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Published: September 8th 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 bus station, a bus from the bus station to a nearby town, and a bus from that town to Tianchi. In total it took about 3 hours and the guy who worked at our hostel gave us good directions. There was a noticeable military presence in Xinjiang and in the town we saw some military trucks. From the park entrance, there is a cable
car that went to the top, but waiting in line with many pushy Chinese tourists was not appealing, so we hiked up to the lake with a group of people from Kazakhstan. They were older and were not wearing hiking clothes, but they were surprisingly nearly as fast as us! Plus they always found better ways around the obstacles than we did and for example did not wade through 50 feet of icy water up to their knees. First we came upon little Tianchi, which had the most green and brilliant water I had ever seen. Clear, rapid water flowed all along the path we walked. The air was very fresh. After about an hour we arrived at big Tianchi. Brilliant, seen-only-in-pictures-type scenery! It was the most beautiful place I had ever been (though I was going to say that a lot this trip). The clouds were arranged just perfectly and we could see the snowy peaks of the Tianshan (Heavenly Mountain) range framing the scene.
Tianchi was way more developed and touristy than I expected. There were lots of Chinese tour groups with flags and megaphones. Also lots of people who took the cable car or busses and
Us and the Kazakhs
They wanted to take a picture with us.were wearing dresses and impractical heels. I don't get going to a really beautiful place just to take your picture in front of it. I think places are more beautiful if you hike to them and also that lets you experience the place with more than just your eyes. There were also big boats taking people around the lake and beeping their horns as if they were cabs navigating Beijing traffic. There were places where you could dress up in minority group (shaoshu minzu 少数民族）clothing and get your picture taken. The ladies were yelling "chuan minzu! chuan minzu! 穿民族！穿民族！" which made us laugh because she was yelling "wear minority! wear minority!"
The lake was blue and green and turquoise and we walked around it, taking in the view. We tried to climb a little mountain, but the path got dangerous so we changed our minds and walked around the lake more. One of the sections had planks and chains and green water and rocks and we felt like we were in Pirates of the Caribbean. While walking around we had to move out of the way for a man and a parade of goats! We took a different route
Obstacle #1
Where we were supposed to walk was covered in a couple feet of ICY water! down, by the Dragon Pool and large rapid waterfalls. The last bus out was 7 pm and we caught a 6:30 one. China is huge but there is only one time zone. Xinjiang is so far west though that they sometimes use their own unofficial time. In Urumqi it seemed like everyone used Beijing time, but just did everything later. Like everything opened at 10 am, the buses ran later, etc. Further west, where most people were Uyghurs, the public buses had Xinjiang time on their clocks.
That night, we went to a fantastic Uyghur restaurant in Urumqi, with live music and dancing!
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