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Published: July 28th 2005
Hi
This is a true story. Even though it's hard to believe it happened. Took me a while to fully comprehend it, and I really want all travelers to know all about it.
We were in Yining, a sleepy little town in Xinjiang, near the border of Kazakhstan. We were looking for interesting things to do and see in that area. A couple of local students told us about an area of grasslands nearby that is very beautiful. We went to a travel agency and they also told us about this place, and even gave us a map and showed us where it is, wrote for us all the names in Chinese, and explained to us where we can take a bus to get there.
The next morning we went to the bus station, and bought a ticket to the five hours ride.
The name of the place we were heading is Narati Grasslands. Remember the name. Avoid this place!
When we arrived to the town we saw big signs with pictures of the nature park, and some locals offered us a ride to the park itself.
We were hungry after the bus ride, so we first went into a restaurant
to have something to eat. Less than 30 minutes later a big guy entered the restaurant and sat at our table. His attitude was aggressive, and he kept saying this one word "hujao". We didn't quite understand what that means, and we tried to find it in the phrasebook, and with the help of some locals we understood that this word means "passport". This has happened before, and people here ask to see passports sometimes, so we let him take a look in our passports. He first looked at the visas, which were OK, and then looked some more and started to look in some papers we had there as well. That was a little too much for me, and I took my passport back. Then he started yelling at us, and we didn't understand why. The owner of the restaurant implied that we should listen to that man, even though he was dressed up in civilian cloths and presented no ID.
We showed him in the phrase book the part about the police, and he pointed at a word that means "permit". We know that there are some parts in China that require a special permit from the police before traveling there, and it is always mentioned in the guide books, and the travel agencies also tell you if you need it. In this case we had no clue that such a permit is required - not from the book, not from the travel agency, not from the bus station where we bought the tickets, and not even from the locals.
We understood that he doesn't want us here, and we really didn't want to make any troubles, so we took out the map that we got at the travel agency and showed it to him. We pointed at the other places on the map and asked him "OK?", and he just kept yelling and saying no to everything we say. We were willing to get on the next bus to any place he would say. He just refused to anything.
At first we were polite and showed him in the phrase book that we would like to speak with somebody who speaks English. He made some phone calls. We waited there for about 30 more minutes, and then we decided that this is more than enough of time to waste on somebody who just approaches us in a restaurant and refuses to introduce himself.
We put our big bags on our backs and headed for the door. Then, another guy closed the doors, and both of them just stood there and refused to let us out. When we tried to pass around them they pushed us back, and started shouting. At this stage I got angry and a little worried, and I showed them in the phrase book the word for a "police station". We tried to explain to them that we want to go there, or to call them, and they kept shouting, pushing us back, and using extreme force on us.
By that time many locals gathered to watch the show through the window of the restaurant, and some more people were inside the restaurant. They were all watching two big guys pushing, grabbing, almost hitting, two foreigners with huge and heavy backpacks on their back, that do not try to hit back. Just to make sure nobody misses that point - one of the foreigners was a woman!
At that point, after 20 minutes of struggle, I went to the phone in the restaurant, asked the owner to allow long distance calls, and I called my embassy, explaining to them that I am being held locked in a restaurant by two local strangers.
The embassy put a translator on the line who talked to the violent man who looked in our passports. After a long conversation with him they explained to us that this man is a police officer, we arrived to a place that is restricted for foreigners, and that he claims that we also attacked him. They also said that the police requires us to hand them our passports, which means that we will need to pay a fine in order to get them back.
We couldn't believe it. We arrived to a place that was recommended to us by a travel agency, not knowing that it is restricted, nobody stopped us along the way, we were there for less than 30 minutes, sitting in a restaurant, agreed to leave as soon as we found out that we are not welcomed there, were attacked by a police officer who refused to identity himself as one, and eventually we are the criminals here???
Our embassy wasn't such a big rescue - all they did was to tell us to do whatever the police tells us, to stop making any troubles, and to ignore the fact that we were attacked. They even mentioned the fact that China has the highest rate of death penalty in the world - so maybe we should be happy that we only got a fine.
So the police took our passports, and then the owner of the restaurant said that he lost many customers today while the doors were locked, and that we should pay him for that!!! That was just too much. We asked specifically to leave that restaurant and go to a police station. We refused to pay anything more than the cost of that phone call we made to the embassy.
They took us to another city, put us there for the night, and told us to come in the morning to the police station.
That night I could barely sleep. I had no passport, already a prisoner in China, and I realized that the corrupt officer can just charge me with anything he wants, and there is nobody in this world, including my embassy, that will help me.
In the morning we went to the police station, and were asked to write a statement with everything that has happened. We didn't understand what exactly they wanted, and they showed us three examples of such statements, from three different travelers who arrived to the same place. The statements all ended in the words "I realize that I broke the Chinese law, I am sorry for that, and I understand that I need to pay a fine". Then we understood that it's just a tourist trap - the send people there, fine them, and make some extra money.
We wrote the statement, for more than two hours, with all the details about the travel agency, the amount of time we spent in the town (not even in the park!), and the attack of the police officer who refused to identify as one. They read it in five minutes, probably didn't understand half of it (even though they brought a translator - an English teacher from the local school), and then they said that we can pay the fine (60$ per person) of refuse to pay it and then they would take us to the capital of the region to be treated there. We called the embassy again. This time they were surprised that we are still in that mess. They said they thought that it all ended the day before. We understood that they really are working hard with their attempts to help us, and that they are in constant contact with the Chinese police. Then they said that we should really stop making so much trouble, and that the police said that they will throw is out of the country if we don't start to cooperate soon.
Without too many choices, we paid the fine, signed many forms that we don't understand, and hoped that at least that would be the end of it.
We actually got our passports back after that, and were taken to the bus station to be sent away from that area.
We were so shocked with the experience, and the first thing that we were both thinking about is - leave China, never come back again. This was just a live example of how it is to be in a country with no freedom, with no real human rights.
We went back to Yining, and from there immediately took a but to Urumqi. By that time we relaxed a little bit, and decided to get back to the original plan - the Silk Road.
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Ryan
non-member comment
Copy of Passport
One thing to keep in mind always make multiple copies of your passport and keep them in various locations in your packs and on your person. These should be as good as the originals if you get in a situation like this. At least you will have some proof of the original passport that you can take to the US embassy and get a new one.