Blogs from Urumqi, Xinjiang, China, Asia
August 22nd 2011
The last week of this month-long trip around northern Asia certainly was the most challenging. After three weeks in Mongolia and Siberia, I had anticipated that Xinjiang would be very different from Beijing or Russia, but I hadn’t imagined it would be such a different world. In ways it was amazing, particularly the scenery on the Old Silk Road, but in other ways I found it depressing. My background is in sociology and I find this blending/clash of ethnicities in China, and the role the government plays in promoting it, to be very interesting. I’ll try to explain as I tell you about the week day-by-day. But first, a little background courtesy of The Rough Guide: “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” is one of the most exciting parts of China, an extreme terrain, more than 3,000km ... read more
August 3rd 2011
After spending the night in Urumqi, the capital of the Uighur minority Xinjiang province, we headed 2 hours out of town to Tian Chi – Heavenly Lake. We arrived to the most spectacular sight…a huge lake in shades of blue I can not describe, rolling green hills covered in Fur trees and snow capped mountains on the horizon. We quickly escaped from the tour group masses and made our way down to the rocky shore line, from there we passed the concrete touristy yurts (traditional round tents used by Kazakhs) until we were totally alone in the beautiful quite wilderness. After around 2 hours as we rounded another lush green cove there was a simultaneous gasp as we saw across the lake the place we would spend the night. A perfect green valley dotted with trees, ... read more
July 14th 2011
So they let us back in... After cramming in and out of jeeps and getting pushed through lines at the border, we crossed back into China at the city of Erlian. No problem getting a bus to Hohhot where we had hoped to get a train ticket for that night to our first official stop back in China - Pingyao. Two days and 16 hours on a hard seat on a packed train later, we arrived in the old city of Pingyao. We got in super early and had not really slept, so when a tout with a vehicle offered us a free ride to a guest house we took the offer. Well there were lots of tourists there, but we got a super cheap room - right next to the toilets, yeah right next to ... read more
September 2nd 2010
Chinese trains usually fill up early, and we were disappointed not to be able to get tickets to Xi'an from Urumqi for another great ride across the desert. But we were pleased to get airplane tickets,which, although somewhat expensive, promised us a 3-hour trip to Xi'an, instead of 36, and giving us an extra day there that we hadn't planned on. Well, things in China don't usually work out as promised, and, indeed we ended up arriving in Xi'an just about when we would have on the train, weary and haggard and with some new stories to tell. Our first surprise was not finding our flight on the departure board at the Urumqi airport when we arrived early Wednesday afternoon. That was because although we thought we were on Hainan Airlines, a somewhat known and ... read more
August 31st 2010
Like all other western Chinese cities we have visited, Urumqi is in the midst of an economic boom, fueled by resource development, domestic tourism, and migration of people from the eastern part of the country. The central and northern sections of the city could almost be anywhere else in China with much new construction of apartments, food from all parts of the country, trendy shops reminiscent of Robson Street in Vancouver, and some opulence in the form of four- and five-star hotels and even foreign restaurants that serve sashimi in this place that is farther from the nearest ocean than anywhere else on Earth. But the south side of Urumqi is another city altogether. This is the city of the Uyghurs and some Hui muslims with different language, food, religion, and manner of dress than ... read more
August 13th 2010
The dates on my blog are somewhat off but oh well. I remember that we went to Tianchi on my birthday! It was a really good way to spend my birthday, but actually I kept forgetting that it was my birthday, and I didn't think to do anything to celebrate it. A week or so earlier, my parents had me a wonderful and very thoughtful "birthday in a box." It really brightened my day back in Beijing and I ate some frosting, though I couldn't find an oven anywhere. As I was saying to Dan online today, China seems like a strange dream world. American holidays don't seem to happen and it's really odd to be hearing about tEp rush and other start-of-school things right now. Anyway, from Urumqi, we took a public bus to a ... read more
August 10th 2010
T-bag and his girlfriend met us at the Urumqi train station and helped us get a cab and make our way to our hostel. We ended up staying at the White Birch Hostel, which was nice and clean, good facilities, comfortable beds. I LOVED and continue to love sleeping with sheets! All this summer I slept on a straw mat on top of the sheets and also a smaller straw mat on the pillow. When it stayed in the high 80’s all night (and maybe higher in the house because my host mother had some thing about keeping the windows closed and the shades open during the day like a greenhouse) the straw mat was soooo sticky, when I wanted to move around while sleeping I had to like peel my skin off of it. Anyway, ... read more
August 7th 2010
KASHGAR 7/6/10: We got up around 7:00am, we packed up checked out and caught a bus to the bus station. We bought tickets to Kashgar and left at 12:00 midday. The bus was a sleeper bus, I don't know why they call them a sleeper buses, just because they have beds doesn't mean you sleep, in fact, in all the sleeper bus we have been in we have not slept once. What made it worse was they didn't turn the AC on because they were to much of a tight arse. All the bus companies are owned by tight Chinese bosses that don't want to fork out extra fuel for air conditioning. It ended up being 35C in a bus that didn’t have any opening windows because the AC was supposed to be on at ll ... read more
Xining, langzhou and Urumqi China Blues
Published: November 21st 2010Asia » China » Xinjiang » Urumqi
August 1st 2010
FOLLOWING THE SILK ROAD 1/8/10: We had to wake up early to sort out tickets to Urumqi. We both had a shitty sleep and still couldn’t believe we had to pay that much for a room, especially since it had no AC. It was 7:30 by the time we made it to the ticketing area. We weren’t even sure it was going to be open. When we walked into the building our jaws dropped to the ground. There must have been 20 ticketing booths with lines more the 40m long. Jacinta had suddenly realized that she should have gotten out of bed earlier. We lined up in the number one isle and waited and waited, we finally got to the ticket booth and they told us we were in the wrong land, f#$& f#$^. We weren’t ... read more
July 20th 2010
¿Por qué escribir un blog? Esta es la pregunta que lleva rondando en mi cabeza desde hace meses...y hablando con la gente, principalmente viajeros, uno llega a obtener diferentes respuestas. La mayoría parece que lo considera una manera cómoda y rápida de mantener el contacto con las personas que están esperando sus noticias en la distancia; siempre es menos costoso escribir tu historia una sola vez y ni siquiera tener que mandársela a la gente que escribir emails personalizados. Además, sinceramente hablando, creo que pocos de nosotros leemos los emails infinitos de todos los que viven en diferentes rincones del mundo, sea por pereza, por falta de interés, por el exceso de información, de fotos, o simplemente de "palabras" o porque, sin siquiera darnos cuenta, nos recuerdan las cosas que nosotros hemos querido pero hemos dejado ... read more
