for me, and a great start for China.

The train ride was luxury, and the two Chinese guys who shared our compartment were completely different than all my neighbors from past train rides. These guys were quiet, they didn’t smoke, didn’t blow snot out of their nose, didn’t chew their food loudly, and were extremely neat. In fact, I really liked the one middle-aged guy across from me because he thought us ‘foreigner friends’ were hilarious. There were so many other foreigners on the train as well (at least 6 others), that it started up a lot of conversations among the Chinese.

In Kashgar, we were still hanging around the two German sisters, and two more French guys joined us and we all went to the same hotel. Even though Kashgar is pretty remote in China (it’s worth looking it up on a map to see how far away it is), it has a ton of foreign tourists as it’s at the end of the Silk Road in China, and it’s near the borders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan.

We got in to Kashgar at the perfect time, the day before the big Sunday Market, where 50,000 people come to Kashgar to make their weekly purchases or sell their goods. We took it easy on Saturday, by just walking around the Old Town areas a little, and eating some excellent western food (by far the best western food I’ve had since I left Canada).

On market day, we got up to see the action at its busiest. Luckily, in Xinjiang province, it’s never too early because of China’s crazy one time-zone policy. We are far, far west in China, but still on the same time zone as Beijing, which is far east in China. I checked a map, and if you cross into Pakistan from China, you lose three hours. And on the far eastern end, if you cross from China into Russia, you gain two hours. China crosses many time-zones, but just keeps it simple at 1. The nice thing about that is that in Xinjiang, the sun doesn’t rise until 8am, and it stays light until past 8pm. Perfect for me!

We first went to the livestock market to see all the live animals bought and sold. There were sheep, donkeys, cows, and a few horses for sale. Lots of deals going on, and after watching the people for a while, it became quite predictable. The sellers would stand with their animals. A buyer would walk up to the animal, and without even glancing at the seller, he’d grab the animal by the mouth and pry it open to check its teeth to determine the age. If the buyer was happy with what he saw, then he’d immediately start shaking the seller’s hand and negotiating. I saw happy and not-so-happy negotiating going on between the people, but what mattered most to me was that none of the locals seemed to notice or care that there were a zillion tourists walking around taking photos of them. It was a photographer’s dream, though the light was pretty harsh. Later in the day when things started to die down, the locals finally started to take notice of the many tourists taking their photos.

The other part of market day was the large bazaar at another part of town. We went there to check it out, but it wasn’t as interesting as the livestock market. I did find myself a handmade Uighur knife, as well as a handmade wooden rolling pin(!)

The story behind the rolling pin is that I saw them being made and thought that they looked cute. I figured that since I’m a tourist, I’d have to pay a fortune for one (not to mention the fact that I’m backpacking, and don’t really have a use for a rolling pin!) so I didn’t bother asking. Then at the market I saw an old man with a pile of rolling pins, and I couldn’t resist asking him how much it was. He held up two fingers. I thought hmpf, he wants 20, what a rip, but then he held up a 2 Yuan note. 2 Yuan! That’s 25 cents, almost too embarrassingly low. I was amazed that he gave me the local price, and I just liked the dang rolling pin so much that I had to buy it. I’m sure Mark is impressed to be carrying around a rolling pin in his backpack.

On Monday, Mark, Mona, Claudia, and I hired a minivan and driver to take us along the beautiful Karakorum highway, a 6 hour drive past Karakul Lake to Tashkurgan, on the Kyrgyzstan border. It wasn’t too much more to hire a driver instead of take the bus, and it was more than worth it because we stopped many, many times to take photos along the nicest highway I’ve ever seen. The road was terrible, but we passed peak after peak, and the nearby surroundings varied from bright red rocks to sand dunes to snow. There were also dozens of semi-wild camels everywhere- something I wasn’t expecting. Apparently the camels usually have owners, but they only come around once a year or so, and the camels go wherever they want and sometimes other people just take them.

The people of the area around Tashkurgan (the Pamir Plateau) are Kygyz and Tajik. They dressed quite differently, and the Tajik women wore a cap on their head covered with a veil.

We spent the night at beautiful Karakul Lake, and slept in a Kyrgyz yurt. A yurt is a circular house that nomads typically live in, because it is somewhat portable. Inside the yurt was just a small woodstove and a place to sleep. The ground was covered with many colorful carpets that the women made. The Kazakh family we stayed with made us dinner that night. It was painstakingly slow to watch, as the women cut everything up, then got the fire ready and fried everything up with oil and spices. I thought dinner was for sure ready after about 45minutes of watching and waiting, but I was wrong, as the mother dumped some wheat and oil into a big bowl and started making the noodles from scratch! There were no tables, utensils (other than a knife and spoon), or any conveniences of a kitchen back home. She mixed all the powders, kneaded the dough, and finally turned it into noodles. Soon after, dinner was finally ready. It was good, and it definitely made me appreciate western kitchens.

I froze that night, as we were at 3600m elevation and our yak-shit fueled woodstove quickly burnt out. I also felt a little sick from the elevation and woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and get some fresh air- outside was a beautifully starred sky so I made Mark come out to see it as well (not to mention I was a little scared being out there alone!).

The next day was marriage proposal day, but I hadn’t planned it until the moment it happened. We woke up for sunrise naturally, since the sun comes up late in the far west of China. The whole area was just absolutely perfect. There were very few people around because we didn’t stay in the pay area- our driver took us to some yurts on the far end of the lake and saved us a 50 Yuan admission fee. Mark and I walked around slowly, since we both felt kind of sick (it might also have been our meal from the night before).

I took tons of pictures, including the marriage proposal surprise photo. It was fun. And there were yaks and camels everywhere, along with a cool old guy trying to round up his yaks that were hanging out in the freezing cold lake.

Our minivan had big trouble starting that morning because it got really cold overnight, so when our driver finally got it going, we had to hop in and drive nonstop for 5 hours back to Kashgar. We did have one stop along the highway, which was a passport checkpoint. Apparently the Karakorum highway area is a little touchy because it’s near Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, and there are possibly some separatists in the areas near the borders.

I should also mention our passenger that we magically collected for our two day trip. His name was Abdul, but we named him Mr. Stone, as he came along with us just so he could buy, sell, and trade rocks and stones with various people along the way. Stones were his business. Our driver, a young, handsome Uighur man named Mohammed, and Mr. Stone, a middle-aged guy who looked like Cheech&Chong (I don’t know which one) often got in funny little arguments while driving. We all made fun of Mr. Stone for his obsession with rocks- he was always watching the millions of rocks go by outside, hoping to eye something precious. And Mohammed always honked the horn with impatience as Mr. Stone was bargaining with rock sellers. Mr. Stone, in turn, gave our driver lectures all the time about his driving skills. He’d often tell him to slow down, or honk the horn to let people know he was coming around the corner. Watching them half-heartedly bicker at each other was yet another highlight of the trip.

We got to Kashgar in the late afternoon, and hung out with Claudia and Mona until they left to catch their evening flight out of town, back to Urumuqi and Beijing, and then soon after, Germany. That’s probably it for our social life in China. We don’t make friends that easily because 1. We don’t see cool foreigners very often and 2. I’m such a pain in the butt with all the photo taking I do.

And now is our last full day in Kashgar.

We walked through the cute little old town of Kashgar. I noticed that the best time to visit is at lunch time, because children come home to eat and parents are out and about. Lot of kids asked for their photos to be taken, and for some of them, I later went to the photo developing place and printed out the photos for them and found my way back to old town to give the photos to their parents, who were pleased. Just a little feel-good thing for ourselves I guess.

We also visited the Id Kah mosque, a nice mosque built 1442. It’s much easier to visit mosques in China than in Malaysia, the people are easy going about women and foreigners. Though in China you have to pay to visit it- in China nothing is free.

We were amused by the introduction sign at the entrance:

Oh China! Where freedom of beliefs are protected, and all ethnic groups welcome the religious policy. What a wonderful country I am in!