On a quest for something a little more exotic than walled cities and quaint towns crammed full of tourists we decided to spend valuable days travelling to Xinjiang province, which borders Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and a number of other stans. Urumqi is a convenient point of arrival and departure but little else. It looks like any other large Chinese city with half of the multi-ethnic population giving it a Middle Eastern tint. Scratching just below the surface gave us a slightly more Middle Eastern feel with an Uzbek restaurant serving mediocre dishes, an outdoor market giving us an oily DIY fry up of chillied intestines and the Uyghur oven-fresh flat naan bread that magically turns to stale biscuit when cold. We didn't do more scratching than that.
The army was out in force on the anniversary of the riots marching purposefully up and down the street, but I wonder how these young distracted faces would fare if anything serious were to break out on their watch.
The Urumqi museum seems to have disappeared and been replaced by a virtually empty building and a guard whose sole duties appear to be shouting at tourists. Xinjiang museum on the other hand was there and was surprisingly interesting, especially the display of mummified bodies and, as with most of China's museums, plaque after plaque describing how grateful its minorities are to central government.
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