Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

During my trip to Ningxia I visited the provincial museum in Yinchuan, which included an exhibit about Hui culture. The Hui are one of China's national minorities and Ningxia is their "autonomous region," a province in which an ethnic minority is theoretically given a lot of control in the provincial government (Tibet is also an autonomous region). There are plenty of Hui in Zhangye, and though quite assimilated into Han Chinese culture they are distinguished by the practice of Islam and the distinctive white hats worn by the men. Part of the fun of Chinese museums is reading the captions, which tend to have a very Chinese flavor to them:

And of the many pictures chosen to represent Hui culture, my favorite was definitely this one:

Daytrip to Inner Mongolia; or, "At the Ends of the Earth"

This week I spent exactly one day in Inner Mongolia (a northern province or more accurately "autonomous region" in China, not Mongolia the country), in a town called Bayan Hot (or 巴音 Bāyīn in Chinese). I live in a fairly remote city, but this really felt like heading out into the middle of absolute nowhere. It was a journey of close to three hours to the city, the last half of which being through pure, desolate desert with almost no signs of civilization. It's a small place that I knew little about besides it being in Inner Mongolia, the main inspiration for going.

Besides the slow pace of life and a chance to see Mongolian writing on all the signs, the town provided one of the ample opportunities to view the dichotomies and contradictions of modern China. Immediately outside the town limits, one can see the traditional clay and brick housing common in northwest China:

Mere streets away, inside the town, I was a little taken aback when I turned a corner and saw this modern monstrosity of a building:

This stadium could clearly hold the entire population of the town, and seemed a bit out of place, as well as ill-used. I asked a couple of locals and they said it was already closed for the winter but in the warmer months they hold art shows and the like. I've read that the provincial government is prone to flashy displays of development in lieu of more practical spending, and a 60,000 capacity stadium has been built in provincial capital Hohhot that with the exception of the opening celebrations is unlikely to fill up. In the near total-silence of this small town it felt a bit surreal to stand in front of it, like an apocalyptic future in which most of the population had been wiped out. Near total-silence is surreal in China anyway.

The main attraction of the town is a Mongolian temple, which was similar in style to others I've seen as many Mongolians practice Tibetan Buddhism. One monk who I guessed to be in his 30's had an obvious affinity for Westerners, and once he discovered I could speak Chinese quickly engaged me in conversation. This turned into a fast-paced and passionate 40 minute lecture about his thoughts on the society around him that fascinated me as much as it gave me a headache; he didn't pause much and I could only catch around 30% of what he said. The main idea was that he's become greatly disappointed in the loss of basic decency and morals that has accompanied fast economic growth. He thinks people in China are interested in money, success, and the approval of others at the cost of everything else. Though he said there are still decent, honest Chinese people around, the whole society is promoting economic success as the be-all and end-all of life, and it's wrong. He also is disappointed in the attitude towards Mongolians like himself; he told me they are seen as stupid, slow and uncouth by many Chinese, and they aren't truly understood. It's true that almost every time ethnic minorities come up during conversation with a Han Chinese friend they have used the word 野蛮 yěmán, which means "barbarous" or "uncivilized" and have made several disparaging remarks (generally students, who also claim during class that there is no discrimination in China). This disillusionment with society inspired him to become a monk two years ago. He hoped I would learn Mongolian and travel to Mongolia proper someday, an idea I've toyed with anyway (the traveling part at least).

I've noticed a pattern of minorities opening up to foreigners in China, whether it was Uyghurs in Xinjiang or Tibetans in Qinghai. I suppose complaints to Han Chinese would often fall on indifferent or even hostile ears (I've heard comments like "those minorities, always complaining; they have it good enough") and we provide a fresh and interested source of conversation that is outside the system. The Chinese tourists walking past us during my talk with the monk paid little attention, the only exceptions being a student who giggled and wanted to ask me where I was from, and a woman who interrupted to ask the monk if she could take pictures. I think images of Confucian scholars and Tang poetry had given me the impression of the Chinese as quite thoughtful and spiritual, which wasn't necessarily on the mark. Whatever other virtues modern Chinese society has I wouldn't put deep spirituality at the top of the list, and famous temples are pure tourist attractions with guys in their new cowboy hats taking pictures of their girlfriend while she gives the "V" sign and smiles (more on that soon).

After leaving the monk I took a bus back to Yinchuan, and on the way out saw this billboard:

发展是第一要务
富民是第一目标
和谐是第一任务

roughly translated:

Development is the #1 duty
Enriching the people is the #1 goal
Harmony is the #1 mission

Qinghai Travels, Part V: Close Encounters with Knife-Wielding Mongolians

When we returned to Xining I was still ill and needed a day to recover, and since we didn't arrive early enough for the day trip we had planned anyway it became a day of rest. The next day was set aside for Qinghai Lake (青海湖), probably the best known attraction of Qinghai Province. It is the largest lake in China and features blue, unpolluted water and the aptly named Bird Island, which has... lots of birds.

The lake is well outside of Xining with no public transportation, so despite knowing better we had to sign up for a Chinese tour group. This was the low point of the trip (disregarding the several days of bus riding) and I was only further turned off of tour groups. In a marathon of a day trip we spent 10 hours riding on the bus to spend a grand total of one hour at the lake. The distance was the main problem, but more irritating were the numerous stops at lame souvenir shops along the way. Before the lake we were also subjected to the Sun Moon Mountain, a hideously touristy Tibetan temple crawling with opportunists selling Chinese tourists the chance for a photo on a yak in a tacky minority costume. It was a big artificial yawn in comparison to the temples in use we had already seen. Referring to the Tibetan prayer flags covered in obviously Tibetan writing on the way in (it vaguely resembles Arabic), a man behind us on the bus asked a companion "is that writing Tibetan or English?" I would compare this to an American not being able to differentiate say, Chinese and Russian writing, after having had six years of compulsory Chinese study at school.

Having seen the ocean in my life the lake itself wasn't too thrilling, though it was indeed a very pretty lake. It was much too crowded with tourists, and the time was too short. Besides that it was far and away the most expensive day of the trip; Andrew even got in a protracted argument with a restaurant owner when he tried to shamelessly cheat us by charging 5 yuan each for tea. Before going to Qinghai every single Chinese friend asked us "are you going to Qinghai Lake? Qinghai Lake is very beautiful." When I replied yes but we were mostly interested in Yushu, they would nod blankly and say "oh," which is probably one reason Yushu was 100 times better: no one knows about it.

The last destination of the trip was Tongren (同仁), which stood out mostly for a reputation for distinctive Tibetan paintings known as Tangka. We were approached on the street by a young Mongolian man without a whole lot to do, and made a friend for the day who showed us around town and helped us. When we talked about the paintings he started telling us about how they were illegal but we could come back and buy them at night in the temples, and we had to clear up that we were buying new paintings for sale, and not antique hunting for the black market. True to our different personalities, Stephen went marching up hills by himself at the first temple, while me and Andrew relaxed in the shade talking to the Mongolian, whose Chinese name was Bateer. A Mongolian through and through, Bateer is in the habit of carrying a large knife on his belt at all times. When we finally saw Stephen again he shouted at us "that was flippin' awesome!" Apparently we had missed the best temple ever. But on the other hand, it was hot out.

Bateer took us to another temple complex where we could buy paintings. We were introduced to a monk artist and his entourage of apprentices, and soaked up the surroundings of his atmospheric workshop/home. I wasn't originally planning on buying a painting, but Stephen's enthusiasm caught on, and I finally broke down as I realized I would be returning to America with very little to show in terms of purchases. I asked the monk to explain the painting, but he would only say "it's too complicated," and in Chinese I was definitely going to take his word for it. Afterwards we had to be heading back to Zhangye, with Bateer (who was fond of us and still had nothing to do) hanging out on the bus until it was time for us to go. About two months later, that finally wraps up the story of the May holiday. I'll try to be a little more on the ball when I travel this summer.

Qinghai Travels, Part IV: Turning Down a 15-Year Old Girl in Marriage

The next day was taken up by a day trip to a town called Nangqian (囊谦), about three hours' ride through typically beautiful scenery in a van taxi from Yushu. Nangqian was even smaller, more remote, and more traditional than Yushu. The surrounding scenery was also even better, and we later regretted allotting only half a day for the place. Thankfully there are places like this that haven't been caught up in China's frenzied modernization drive, where there is no Construct the Nation Road or Liberation Street and women can be seen washing clothes in the river.

There was a colorful and attention-grabbing temple in the town which afforded great views from the top. Andrew wasn't too taken with temples and while me and Stephen explored and caught a few minutes of monks performing music, Andrew remained in his element outside, talking with a small crowd of people in Chinese. In the 20 or so minutes we had been gone, he had already received a marriage proposal to a shy, pretty 15-year old Tibetan girl. A jovial woman was half-jokingly (maybe) trying to talk Andrew into the deal. "Are you her mother?" Andrew asked. "No, her sister!" "Her close sister? [it's common in China to refer to cousins as brothers or sisters]" "Nope!"

While searching for a bathroom on our way out, we walked through an outdoor pool hall. The crowd of 96% young men all paused in their games to look at us, and if it were a movie it would have been the scene where we knew we had stepped into the wrong bar. A small boy came up to Stephen and begged in Chinese "Foreigner! Take our picture!" Several times Chinese people have said to me "I guess in America you call us foreigners, huh?" And then I picture an American pointing and staring at a Chinese person on the street and saying loudly to his friend "foreigner!!" He would look like an ass, but we are on the receiving end of this several times a day in China. Fair enough that we draw attention when there are so few of us, but I do resent the lumping of every single foreign country into one single "not Chinese" category, and tiresome comments like "foreigners have blond hair. Why is your hair the same color as ours?" After a year and a half I don't think I have been called a Westerner here even once, simply "foreigner."

Upon returning to Yushu we went out to dinner with Natalie, the woman from South Africa who we met randomly on the first day in town. She took us to an authentic Tibetan restaurant (which had been surprisingly hard to find during our stay) and we had a pleasant conversation over a decent meal.

The next day was the epic return journey to Xining by sleeper bus, and after saying our goodbyes to the beautiful Tibetan girl in the hotel that had befriended Andrew (so many missed opportunities), we set off. This bus was in fact a sleeper, to our great relief, but we soon had other things to worry about. I'm not overly picky about cleanliness, especially in China, but the bus was absolutely filthy, and smelled. The blankets were so disgusting that we refused to use them, throwing them on empty beds where they were later claimed by other passengers. I already knew the road was rough, but the bus was in such poor shape that it shook dramatically for the entire 17 hour journey. It felt like being in a violent storm at sea, or asking a couple of friends to shake your bed for 17 hours straight. To top it all off I wasn't feeling particularly well, possibly due to the high altitude. Near Nangqian we had seen signs declaring over 4,300 meters and I was feeling a little lightheaded in that town. The supremely greasy rolls I had bought for the journey didn't go down well (I still can't look at similar rolls without feeling sick) and finally I had a hearty vomit or two on the bus. Fortunately I had empty plastic bags with me, but unfortunately (at least for Stephen and later Andrew) I was in the middle row and had no choice but to ask my friends to dispose of them out the window. Oh, the ups and downs of China. When traveling through her she's as fickle as a Greek goddess, but you love her just the same.

Qinghai Travels, Part III: The Tibetan Al Pacino

note: yes, I am still writing about what happened in May. This is due mostly to my laziness in writing this blog lately, but I also have somewhat of an excuse in that the internet on campus has been down most of the time in the past week or two.















The day after arriving in Yushu we visited the Princess Wencheng Temple, one of the noteworthy sites of the area. Princess Wencheng was a famous Tang dynasty princess who was married to a Tibetan king named Songtsan Gambo (the enormous statue in Yushu was probably him, though I'm not certain) and thereby helped bridge the gap between the two cultures. The temple in Yushu is to commemorate her passing through the area, and apparently there are two Tibetan festivals to honor her.

On the bus to the temple we had an unexpected surprise: our fellow passengers were none other than the same migrant workers who had been kicked off the bus on the way to Yushu and presumed lost to the elements and wild dogs. They also got a kick out of seeing us again and we (rather, Andrew) had a friendly chat with them. We also slowly pieced together the story: there is a rare plant grown in the area (called 冬虫夏草 dōng chóng xià cǎo) that is used by upper crust Chinese as an aphrodisiac, and therefore sells for a high price. There is money to be made harvesting the plant, which is not easy to do, and there is a law preventing outsiders from coming in and profiting off it. Thus a permit is required to get in. That, or take an expensive taxi and sneak into town after you've been kicked off the bus after 14 hours, like those guys did. They were in fact not sightseeing at the Princess Wencheng Temple, but rather heading farther on to a place where there was work. They had also reunited with their super-shady baseball cap-donning boss.

The temple was certainly a pleasant, atmospheric place, quieter and more enjoyable than the more famous Ta'er Si outside of Xining. The cliff sides towering over the building were bursting with colorful prayer flags, and the surrounding scenery was not half bad. The monks living and studying in the temple were a friendly and curious group. I guess it shouldn't be surprising but in general the monks we met on the trip were memorably hospitable and kind. There was only one monk who could speak good Chinese at the temple, and at around 24 was the oldest. After a number of years of studying Buddhism the monks would graduate and move on. They were not allowed to marry, and if they did they would have to permanently leave the order.

After touring the modest temple we took a walk out into the surrounding countryside. The shy girl running a small store told us there was a primary school about a half-hour walk along the path, and we figured we'd see what was to be seen while we waited for the bus to return in the later afternoon. We did find the school, which was a poor, one-room schoolhouse with just one class of 50 students. The students were at different ages and levels, averaging around 8 or 9 years old, and there were only two teachers. The children poured out of the building after their lesson and took some long, curious looks at us, with a few of the braver ones coming up to say "hello". As with most of the area, they were all Tibetan.

When we returned to the temple to wait for the bus, a monk who was driving into town offered us a ride in his car, which we gladly accepted. He went out of his way to show us a nearby cliff carving of a Buddha, and was quite a cool monk. He was very fond of Stephen's sunglasses which he was borrowing, and seemed to be dropping hints that he wouldn't mind if Stephen gave them to him, but Stephen hadn't brought them all the way from America just to make a monk in Qinghai stylish. The music selection of the day was Buddhist chanting. When he dropped us at our hotel we decided to give him some gas money as thanks. As it happened there was a 20 yuan bill laying on the ground just in front of us. We weren't quite sure where it came from, possibly falling out of one of our pockets, but we gave it to the monk, who declared "money from Heaven!"

That afternoon we went to the bus station to buy return tickets, and met one of the more colorful characters of the trip, a middle-aged Tibetan man whose English name was Jerry. Jerry dabbled in officialdom, selling pet food, history, amateur philosophizing, and heavy drinking. If he spoke English I think he would have used phrases like "now let me tell you something" a lot. He spoke quite fast and excitedly so mostly the only one who could keep up with his Chinese was Andrew, who Jerry was fond of hitting with the back of his hand when making an important point, at least once spraying the ashes of his cigarette all over Andrew's clothes. He was straight out of the movies, especially in his all-black outfit and sunglasses, and Stephen eventually caught on to his resemblance to Al Pacino.

After a long conversation at the bus station, during which we learned his son was in India studying at the Dalai Llama's school, he decided to show us around town. By "around town", I mean hang out by the river and drink beer and baijiu (Chinese liquor). We were to have company: four Tibetan woman in their late 20's or early 30's, sitting on the rocks and singing to their hearts' contents. They were also wasted. Sadly, only one of them had learned to speak Tibetan, the other three knowing only Chinese. The three of us drank lazily but Jerry hit the baijiu at a brisk pace. The more he drank the more he talked (not that anything had been stopping him), and at one point he went into an amusing string of stories about war, which he acted out as he told them. He was actually a pretty intelligent guy, who had a lot of political opinions and made comments commending the US style of agriculture. 95% of our Chinese conversations are based on "can you use chopsticks?" and "are you used to the food here?" He was also sentimental about Tibet's lack of independence, and told Andrew he identified with Scotland. A young monk also joined us for a little while, and among other things we learned that the 4 big sins for his religion are killing, stealing, drinking, and sex.

When we left the river it was getting on in the evening and we had discussed getting dinner together, but by this point Jerry was drunk and increasingly annoying. We decided to part ways, but subtle hints were not working and he continued to follow us towards our hotel and into our room, jabbering the entire time. Though Andrew was by far the best able to speak to him he was also by far the most polite. He did get it across that we wanted to rest and be alone, and though Jerry agreed in words, he wouldn't follow through in action. He had been in war mode for the past couple of hours, asking me questions like "do you think I'm more of a scholar or a warrior?" Once drunk he had taken a liking to me, describing me as a leader, which I can only attribute to my superior beard-growing skills. Which reminds me: on the first day of the trip the three of us decided that none of us would shave, and thus a beard-growing competition commenced, and may the manliest among us win.

When we left the hotel we was still with us, so we had to resort to drastic measures. We had the advantage of him not understanding our native language, and organized a quick plan. Stephen called Andrew's cell phone, and Andrew answered and pretended to be making plans with a friend. He then explained we had to be at our friend's house for dinner, and really had to be going. Jerry said he would leave, yet refused to do so, talking all the while. Finally I reached the end of my patience and flagged down a taxi, and thankfully he didn't get in with us and we were rid of him. Al Pacino had been given the slip.

Qinghai Travels, Part II: You Should Have Come in July

The impression of Yushu I had from my scant information proved to be accurate enough - a small, remote, and pleasant town with Tibetan characteristics. From the architecture to the hilltop temples and the huge (and I mean HUGE - take note of the bulldozer in the picture) statue of a legendary Tibetan warrior king, it had a refreshingly un-Chinese character. Like my travels through Xinjiang, there a slight feeling of not being in Kansas anymore.

As would be expected, Tibetans look, dress, and act quite distinctly different from the Chinese. Red-robed monks were everywhere, and it was generally agreed that Tibetans, with their cowboy hats and unpolished features, were much cooler looking than the Chinese. Many of the women were very attractive. Not necessarily more so than Chinese girls, but they were striking at the time for their differences. As expected we attracted attention on the streets from passersby, but there was a genuine friendliness from the majority of residents, and many come up to make friendly conversation. There seemed to be fewer obnoxious "hellooo!"s shouted at us than usual. Yushu is 85-90% Tibetan, although surprisingly most of the restaurants served the same Chinese cuisine we have come to know. And to our surprise food was twice the cost of food in Zhangye, because much of it must be brought in from long distances away. A theme emerged in the conversations we had with locals: there is a big horse festival in July. Most of the tourists come in July. The grass is greener in July. Why didn't we come in July?

One of my favorite aspects of the town was seeing monks going about their everyday business. From the typical images of monks we see in movies and the media it's easy to form a stereotype of them sitting in a temple all day chanting, but there was more life to these monks. Monks on cell phones. Monks on motorcycles. Monks shopping. Monks on escalators. Monks falling off motorcycles. Monks joking around, talking to us, having their dinner, taking a bus. All the while in their brilliant red robes.

The town was old-fashioned, even in comparison to Zhangye. The streets (and there were only about three of them) were lines with stalls with every manner of handicraft, and people would be pounding metal or carving wood on the sidewalk. And of course, it is quite a remote place. I mentioned that the bus from Xining is at best a 17 hour trip - Xining is the closest big city in any direction. Despite the holiday we were not anticipating running into many tourists.

There was also an unusually high number of beggars. During our first dinner in Yushu, after a few minutes a woman came into the restaurant to beg, obviously focusing on us. She stood for an awkwardly long time with hand outstretched before giving up in the end. When she left, another beggar came in and did the same. And then another. And then two monks chanting. They were tag-teaming us, with a replacement for each disappointed beggar who left. We decided to keep count, and during the meal we faced down 19 different beggars. Presumably word was going around the begging community that foreigners were in town. During the next meal there were 8 beggars, and this quickly dwindled down to almost nothing. Word must have gotten around that these were stingy foreigners. Qinghai is one of the poorest provinces in China, and it's possible that the widespread belief in Buddhism is a factor in the higher numbers of beggars compared to the more secular Chinese of our own Gansu.

During that first meal, we asked for a couple of safe dishes plus a request for a local specialty. After a long wait we were represented with two enormous plates of what we determined was yak meat, which was delicious but exhausting to chew. There was a group of teenage monks in the opposite corner, and we had a lengthy disagreement over their sex. Stephen was adamant they were girls, whereas Andrew was convinced they were boys and I was simply confused. After they left Andrew finally asked the staff and found out to his disappointment that they were girls, which Stephen was happy to bring up during the rest of the trip.

One of the attractions in Yushu we were aware of was the largest collection of prayer stones in all of Tibet. Prayer stones are stones which have Tibetan Buddhist prayers carved into them and are in large piles which grow slowly as worshippers add more stones. There are apparently more than 2 billion prayer stones at this site, which are arranged in walls around a temple. Me and Stephen took a walk around the complex while Andrew found a shady spot and some people to talk to in Chinese. Andrew had little interest in Buddhist temples throughout the trip, and could frequently be spotted in a shady spot talking to people in Chinese. Not every Tibetan could speak Chinese well, but there were more Chinese speakers than I had expected. There were several friendly and curious Tibetans hanging around that chatted with us, and asked to have their picture taken. They also informed us that we should have come in July.

After visiting the inside of the temple and continuing our walk, me and Stephen were surprised to see a foreign woman just older than us walking with a young Tibetan girl. She turned out to be a volunteer teacher in Yushu originally from South Africa, and the girl was her student. After a brief conversation we exchanged phone numbers with the woman, whose name was Natalie, and she offered to give us further help with our stay.

We felt it was time to go at this point and wanted to fetch Andrew. We knew he was just around the corner, but when we turned to get him a quiet Tibetan man who had been sticking with us awkwardly communicated that it was impossible to go that way. In Tibetan belief, you should always circle a temple clockwise. We were aware of this and had been abiding by it, but we didn't realize it was strict to the point where we couldn't turn around and walk back 50 feet. I tried to explain we were just getting our friend, but he firmly suggested we go around. So we walked all the way around the temple complex again to get Andrew. I envisioned him getting up to look for us and circling each other blindly for 30 minutes, but he was still in the shade where we had last seen him and we went back into the center of town.

That night we took a look around the area of our hotel, and settled on the Prosperous Restaurant/Bar as a promising place to get a drink. The owner was a large, opinionated Tibetan man who was happy to have conversation with us. From him we learned that the Tibetans and Muslims (the town had some Hui, a Chinese Muslim minority group) don't get along too well. Actually, he didn't call them Muslims, but rather "white hats" for the distinctive head ware of Chinese Muslims. The hats might be white, but according to the owner they have "black hearts" and can't be trusted. His bar also featured a prominent picture of the Dalai Llama, which we would see frequently throughout Qinghai. In the actual Tibetan Autonomous Region his picture is forbidden and restrictions on Tibetans are more severe, but Qinghai seems a little more relaxed. The Prosperous owner said this is because in the TAR most of the government is made up of Han Chinese, but in Qinghai much of the government consists of Tibetans.

Like some others we would meet, and some of the Uyghur I met in Xinjiang, he spoke of a general dislike of the Chinese. The Chinese government handily crushes any separatist sentiment in the vast and strategic regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, and encourages an influx of Han Chinese to the areas, who are the main benefactors of the development in these regions. My students, who have only heard the official Party line, have a naive but sincere belief that China has a mission to help out these poor backward people and improve their lives for them. Some of my students talk fondly of their desire to find work in Tibet or Xinjiang and help out using their superior education level. The Dalai Llama has been painted as a troublemaker and criminal who wants to take from China what is rightfully hers. Western travelers carrying the Lonely Planet Tibet guide have had the preface ripped out while being screamed at by customs officials, as it was written by the Dalai Llama.

But among his other opinions, the bar owner didn't forget to suggest that we should have come in July.

Qinghai Travels, Part I: Eating Bitter

"There was no good reason to go to Yulin and it took 10 hours to get there."

Since reading it I've always liked this line, which opens one of the chapters of Peter Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. I believe the foreigners who get the most out of living in China are those who secretly get a kick out of the hassles, frustrations, and absurdities of living on the other side of the world. With this attitude in mind, I opted for a less comfortable but less predictable travel experience during this past May holiday. The first week in May is a national labor holiday in China, and through careful diplomacy me and travel companions Stephen and Andrew turned that into a 9-day trip through Qinghai (pronounced "ching-hi"), a neighboring province. I had never had any intention of visiting Qinghai, which is known for being a hostile home for Chinese prisoners sentenced to manual labor, when it is known at all. It is one of the poorest provinces in the country and perhaps 75% of its population lives in Xining, the capital and only large city.

What drew me to Qinghai the most was a small town of about 40,000 called Yushu. Yushu (玉树, "jade tree") is the Chinese name, but it is culturally and historically a Tibetan town with the name Jyekundo. It took 17 hours to get there (actually 29 if I include the initial trip to Xining), but we had a moderately good reason to go there. It is not in the guide books, but I stumbled upon a thread at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree travel message boards which describes Qinghai as underrated, and a great place to see mountainous scenery and Tibetan culture. It's separation from the Tibetan Autonomous Region is somewhat arbitrary, and outside of Xining the area was and continues to be part of the Tibetan cultural sphere.

The first stage of the journey was getting to Xining, which due to my teaching schedule involved taking an overnight bus. Overnight buses are normally sleeper buses, but unfortunately only buses with seats were available to Xining, so we spent the first 12 hours of the trip sitting upright until 6am, enjoying the increasingly snowy scenery and the only genuinely humorous Chinese movie I have seen so far.

The next bus to Yushu wasn't until 4pm, so we bought tickets and took a walk around Xining. During a tense moment they were initially reluctant to sell us tickets at all because we were foreigners; we knew the area was closed to foreigners in the past, but has been open for some years now. There was some issue about coming into contact with dirt and bugs that we didn't quite understand at the time, but after a couple of phone calls and long glances they were satisfied that we didn't spend our days digging trenches with roll-up sleeves.

Xining is cleaner and more pleasant than our provincial capital, Lanzhou, but other than it's ethnic mix of Han Chinese, Tibetans, and Hui, isn't particularly noteworthy. We also used our time to visit Ta'er Si, an important Tibetan Buddhist temple complex outside of the city that we had hoped to see.

Ta'er Si was worth the visit, but was heavily touristed and didn't have as good an atmosphere as other temples we would see. We were alarmed to see a monk carrying an automatic weapon in one small temple, until we realized it was a toy to keep birds away. As we climbed one of the encircling hills to get a view over the area, we struck up conversation with an old Tibetan man. By "we" I mean Andrew, whose Chinese is considerably better than mine or Stephen's and is a good conversationalist. The many interesting conversations we got into during the trip would have had less depth or been non-existent without him.

The old man was performing the self-prostrations which are part of the Tibetan Buddhist faith. This involves kneeling on the ground and spreading forward until you're flat on your stomach, and then spreading your arms in an arc which marks the spot for your next prostration. It's a slow process which seems to cover fairly long distances and lengths of time. According to Stephen, who was the only one who knew much of anything about Tibetan Buddhism, it is to atone for one's sins. He had a thick cake of dirt on his forehead as he talked to us. He seemed to like Americans, remarking that Americans look after the Tibetan people. This was a fresh change from the usual bland "America is very developed" that I get.

Back at the bus station in Xining, boarding the bus was to be a heart-wrenching experience - despite our assumption, the bus was not a sleeper. That meant for the 17+ hours to Yushu we sat upright and awake, on a road that would sadden a civil engineer's heart to see. We were in the very front as well, but along with the extra leg room we were treated to a front-row view of the death-defying turns along the precipitous mountain roads. It was stressful at times. And thus we spent two nights in a row sitting on bus seats, and Chinese bus seats at that. It would be 60 straight hours before I slept, a record-breaking streak for me. For better or worse I took pride in "eating bitter" (吃苦 chīkǔ), a Chinese phrase for enduring hardship.

We did make it all the way to Yushu on that bus, which can't be said for the majority of the passengers. Around 20 of our fellow riders were migrant workers that had been organized by an untrustworthy-looking man in a cap and glasses who spoke in heavy dialect. In the early dawn hours of the next morning, perhaps 14 hours into the journey, we came to a small settlement that acted as a police checkpoint. After waiting a couple of hours (I believe the policemen were asleep) our bus was inspected and everyone (besides us and an obviously Tibetan family) was asked to get off. Things took a turn for the worst for the migrant workers, and after some meek protesting and a policeman declaring several times "I don't care," they were not allowed back on the bus, and we left without them.

This place was very much in the middle of nowhere, with nothing for miles upon miles upon miles. It reminded me of a Hollywood set for a Old Western ghost town. The buildings were empty and a good proportion of the inhabitants were large, vicious dogs on chains, one of which nearly frightened me to death when it lunged at me in my half-asleep stupor before I had noticed the chain. I had to wonder what on earth the motley crew of workers was going to do now. The bus was now mostly empty, carrying just the three of us, four Tibetans, and the boss of the workers, who was not about to hang around to see what happened to them. From what Andrew understood the reason the workers were not allowed to go to Yushu had to do with the same insect issue that nearly prevented us from buying tickets, and at the bus station had told us outsiders were not allowed in without proper documentation, which they obviously lacked.

As we made the final approach to Yushu, my lack of sleep was overpowered by increasing excitement, as the empty stretches of land and undulating mountains slowly became populated by Tibetans on motorcycles, Tibetans herding yaks, Tibetan prayer flags, Tibetans in colorful outfits, and yet more yaks. Nearly as satisfying was the lack of tour buses or huge groups of Chinese in matching red hats being led by a megaphone-touting tour guide. After a long trip, we had arrived.

Xinjiang Travels: Part VI

Day 30 (8/18) - Urumqi

The sleeper bus arrived in Urumqi in the afternoon , and to my astonishment we were only one hour late. Urumqi is Xinjiang's black hole which I was now passing through for the fourth and last time, in order to get a train back to Zhangye. So I checked into the same hotel and set about killing another evening.

With hopes high, I decided to give Hu Yan a call, the girl who gave me her phone number last time I was in town. She sounded genuinely delighted to hear from me - and was also in the city of Hami for the weekend. I lead the romantic life of a poorly written sitcom character. This was especially appropriate because I had considered going straight to Hami, since it's about halfway to Zhangye and I could visit the British teacher Tracy who just left Zhangye for Hami.

As I paid for the phone call the shop owner, who undoubtedly would have been listening in on my struggling Chinese conversation, wanted to show off her "English-speaking" daughter. To my totaly surprise she did speak extremely quiet and nearly-fluent English, and I didn't know to make of her. Some Uyghurs could pass as Westerners, and she looked like a British imposter working undercover in a Uyghur convenience store. I guess she actually was Uyghur, but has been living in Australia.

With nothing to do I once again headed to Fubar, the Western bar. There is a middle-aged man I have seen there every time who depresses me because he looks like a lonely, balding version of me. He probably teaches English. A small group of regulars and an owner were pre-occupied at the other end of the bar with a new toy - a large hour-glass monstrosity with multiple taps for dispensing absinthe, which was taken down from the shelf. One of them was telling an absinthe story from Norway that ended with him not remembering a full day in which he took a plane to Beijing, without any of his luggage.

After a while, an older Chinese man struck up a conversation with me in English. He introduced Tian Tian ("Heaven"), the pretty and much younger girl sitting between us, as "my girlfriend... but only for tonight." Sympathizing with my traveling alone, he related his visit to Australia - "I sat alone in the pool. I had no lover. Not interesting." Tian Tian involved herself in the conversation by toasting my glass every two minutes. Even among a group of people, drinking from your glass alone is considered rude or at least odd in China.

Back in my hotel room, I had to ignore several calls from the local brothel, who I could hear making the rounds of all the rooms. When they called earlier they sounded so bored and listless I thought it must actually be the front desk, until they managed in terrible English "do you want a massage?". Mostly I was just bothered by them calling each night when I was trying to sleep; I need to learn how to tell people off in Chinese.

Day 31

For about the twentieth time in Xinjiang I ordered zhua fan, a good lamb and rice dish. That morning, however, I got a special bonus - a front-row view of the skinless and headless animal gracing another table, which the cook soon set about sawing in half. Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to like kitchens with walls.

Allow me to once more vent my frustrations on buying train tickets. I would best compare it to getting tickets for the most popular rock tour in America, except they can only be bought in person with cash in the city of the show, and go on sale about 5 days beforehand. Even the travel agencies (the "ticket scalpers" you might say) had no tickets, so I went to the station to see what I could turn up. Chinese people have only the barest concept of the line, and the closer you get to the front, the more prison rules set in. Someone just behind me elbowed me out of the way and quickly ordered, but when another person behind me actually reached their arm over me with money in their hand and shouted what they wanted, the counter woman angrily told him to wait his turn. There were no sleeper tickets to Zhangye (or anywhere I expect), just hard seat tickets, so I got one that left in two days and hoped I could upgrade on the train, which I've been told is easy to do. This was a huge mistake, but more on that later.

I spent the rest of the afternoon using the internet in one of the numerous internet cafes in Urumqi. For some reason internet cafes ("net bars") in China are always in ill-lit, smoke-filled and seedy basements, like modern opium dens. And for some they seem almost as addicting - the only student I failed last term was apparently a net bar addict, who never attended any of his classes or even his final exams. For dinner I decided to treat myself to a Brazilian barbecue restaurant called Sabbath I had heard about, which had live music. When I told the waitress I was alone she laughed and said "only one?", which of course didn't make me at all self-conscious. The band was terrible, though they seemed to be actually Brazilian. Maybe classy Asian bars and restaurants act as a dumping ground for mediocre Western musicians, like in Lost in Translation. I should move to Shanghai, brush up on "Hotel California" and "Scarborough Fair" , and start a jazz band. The food was good, but shockingly expensive - about 12 times what I normally pay for dinner.

With nothing to do but go to a bar again, I figured I could at least try a new place. I don't know what the bar I went to was called, but it was aggressively promoting Carlsberg "Chill" beer and I couldn't think of a more appropriate name for the place. It was trying very hard to be cool, with Western movie posters and a tiny see-through dance floor equipped with a dozen lights and even a smoke machine. However, it was definitely cheesy and definitely lacking in customers for a Saturday night. I sat in one of the booths, but was soon told to sit at one of the plain tables in the middle because the booths for reserved for certain people. I then noticed the tables were labeled "B" and the booths were "A", and actually at a higher elevation. I didn't understand, or really care, what you needed to do to get into an "A" booth (Party official?). The server wanted to know what the word for "bar" was in English, which I supposed might be the height of my conversation success there.

I was quickly bored and a little self-conscious about being alone in such a big, empty place. However, there was an attractive and bored-looking Chinese girl sitting alone in a booth who seemed to be casting glances in my direction, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try invading "A" territory one more time. She made no objections to my sitting there, and we proceeded to have two different conversations. She would repeat what I said to herself, making it obvious she heard something else each time, so I imagine it went something along the lines of "I work as an English teacher" "Oh, so you just got out of prison, interesting." Then she would say something to me I didn't understand at all, and I would smile and nod in agreement. Alas, the scintillating conversation was interrupted by the server, who in nervous English said:
"If you want to talk to her, you must pay, 20 yuan per hour"
"Huh? You mean to sit here?"
"To talk to her"
Then she said something about how she was working, and the wheels slowly clicked into place.
"Ohhh.... I didn't know. No thank you" I said, making my exit. I suppose that was less awkward than it might've been if he hadn't said anything.

On the street I heard what sounded suspiciously like a live band, and to my surprise there actually was a band in another bar. I'm not sure I'll ever be impressed with Chinese rock music, but they really had some life to them and were fun to watch. For a couple of songs there was a talented female singer, including one which seemed to be in English, although the only word I could make out was "Jesus." I would love to see more live music in Zhangye, but I won't be making any plans to move to Urumqi anytime soon.

Day 32

I had yet to see the market and Muslim quarter of Urumqi, which turned out to be the most interesting part of the city I know of. There happened to be another backpacking Westerner at the restaurant I ate lunch at named Derek, and when we struck up conversation he turned out to be a Peace Corp volunteer who also knew Julian and Cynthia, the PC teachers who had just left Zhangye. Small, strange world when you travel. As he taught at a medical college he had done a unit on sex ed, which he was sure was going to get him fired when the students started bringing things to their presentations like condoms on cucumbers and a videotape of a cat, well, pleasing himself. I always wonder what's really going on behind the innocent faces I teach. I thought my being in Urumqi a day longer than expected might at least allow me to meet up with that girl Hu Yan, but as I should have surely known before calling, the cruel masters of fate responded by delaying her weekend trip another day.

Day 33

My last day in Xinjiang. My train left around 7pm, so I had time to finally see the museum in Urumqi. I was pleased to see a proper museum, with air-conditioning and more than one room, more than one floor even. There were good displays about the numerous ethnic minorities Xinjiang and the region's history (which, as told by the plaques, is nothing but an inspiring account of varied ethnic "brothers" working joyously towards the common goal of development and securing the borderland). I enjoyed the miniature models of places I had actually been to throughout Xinjiang. As in the Hotan museum the highlight was the mummies, with a whole room dedicated to them, including a bizarre fixation on the "Loulan Beauty" with both a painting and a full-size clay model guessing what she looked like before she was a shriveled, decrepit mummy.

And then it was time to board the last train. I tried to head directly for the desk that upgraded tickets, but was waiting in the wrong spot and ended up as a late arrival in the small, aggressive crowd. I was told there were no sleeper tickets when I did get through to the ticket woman, and got the same news when I checked back later as some were told to do. I'm not sure what quirk it is in the ticket system that allows there to be sleeper tickets available to be purchased on the train when they are impossible to get beforehand, but it turned out to be a false hope. As I thought might likely happen, I prepared myself to sit in "hard seat" class for the 15 1/2 hour overnight journey to Zhangye, wishing again I had broken up the trip by stopping in Hami. The guide books generally recommend not getting a hard seat ticket for a trip of more than 4 hours. It was fine for the first six hours or so, but as about 8 hours passed and it got towards the time I ought to be sleeping, my tolerance started to wear very thin.

Day 34 - return to Zhangye

The last 7 or 8 hours truly sucked - the bright lights worked against the tiny shred of hope for sleeping I had, and the crowded aisles weren't really a break from the cramped seat. I had to remind myself that I was only of hundreds of people doing this (no empty seats, most continuing further to Lanzhou) and they mostly seemed to take it in stride, playing cards and joking around and, somehow, sleeping. The Chinese have developed an amazing talent for not being bothered about things. Nonetheless, the last hours passed painfully slowly, especially when the train was delayed by one and a half hours, and after 17 hours overnight in a seat I was less thrilled during my return to Zhangye in the morning than I expected. I also managed to get some kind of illness in that time, so my first 48 hours back in Zhangye have mostly been spent sleeping and feeling like I got in a fight, and lost.

However, two days later I'm returning to normal, and enjoying the normalcy of being in my apartment and a city I'm on good terms with. Even if I pulled together the funds, I'm not sure I would fully enjoy one of those one-year round-the-world backpacking epics some people do, at least not on my own. I've been fortunate enough in life that I have difficulty saying which trip was the best, but Xinjiang definitely lived up to expectations. Along with the longest time I've spent traveling, the trip could be described in numerous dramatic exclamations - the farthest city west in China ! the hottest spot in China! the second-lowest place in the world! the largest province in China - 1/6th of the country, and four times the size of California! the farthest city from the ocean in the world! mountains! deserts! colorful minorities! camels! Actually, after a full year I'll have seen little of the most typically "Chinese" parts of China, though there's always time for that later. Out of curiosity I've made an estimate of the number of hours I spent on buses and trains between cities on the trip, and came up with 192, or about 8 full days. It's surprising that "Xinjiang" is a name pretty much unheard of in the West, but like most I couldn't name more than about three cities or any of the provinces in China before coming. Nows it's back to the life that I've come to know here - running into students on the streets (and forgetting their names), walking beneath the bright lights of Zhangye at night, and forgetting what it was to be anonymous. It's good to be back.

Xinjiang Travels: Part V

Day 26 (8/14) - Yarkand

My next stop along the Southern Silk Road was Yarkand, which proved to be a lot more memorable than Yengisar. The area around the bus station and my hotel was Chinese, modern, and nothing particularly interesting, but just a bit to the east was the utterly different Uyghur old town. Transportation around town was by small motorcycle-powered pedicab, with me seated in an uncomfortable cart in the back or a covered bench. Many of the drivers were children who looked to be about 6 years away from a driver's permit in America. One tired-looking man powered his cart by bicycle, which felt like a very bourgeois thing to be taking advantage of.

The main tourist attraction of Yarkand is the Altyn mosque complex, an ancient and well-attended mosque with some surrounding spots of interest. The most striking building is the tomb of Aman Isa Khan, the musician, poet, and wife of the local ruler in the 1500's and famous for collecting the 12 muqams, important traditional Uyghur songs. A portrait of her holding a dutar is popular throughout Xinjiang. To the side of her tomb was a small cemetary of the tombs of royalty of Yarkand, with all the graves having been built in a similar, peculiar style with a curved top. Behind the mosque complex is a very large cemetary, a shady place with few people. I've always liked cemetaries for some reason, maybe because of the guarantee of peace of quiet.

The old town that began in the streets around the moque was reminiscent of Kashgar's, but perhaps a little more colorful, and certainly more off the beaten tourist path. The locals struck me as just a bit friendlier as well. I bought two small knives from a group of excitable boys, who ran inside to get a newspaper and pen so they could write down numbers and barter with me. On one of the "main" streets I stopped for some Uyghur ice cream, and in two strange minutes witnessed a man basically beating his son in the street, a small cart get hit and nearly demolished by a large truck, and a man walk by with an enormous tumor coming from his forehead that had an eery resemblance to the pictures of Confucius on the bottles in front of me. Confucius is said to have been very ugly and is usually portrayed with a bulbous, bulging forehead to represent his wisdom.

In a restaurant near my hotel, the TV was showing a Chinese movie with a Western doctor as the main character. They actually portrayed the doctor speaking English and using a Chinese translator the whole time, and I was intrigued enough to finish it in my hotel room. I finally realized it was about Dr. Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who helped China in WWII and Chinese children all learn about. Apparently his Chinese name was "White Doctor", or at least that's what they called him in the movie. Which may have been an on-going series as it ended on a weird note, with his daughter refusing to use the smelly outdoor "bathroom" and him saving the day with a new "ladies only" toilet. As could only happen in a Chinese drama, there was a full six or seven minute scene about someone making a bowl of noodles, which included dialogue along the lines of:
"White Doctor": What are these noodles called?
Chinese Man with Unnaturally Wide Smile: Dao Mian!
WD: Dao Mian!
Small Grinning Child: Dao Mian!
Chinese Man, now with wider smile: Dao Mian!
Second Small Grinning Child: Dao Mian tastes really good!
(Chinese Man now gets cocky, placing the flour he's been cutting into pieces on his head and landing them all in the pot)
(cut to about two minutes of White Doctor eating noodles and having the time of his life, moving on to a second bowl and finishing with a satisfied belch)
I remember once watching a drama on TV with some student friends, and one scene began with a long close-up of the food the couple were eating, before finally scaling back and starting the dialogue, which made the students gasp and exclaim "oh that looks really good!". As the writer Lin Yutang put it, Chinese biology never did advance very far because a Chinese person can't look at an animal without focusing on how best to cook it.

In the evening, I decided to go a little deeper into the old town, which was the best thing I could have done. The old town turned out to be pretty large, and the further I explored, the further I felt I was stepping back in time. Besides the motorcycles powering the carts, the large coolers outside the shops, and a few other details, the place didn't look like it had changed much in 400 years. The whole place was dusty and narrow and ancient, and through the numerous open doors I could see the courtyards and furnishings of the traditional one-story homes. I drew quite a lot of friendly attention, especially from children. One child followed me timidly, until she found her friend and the two of them excitedly bounded up to me. She was wearing a dirty white dress that made her look like Miss Havisham in a children's performance of Great Expectations, and said "rekmet! [thank you in Uyghur]" in a tiny voice when I showed her and her friend The Pirate the pictures I took. Three blacksmiths stopped what they were doing to stare at me, and when I motioned I would like to take a picture, they used body language in turn to suggest "sure, but let us start doing something again!" and got to work, quite amused at their picture I took. As I was buying a bottle of water, I suddenly felt something grab my shoe. A man older than me had bent down to get a good feel of my sneakers to see what they were like and grinned up at me, although I'm not sure what was so interesting about them. After an hour or two of wandering I was taken back to reality by the presence of a car, but it was stuck in all the sand and dust of the alleyways and was being pushed by a small army of children. There are many things to look for in a travel location: famous sights, scenic beauty, nightlife, etc., but I think I'm truly after the general atmosphere of a place and its people, and I'll remember Yarkand as one of the highlights of the trip.


Day 27 - Karghilik

On the way to Hotan, the only big city east of Kashgar, I stopped briefly in the small city of Karghilik, called Yecheng in Chinese. I was hoping to spend several hours there but there were communication difficulties finding out if there was another bus to Hotan after the next one, so after getting some noodles for lunch I only had an hour. The main sight of Karghilik is the Friday Mosque, which was worth getting a quick look at and is surrounded by shop-lined streets. I didn't have enough time to get a sense of the city, but it seemed like a decent enough place.

The bus to Hotan was meant to take five hours, but I've learned by now to take time estimates lightly in China. After a while it became obvious there was engine trouble, and finally about halfway we stopped with a thick cloud of smoke coming up from the engine near the front and spreading throughout the inside of the bus. Luckily I had a window seat and could stick my head out. We were quite far from anything resembling civilisation when we broke down, so I took a stroll around the desert and maintained some faith that they would fix it like they usually do. At one point while we waited I was the victim of another curious shoe-grabber, again without warning. After he was satisfied with his inspection of my sneakers, with a triumphant smile he insisted I feel his shoes as well. We did start up again after an hour or an hour and a half, but with frequent short breakdowns from then on. Finally, I just abandoned ship as some others had done and got an empty seat on another bus to Hotan for 10 yuan, arriving 7 hours after departure. If I was traveling much longer, the hours of late arrival would soon add up to a full day by themselves.

Day 28 - Hotan

Despite it's very remote location south of the Taklimakan Desert, Hotan is a fairly modern and crowded city, and to me didn't have quite the alluring atmosphere of Kashgar or Yarkand. Hotan is known for making rugs, silk, and especially jade which are famous throughout China, and many of the sites relate to this. There is a small village called Jiyaxiang just outside the city which has a little workshop that makes silk using ancient methods (and ancient people as well). It was a brief but interesting visit, but was overshadowed by my annoyance with my unscrupulous taxi driver, who wouldn't leave unless I also gave him some money for his return trip because he didn't think he'd find someone on the way back that far out. I would rather have walked back most of the way through the village, but the woman at the workshop insisted he was right and there were language difficulties, so I ended up giving him another handsome sum to get me back into town after he waited for me to finish my visit.

I explored the city a bit more, and browsed some of the jade stores. Most of the stuff was quite nice, and also well beyond what I thought Chinese people could afford, but they don't get all that many Western tourists in Hotan. For lunch, I decided to be adventurous in a large Uyghur restaurant and just point to something that I didn't know the Chinese characters for, though the last one suggested it was some kind of bird. A bird indeed it was, just a flame-broiled bird on a plate with the head still attached. It's limbs were folded in a hideous position, that brought to my imagination that it was burned alive while crouching in fear. Not the most satisfying meal I've had here.

Day 29

In the morning I went for a visit to the Hotan Cultural Museum, where business was obviously booming - they had to unlock the doors and turn on the lights for me. It was small and focused on Hotan's long history as a Silk Road outpost. The highlight was certainly the two small mummies in the center of the only room, which still had some hair intact and were incredibly eerie.

I also went to visit another, much more modern silk factory which I read about in the Lonely Planet guide. It was out of the way and the guards were positively amused to see me, and radio-ed someone to say "there's a foreigner here". The woman who emerged and gave me a silent tour seemed much less amused to have to drag me around, but the multi-building complex was worth the visit. I didn't bother trying to prove I could speak some Chinese since I was definitely in over my head vocabulary-wise, and she said little the whole time besides pointing to an assembly line and saying "good" in reference to the boxes of good silk worm cocoons at the end of line, and "bad" in reference to the bad cocoons being picked out by the woman workers. In one building I was shocked to see that they weren't wearing ear protection, since the sound was so loud you wouldn't be able to shout into the ear of the person next to you.

In the afternoon I climbed aboard a sleeper bus and began the mammoth 24-hour journey back to Urumqi through the long, lonely Cross-Desert Highway that cuts through the Taklimakan Desert. There was almost, but not quite, enough room to fully extend my legs in the bed I occupied for a full day, and it was difficult to so much as turn on my side, and impossible to sit upright because I was in the bottom bunk. The sleeper buses in China are roughly the size of a big Greyhound bus in America, but made for 30 people to lie down in three rows and two levels. We stopped twice in the first two hours, first for them to look at the engine and second for a half-hour wait for an accident, but to my great relief these were the only unexpected stops, and the ride was as close to smooth and comfortable as could be hoped.

Xinjiang Travels: Part IV

Day 24 (8/12)

I told Waili I'd stop by the shop, and with a mischievous grin he asked if I had a good time the night before. He told me his father scolded him for getting home too late. He's 28 years old. He treated me to some Uyghur "ice cream", chips of ice shaved from a big block into a bowl with flavoring. He also helped me pick out some Uyghur music CDs and cleared up my confusion about the half-dozen people playing a simple, monotous beat on the drums on the street all day, every day. A new supermarket had opened, and in celebration the drums would keep up the street performance for 15 days, or even 30. Drums are also used to announce weddings, so they're the Uyghur equivalent of Chinese fireworks. I was wondering why trucks sometimes wander the streets with young guys beating away at drums in the back, not that you should necessarily have a reason to do that.

I only managed one tourist-related activity during the day, which was to see the inside of the Id Kah Mosque. The leafy, roofless grounds were pleasant, though surely worshippers mind the tour groups. To me the most interesting thing was the sign at the entrace gate, a fascinating piece of propoganda with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. After mentioning the restoration of the mosque by the government, the closing paragraph waxed poetic about the perfect harmony and happiness in which Chinese minorities live, and encouraged everyone to work together to fight separatist movements and "illegal religious activities".

The Uyghurs, like many cultures subjected to unnecessarily hot weather, have the amusing habit of sleeping everywhere - in their shops, on a cart, and especially on the patches of grass next to the roads. It's like they got halfway home from the grocery shopping during the afternoon heat and thought you know, screw it, the kids will be alright and this patch of grass is looking pretty good. Not a bad mindset if you ask me.

Day 25 - Yengisar

Besides simply enjoying the atmosphere, I was hanging around Kashgar so I could catch the famous Sunday Market. I had heard it was best to arrive early to avoid the tourists, and that the separate livestock market was more interesting, so I headed there first. The place looked so dead when I arrived that I wondered if the taxi brought me to the right place, but the several tour buses of Westerners served as confirmation. I may have arrived too early after all, and I had an unexplainable urge to turn to someone and say, "boy, there's not much life at this livestock market." It's just as well no one was nearby to receive that paragon of wit.

As the morning unfolded, trucks crammed with cows, donkeys, and sheep made their way into the arena, and things picked up slightly. One bold sheep made a run for his life, possibly having noticed the fly-ridden sheep's heads on the side of the path, but he was quickly shuffled back into the crowd. My favorite thing about sheep is that they sound exactly like people imitating sheep, and not even doing it very well. After waiting a while the chaotic bartering scene I had imagined didn't look like it was materializing anytime soon, and I left with hopes of greater excitement at the Sunday Market.

After having unexpected difficulties getting the taxi driver to understand where I wanted to go (surely every tourist in Kashgar descends upon the Sunday Market), I arrived with anticipation at the event I had structured my week's plans towards attending. However, there was the same strange, dead atmosphere I felt at the livestock market, and I left confused as much as disappoited. I was expecting the crowds of Western and Chinese tourists, but I wasn't expecting there to be so few locals. My guidebook glorified the market and advised "bring twice as much film as you think you'll need"; I took about two pictures. Like a bad album from a favorite band, there was a foulness in the air I couldn't overcome no matter how much I wanted to like it. I did get some useful gift shopping done, but from overheard comments by tour operators and others I suspect the market isn't what it used to be. On the way out I did pass a man selling turtles and baby scorpions, the most satisfying image of the morning.

I felt a bit sad to leave Kashgar, having spent enough days there to grow mildly attached. From there I headed east along the less touristed Southern Silk Road, a series of small towns that are remote enough to have the least diluted Uyghur character. I spent the second half of the day in Yengisar, a small place renowned for making the decorative knives sold throughout the area. Waili had advised against it, saying it was poor, undeveloped, and unfit for tourists. I had been told the same things about Zhangye, so I gave it a shot anyway. He was right; it wasn't interesting, and was the only stop of the trip I should've skipped. It wasn't horrible, and would've been interesting in the impossible event it was the first Uyghur city I'd seen, but the sun was so unbearable I was just torturing myself by being outside. I did get a couple of knives for a good price, but I failed to locate the knife factory and just retreated to my hotel room to read Bill Cosby's "Love and Marriage". You end up with some random things at a book exchange.

Xinjiang Travels: Part III

Day 18 (August 6th)

An uneventful day spent mostly on the 23-hour train ride to Kashgar, sleeping, reading, and talking to the Pakistani medical students who were in the same sleeping compartment.

Day 19 - Kashgar

Spending time in Kashgar, more than any other place I've seen in Xinjiang, feels like stepping out of China completely. Most of the Chinese I do see seem to be tourists themselves, and it is almost completely Uyghur in character. It is the city farthest west in China and keeping official Beijing time feels the most bizarre, as it is daylight until at least 9:30pm. Kashgar was once an important city along the Silk Road, and is still a place of trading and markets.

Besides its famous Sunday Market there isn't much in the way of "sights" in Kashgar, so the city itself is the attraction. The streets in and around the Old City and Id Kah mosque are lined with fruit stands, kebab houses, and shops selling distinctly Uyghur goods such as instruments, decorative knives, hats, and rugs. Headless, skinned animals hang outside meat shops, and young boys walk the streets with baskets of bread balanced on their heads. Besides the lamb kebabs and other foods I am familiar with from the Xinjiang presence in Zhangye, there are a variety of new dishes being sold on the street that I haven't always been able to identify (or necessarily recommend).

People watching is fascinating. The young girls wear scarves covering their hair and traditional dresses, while some of the traditional older woman are covered from head to toe and have black veils that hide even their eyes. The men wear the round hats that are a familiar sight among Muslims in China, and some of the old men have the most fantastic beards. It seems even the people selling fruit in the street sometimes don't know so much as numbers in Chinese, so the language barrier is bigger here. As another English teacher who's been in China one and a half years said, "I've experienced culture shock coming to Xinjiang". In a way, it's a little refreshing to get no reaction to my Chinese, rather than the gushing Chinese compliments that can feel patronizing.

For lunch on the first day in Kashgar, I tried a second-floor restaurant on the square with the mosque. The waitress there was fascinating to watch, an unnaturally tall and thin young woman who ran/slid around the busy place in her sandals and Uyghur dress. She knew English, but didn't so much speak it as shot it out like ammunition: "Sorry! I am late!". During the day I attracted the attention of 3 different eager English speaking Uyghurs looking for conversation: a man running an instrument store, a man selling socks from a push-cart, and a teacher from Urumqi named Kurban ("You know Kurt Kurban? Nirvana? He is a good singer"). Mohammed, the man selling instruments, told me of his wish to visit Africa: "I met a black-skinned person the other day. They are very interesting! I pinched his arm, and I wanted to know if his blood was red or was it also black. If a black-skinned person opened a shop here, it would be very popular, because everyone would want to look at him." He was fascinated to hear that I had "black-skinned people" with me at school, and that sometimes they marry white people.

For a late dinner I visited the popular night market that is also near the mosque, where the end of a street becomes flooded with pedestrians and stalls selling various fried foods, fish and meat dishes, glasses of colorful drinks filled from fountain-equipped carts, and the ever-present lamb kebabs. I sampled some foods I had never seen before, which were mostly good, though I decided to pass on the full sheep's head.

Day 20

I had made the decision to stay in Kashgar about a week and relax, and on my second day I had no plans or ambitions whatsoever. As it is put in Office Space, "I did nothing, and it was everything I hoped it could be". The highlight of the day was going to the park for a few hours, surrounded by local families and young couples who hung out on carpets and played cards or songs on the dutar, the two-stringed instrument my friend Aqbar would play in Zhangye. The largest Chinese presence in Kashgar is in the official names of things: "People's Park" runs south of "People's Road", and is to the east of "Liberation Road". In a square to the north of the park is a bizarre spectacle: one of the largest Mao Zedong statues in China, with a confident arm outstretched and rows of Chinese flags to either side. I suppose it's Beijing's reminder of who really controls the area.

At night I went back to the same market, where the stalls were different and I was tempted by the huge legs of lamb. It was rubbery and revolting, but was worth a try. Better were the lamb kebabs from a restaurant on that street, where there were tables outside that were actually beds with a small table in the middle, where you could take off your shoes and sit comfortably while having some tea and kebabs. There were many places like this in Turkey. It's incredibly relaxing, and I'm not sure why it hasn't caught on in America.

Day 21

I set out on bicycle for several hours, passing through the streets I had already explored before continuing on to the famed Sunday Market area. It was Wednesday, but the market is there everyday and I thought I'd see it first in its tamer guise. Apparently, about 50,000 extra people flood Kashgar each Sunday for the market. I was reminded of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul - it was indoors, and a maze of alleyways wound past stalls with jewelry, carpets, instruments, or simply bicycle tires and car parts. The place was lazy and without many people, and the vendors lacked the usual enthusiasm to shout "hello!" as soon as they saw a Western tourist.

I also visited a Uyghur crafts store, a high-class place with hand-made jade figures and various jewelry. The prices were shocking, with many larger pieces going for well over my year's salary, and I wasn't really planning on buying anything anyway, but I figured I'd take a look at what they had in my price range. They had to pull out a special bottom-of-the-barrel box from behind the counter with assorted small pieces of carved, impure jade. They had figures of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, so I took a look at mine, the glorious pig. It was a small but nice enough figure, which they quoted the price 220 yuan for. I slowly worked them down, and the mood changed when I told them I was an English teacher in Gansu province, so I bought it for 80 yuan. I don't know what a fair price was and I was just mildly interested, but the bargaining success was fun in itself.

While browsing a store near the mosque and admiring its painted tamborines, I got into conversation with the man working there, a middle-school English teacher who helps out at his brother's store during the summer. As so many random people have here, he had a Gansu connection, having gone to college in the city of Lanzhou, so my job was again an in into a good conversation. His name was Waili (sounds like "Vie-lee"), and we hung out talking for a while as I tried different Uyghur instruments, all made by his family of 8 siblings. He talked fondly of his foreign teachers from university, and obviously missed the chance to speak English with foreigners.

Day 22

I took a day-and-a-half break from Kashgar to visit Karakul Lake, about fours hours away by bus along a scenic mountain highway. This was the last of the three famous mountain lakes in Xinjiang, and became my favorite. I had heard rumours of the road being washed away in parts, but didn't bother much about them. Sure enough, about a half-hour away from the lake the bus stopped, and what little traffic there was became backed up. One of the other foreign travelers joked that we should just walk - it would only be two or three hours. As luck would have it, we sat around not moving or knowing what was going on for a full four hours. We should have walked. So, the four hour journey became eight hours, and I was reminded how much I enjoy trains.

Surprisingly, there were very few tourists at the lake, nothing even beginning to approach the numbers at Tianchi and Kanas Lake. The area of the lake itself is small, but I appreciated that it involved neither a long uphill climb or trekking over a large spread-out area. I also thought it was the most breathtaking of the three lakes, indeed it was spectacular, and I would challenge any artist in the world to create a more beautiful landscape. There was complete silence, and I stared alone at the snowy, cloud-capped mountain that is the centerpiece with a feeling of enormous well-being. Because of the late arrival there was no time to try climbing up any of the mountains on the other side, so I decided to just make a circuit of the lake. This was harder than expected - probably because of the recent bad weather, a tiny but challenging river snaked across my path about a quarter of the way around. I found a place to cross, but the land became more and more like a swamp as went along. I was sure I would find enough footholds to complete the journey and pressed on, but after an hour there was simply too much water to go any further, and I retraced my steps in defeat.

Like at Tianchi I stayed overnight in a yurt owned by herders, this time a Khyrgyzh family rather than Khazahks. I was the lone boarder at that yurt and they spoke about 10 words of English ("noodles!" was the enthusiastic announcement for dinner) and no Chinese, so it was a more idyllic and romantic yurt experience than the backpacker hangout at Tianchi. I became very curious about the lives of these people - funny-hat wearing Manas, his pleasant round-faced wife Wuljun, and child Mustapa, who had learned to say "Hello!" and made damn sure I didn't forget it. There were no books, instruments, or anything that didn't directly have to do with surviving, and I'm curious what they do with their days. I tried to get answers from a young friend of theirs who came in and spoke some English, and he said his interests were "business", which I gathered from his constant attempts to sell me anything from a hat to a motorcycle ride.

Around 3am I snuck out of the yurt to use the bathroom, and the grey-washed scenery at the time was so surreal and otherworldly that I won't soon forget it.

Day 23

For breakfast Wuljun served some bread and milk tea, and the three of them watched everything I did with curiosity, and casually looked through my notebook and possessions. They were an especially attentive audience when I put in my contact lenses. I wished I had brought postcards or something of interest from the outside world for them, and I decided to leave them a photocopy from my Chinese textbook, which fascinated them. I very easily flagged down a bus to Kashgar on the side of the road, and we waited merely one hour on the return journey. Besides terrible 80's music videos they showed Mr. Bean, which brought a broad smile to my face. I shudder at most of the Western culture the Chinese have imported and are forming their ideas about us on (The Backstreet Boys being by far one of the best known), so it pleasing to know Mr. Bean is available dubbed in Uyghur and sub-titled in Chinese.

Waili, the Uyghur man I met at his brother's store, had wanted me to stop by again and possibly go out for some drinks, so I decided to take him up on the opportunity. Chance encounters like this with local insiders are one of the best results of hanging a place with no rigid schedule. First we went to a night market for a few kebabs and beers, as it was still evening and the bars would also be much more expensive. He showed me the Uyghur style of drinking, in which one person alone has a full glass, and while they are drinking it is their turn to carry the conversation, until they finish and the next person drinks solo and talks. I also learned cheers in Uyghur (something like "huoshe") and a drinking game in which tiger beats chicken, chicken beats insects, insects beat stick, and the stick beats the tiger. He had a little of funny and interesting things to say, such as the time he had dinner with one of his foreign teachers, a tall and overweight American woman. He was amazed at the amount of food and beer she could handle, and not knowing the word for "appetite", he blurted out "you really have a big belly!" and couldn't understand why she got angry. He clearly admired America, such as its principles on human rights and freedom of speech. The people of Xinjiang are different in every way from the Chinese and don't necessarily love being ruled by them, something I finally got the chance to ask a local about. He was also fascinated by the strange things Americans do - "I read about a kissing contest, and the winning couple kissed for 30 hours! It went right into Guinness World Records." When it was time to head to a bar, he asked if I wanted to see a Chinese or a Uyghur bar. The difference? "Different music, and in a Uyghur bar there are only Uyghur people; in a Chinese bar only Chinese people go." He also wanted to know if I wanted to the best bar, or to a cheap bar where people get in fights.

I have no doubt the bar we went to must have been the best Uyghur bar in Kashgar. There were two uniformed staff to greet us at the entrance, and waiters in bow ties served tables inside. A typical large bottle of beer in China from the store costs 2 or 3 yuan; here there was a 30 yuan spending minimum per person. A bowl of popcorn was 10, and small foreign beers 18 each. There were two floors, with the second floor balcony looking out over the large dance floor. The music was all Uyghur, and there were not but one a series of live singers, and two separate solo dance performances from beautifully dressed girls that were nothing short of mesmerizing. The Uyghur people have dancing in their blood, and they had a funny way of doing it at a club - everyone would converge on the dance floor simultaneously, and leave it just as quickly when the song ended. I couldn't tell the difference between the songs meant for dancing and the ones meant for sitting and talking.

At the table next to us were four girls, who would dance in pairs during the appropriate songs. One of them was absolutely, unbelievably beautiful, far and away the most attractive in the building. Feeling an unusual confidence that could only come with a mix of beer and being in a foreign country, I asked Waili to ask her to dance with me, relieved that not knowing the language allowed me to put the task to someone else. But he was no braver than I was, saying "I don't know, I'm too shy!" After a few songs he went over and asked, showing his head with disappointment as he returned to our table. Perhaps she was unimpressed with my shabby jeans and a t-shirt that now had an unmissable stain from eating kebabs.

After a while Waili convinced me that we should get on the dance floor during an upbeat song, so I tried to follow what he was doing and was glad that the Uyghurs don't stare at foreigners anywhere near as much as the Chinese. And it didn't go half as badly as expected, at least according to my judgement at the time. Waili less-than-subtlely drew us nearer to the four dancing girls, and they acknowledged us with knowing smiles as they continually floated away. During the next dance song they softened, and we ended in a circle of five with one of the girls dancing in the middle and smiling at everyone in turn. This was immediately followed by a slow song, and to my surprise the center of the circle lingered and then began dancing with me. It wasn't the Aphrodite, but I suddenly realized how attractive she was in her own right. I began by making an ass of myself and putting my arms in the wrong position, which she had to correct, and I was probably a less than inspiring dance partner after going so long without a slow dance. I noticed Waili dancing with the girl I had my eyes on all along, which was cut short because he left to greet a friend who had phoned and wanted to meet him at the bar.

His friend was a timid, pretty girl who was apparently a doctor, which may have been a mistranslation considering how young she looked. She said almost nothing and ordered a soft drink, and then wanted to leave after about 20 minutes. I was of the mind to stay, so I let the two of them leave first. During the next available song I asked the girl at the next table to dance with a gesture towards the dance floor, but she shook her head and waved her hands "no" with a little more emphasis than was necessary, pointing towards her friends as explanation as she accompanied them to dance. I'd like to think it was because she was truly unable to leave her friend without a dance partner, and not because our dance had been that traumatic an experience. At any rate, a fun and unexpected night out in high-class Kashgar.