Xi'an - boy

 At the mosque in Xi'an - which looked like every other Taoist temple, Confucian temple and most Buddhist temples - we were given a tourist questionnaire that asked, among other silly questions, why we were in Xi'an. Just as Hiroshima draws people interested in cities destroyed by atomic bombs Xi'an attracts people for its clay statues built a couple of thousand years ago by some megalomaniac paranoid military genius.

 

And they are impressive, for their quantity, quality and age. Nothing else comes close. The Xi'an museum shows terracotta figurines from much later periods and they pale in comparison. It's a shame the business surrounding the terracotta warriors is in such a state. Our introduction to the site was some very pushy guides that tried every tactic in the book including emotional blackmail to try and sell their services. We wasted our money on a truly atrocious audio guide which produced so many meaningless measurements I thought we were back in North Korea. Maybe it was comeuppance for not hiring a human guide or maybe we were rescued from even worse exposure to regurgitated figures and dull facts.

 

The 360 degree theatre made up of multiple screens should have told the story of the man behind the warriors, Qin Shi Huang, but we didn't hang around because the pointless battle sequences in the documentary never seemed to end. Though it would probably have held our interest had more than one screen been working.

 

Our most pleasant experience was on a tandem cycling around Xi'an on its city walls, parts of which were completely empty. As soon as we were on the ramparts the temperature seemed to cool and the city noise die away. It made us feel even calmer to occasionally glance down at the hectic humid city life as other people sweated about their business.

Xi'an - girl

 I don't remember Xi'an being as developed as it is now. It feels like a huge, sprawling mess of a city and I didn't warm to the place at all. It finally struck me here that I'm fed up with Chinese food. I didn't think the day would ever come but it has: there's simply not the variety or quality to keep me interested. Sure, duck is fab and everyone with sense loves sweet and sour pork, but does everything have to be so oily? Even the veg are covered in oil. And nothing's ever cold. In 40 degree heat I do not want hot, oily veg for lunch. So, we ended up having lunch in Starbucks every day bar one in Xi'an. I'm not proud of this as I've always been fairly anti-Starbucks but you know what? They actually do pretty good sandwiches, and they have air-con!

 

The air-con was vital given that we were in Xi'an during a three day heat wave. The city recorded its hottest day ever on one day and we could tell. It felt like walking through warm bath water, much like Turpan and Urumqi did every day actually. We were moving from cold drink to ice-cream to cold drink pretty much every minute of every day.

 

The Terra-Cotta warriors are exactly as I remember them although the dude who discovered them is dead now. I did not remember the appalling surround screen video at the site though, and nor did I remember the museum being quite so dull. However, the warriors themselves didn't disappoint, which was the main thing. We thought we'd hire audio-guides in order to ward off the pushy human guides who busied themselves by emotionally blackmailing tourists in to hiring them. The typical conversation would go like this:

 

Guide: Do you need a guide? 100 Yuan.

Us: No, thank you.

Guide: Listen to me. Without a guide you will understand nothing. It's all in Chinese and you will understand nothing. You'd better hire me. 80 Yuan.

Us: No, thank you.

Guide: Listen to me. It is very complicated and you will understand nothing. 50 Yuan, last price.

Us: No, really, we don't want a guide, thank you.

Guide: Look, if you don't hire me I'm going to lose my job (tear in eye)

 

C. was great with this and calmly asked if the guide thought emotional blackmail was a good idea and if it was really likely to work on tourists. The guides weren't wrong, there was a lot of information that was only in Chinese but given what the audio-guide told us, I don't think we missed out on much. Of course, some people may like to know how deep, how high, how wide, how many bricks etc. etc. I'm not sure most of them are allowed out of North Korea, though.

 

We also visited the Xi'an museum, which was dull, dull, dull. It was free but we had to wait in an hour long queue to write our passport numbers down before they would let us in. Guess who doesn't know her passport number? Guess what, she made it up. Bad girl.

 

The most fun thing we did in Xi'an was hire a tandem bicycle and cycle around the city wall. What fun. Neither of us had ever ridden a tandem bike before and we definitely enjoyed the experience even if one of us did want to ride up or down every steep bit of path and the other didn't (not because she's a wuss but because sitting on the back seat her feet would hit the ground every time). I do feel a bit bad though, when I was choosing my latest drink, a country mouse came up to me and bashed me on the back. When I turned round she gestured that she wanted to take my photo with her kid/grandkid. I was hot, sweaty, dirty and tired and had just been hit. I refused. I do feel bad and I know she meant no harm by bashing me, but really? Did she think bashing me was the way to get me to do something for her? If I had been nicer I might have done it but I didn't really want a picture taken looking like that anyway. Can't be nice all the time, I guess.

 

And then it was time to go to the train station, a heaving mass of humanity in a station that only has enough space for about a fifth of the people pushing and shoving to catch the right train.  

Turpan - photos

 

Turpan - boy

The real reason for coming to Xinjiang. This was the experience I was expecting; sandy landscape, dry heat, blue skies and the feeling you're not in China. Blue skies, for a start, will make you feel you're not in China and it wasn't the first time either. Lhasa also had blue skies so it seems these "autonomous" regions don't have it so bad after all.

 

Central Government wants to lure Chinese tourists to this province and has started by building expensive ticketing machines and charging a high entry fee to cover the costs. If they were able to cover up the mountains and charge for taking the cover off, they would do it - this is not far fetched when you consider what they've actually done: for example, tour buses for the 'flaming mountains' attraction must enter a sunken parking lot surrounded by two metre high boards obscuring the scenery; the tourists must then pay to exit this enclosed space through a turnstile to see the same scenery that was already visible before entering the parking lot. Needless to say none of us wanted to pay (would anyone?), so we drove out of the parking lot and stopped on the desert road a few metres ahead and looked for free.

 

Apart from the forced attractions there were a few genuinely interesting ones such as an Afghan style mosque and Tuyok, a traditional Uyghur town. The two thousand (or so) year old town that is now more or less a melted mud city with barely recognisable streets and buildings was less appealing as was their underground irrigation attraction - maybe fibre glass models of people building tunnels just don't do it for me.

 

We tried to round the day off with some interesting Urghur food, however the two dishes that were recommended, spaghetti in oil and spaghetti cut into small pieces in oil, didn't really satisfy so we ended up eating more Chinese; just as oily but more interesting. Since Turpan is famous for its grapes we thought we'd sample the wine, but unfortunately it turned out to be as drinkable as the Urghur food was interesting. It's probably a real art to make food this tasteless and on the plane they brought it to a new level; or maybe we were put off by the guy on our left who was determined to fill three sick bags full of spit.

Turpan - girl

Turpan is the second lowest land point in the world (after the Dead Sea) and the hottest part of China. It has reached 49.6 degrees celcius here before although I don't think it was over 41 degrees while we were there. Turpan is in the far north west of China, near Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's a small, dusty city on the edge of the vast Chinese empire. I'd always fancied going to the region and a nod in the right direction from another C. (met in North Korea) helped us make the 12 hour train journey, three hour flight and three hour bus from Beijing to Turpan.

 

So, we spent three days getting there, was it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. I found it fascinating, weird, wonderful and very, very different from anything else we've seen in China. The city itself ain't any great shakes but the environs are. On our first day in Turpan we walked three or four km in the aching heat down small roads lined with old mud houses. People were sitting outside chatting, kids were playing, women were washing clothes in the stream, men lazed on the outdoor beds and watermelons and traditional breads were sold on the side of the road. Truly a world away from Beijing or Shanghai. I wouldn't be surprised if these people never make it as far as Beijing. At the end of our walk was the (Afghan style) Emin mosque and minaret I so wanted to see. It didn't disappoint, made of mud brick in the C17/18, the minaret towered into the deep blue sky in the dizzying heat. We escaped into the cool shade of the mosque below and just sat, enveloped in the silence and cool air. Sadly we couldn't climb on to the roof as part of it has collapsed but a walk around the building was enough before we headed back into town.

 

There are no other sites within the city itself, one must take a day long tour to see the other reasons to visit the area: Flaming Mountains (that didn't appear to be flaming to us), Tuyoq, a fascinating mud village that's still inhabited. I think there's some grave or other that is almost as holy to Muslims as Mecca. If they visit this grave seven times it's the same as Hajj, or something. We didn't much care about that but the village itself is pretty interesting (even if they won't let you use a perfectly valid student card to get in).

 

Other sites we visited included the Jiahoe ruins, apparently one of the world's biggest and best preserved ancient cities. Quite frankly it wasn't up to much. It felt like it was about one million degrees and we were looking at dried mud. Maybe I'm a heathen but maybe I don't care! We also saw some grottos with rock paintings that were stolen by some German years ago - not exactly worth the entrance fee. The last destination was an extremely touristy karez - a clever underground watering system that made Turpan into the oasis it is. Water is transported from the mountains by a series of wells dropping into an underground stream. We paid a lot of money to follow the stream a short way and then to walk back (a longer way round) via millions of tourist stalls all selling the same goods.

 

We stayed in Turpan for longer than necessary, partly to relax and partly to write up the damned North Korea blogs and I'm glad we did. There may not have been much to do or anywhere to eat (local food isn't up to much) but the small bazaar was cute and we felt like we'd really escaped the tourist routes, in fact, I got pretty upset every time I even saw another tourist in 'our town'. Turpan showed us the China we knew still existed but hadn't really seen; poor, slow and diverse, truly a million miles from Beijing. 

 

Photos - Urumqi

Urumqi - boy

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.