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Published: October 24th 2009
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Some say everyday is a gift. If so, these 11 days in Xinjiang were gifts wrapped in quality colorful Hallmark paper with the extra curly bows on top. Yes, the weather was good. The tourism was low and sights were free from megaphone toting tour guides and multitudes of photo popping tourists. We experienced history, culture, scenic beauty, and pure and simple fun. In fact, we racked up 14 different modes of transportation on this trip, including: van, horse, boat, donkey cart, open bus/tram, train, ultralight plane, little ATV, bamboo sled, station wagon, airplane (of course), moving airport walkway, airport bus, and even camel!!
Funny how you can be so foreign to a land and yet walk through it fearless, awed, and oddly accepted at some cursory level. So, while we certainly didn’t part with a deep understanding of what makes this place tick, we did learn some insightful facts about Chinese history and this portion of their country that struggles for a separate way of life.
47+ different ethnic groups, 8 neighboring country borders, resources that include 1/6 of China’s oil supplies, ¼ of their coal, ½ of their cotton, and a location
Urumqi road
Flowers line this modern highway that brags to be the center of the Eurasian continent - indeed one would need to travel more than 2000km to find an ocean! 122 different minerals exist in this region, with many of them ONLY found in Xinjiang. There are grand mountains, shifting desert, pastoral plains, verdant valleys, and snowmelt rivers. But the history, oh the history, one can observe here. Our trek involved several stops along the Silk Road land corridor with many of the places boasting their cultural highpoint in the Tang dynasty of around 600AD. Urumqi, Kashgar, Turpan, and Dunhuang - plus a few side trips.
First stop, Urumqi. Prior to arriving, we are concerned about political unrest. Will the soldiers block our viewing of important sites? No, but the arrival discovery that really affected us…OMG, there’s no internet, international calls, or texting allowed due to government restrictions. Matt has forced vacation! Sheri smiles, Matt is anxious. Our guide, Alex, is a walking encyclopedia. Muslim and from the Hui ethnic group, he provides more information than we can possibly absorb about every aspect of this region. A few fun facts:
• People here are noted for longevity. Why? 1.Dry, warm climate (fewer
joint issues) 2.No stress.”Your life is not 1 day long. Everyday relax” 3.Plenty of fruits (grapes, apricots, pomegranite) 4.Plenty of nuts(walnut, fig, apricot seed, almonds) 5.No chemicals used in agriculture (fertilizer of the natural kind - if you know what I mean)
• Camel milk is nutritious but not so tasty. It can only be drunk in the spring since the camels won’t continue to produce milk.
• Xinjiang operates on two time systems: Official Beijing time and local time (2 hours later).
• Some people here believe the Chevy bowtie brand plate is also a religious symbol (close to a cross shape?).
• Many of the ethnic groups eat horsemeat. It is apparently very red, tough, and makes the body warm inside when eating it. (The Chinese health beliefs are all about energy flow and warm/cold balances in the body.)
• Global warming is believed to be affecting the snowmelt runoff from the mountains, with less water available than in the past. Worrisome.
• The local newspaper, the Xinjiang Daily, is printed in 5 different languages. Mongolian, Uygur, Mandarin, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh.
• This region is so remote, the Cultural Revolution and invasion from Japan had minimal effect.
Home sweet home
Along with our guide and 2 german tourists, we laughed away an evening in here playing "mao mao" beside the coal fired stove. Pretty comfy sleeping too! A side trip outside of Urumqi landed us at Heavenly Lake. A beautiful glacial lake surrounded by multitudes of radiant brides… I mean mountains. Actually, both are true. Here we enjoyed some hiking, boating, horseback riding and card games in our yurt. Jessie and I taught some Kazakh kids the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and Matt spent some quiet time reading. Down the winding road we went, early in the morning, to catch a plane to our next destination, Kashgar.
As we neared our destination, from the plane window I marveled at the hostile desert landscape below and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Adobe colored dust, donkey carts driven by Arabic looking men wearing little square caps, truckloads of soldiers, women with headscarves and beautiful eyes - all instantly bring to our awareness that this is NOT Shanghai, Dorothy. Kids out on holiday are everywhere and all seem happy and well fed. Women, though covered from head to toe, walk with a brisk air of confidence. And the men. Serious faces, often together in groups, seemingly too involved in the importance of their business to bother noticing or smiling at foreign gawkers.
Actually, Kashgar is the Islamic hub of the country. Mosques abound and Sunday market is the place to be. Jessie loves this place for its diversion from the typical Chinese way of life.
A 3+ hour, 270km drive up, up, up the mountains reveals yet another geography, climate, and culture. The roadside scenery is never common to my eyes - sheep, donkey carts filled with cotton, farmers hoeing in the field, tall poplar looking trees, a brick factory, small villages with houses formed from mud/straw walls, goats, yak, camels. Cold, multi-colored austere mountain backdrops bombard our senses as we climb up toward beautiful Karakul Lake. Shrewd Uygur business culture is replaced with practical, earthy Kyrgyz nomadic life. I buy a hand stitched rug from a Kyrgyz woman in the mountains. She held a tablet with a sequence of numbers hand written on it. We each would point to the number representing our bid for the price of the rug. Her gold capped teeth, leathery smile, and enthusiastic “OK!” upon agreement of a price still warm my heart. I said “Rahkmaht” and we exchanged knowing smiles - both content with the deal.
In as much
Wedded bliss
Wedding probably won't occur for weeks or maybe months, but the day is lovely and the setting ideal - a photo op not to be missed. as Kashgar piqued our cultural intellect and stimulated our senses for its rugged beauty, Turpan awakened a deep sense of wonder for our ancient heritage. Hot and dry, bodies are naturally mummified, Buddhist cave temples are preserved, and skeletons of Silk Road trading stops are still intact to make the past come to life. Savvy in trade, respectful of religion, tough physical laborers, and technically sharp, these ancient people accomplished many amazing things. We marveled at the 2000 year old Karez Irrigation System which along with the Great Wall and the Grand Canal, is considered one of China’s “Great Ancient Projects”. The underground series of wells utilize the natural slope of the mountain to funnel, underground, water runoff into channels that today supply 30% of the water needs for everyone in the basin some 60km away. No pix of this, just was fun to see. After all the culture, history, and adventure, we’re about ready to just go have some fun.
From our overnight slumber in a Chinese soft sleeper car, we awaken early to our next desert stop, Dunhuang. The 2 hour ride from the station on the “massage road” loosened us up for our playtime
Sharing art journal
Our Hui guide, Alex, is amazed that Jessie's homework is so loosely defined. "Don't they tell you what to draw?" "Did you decide yourself what to write?" A novel concept in Chinese education. in the Gobi desert. After a few hours of trodding, sledding, and flying over the dunes, we made Jessie endure another 2 hours exploring ancient caves. But really, it is sooooo interesting! Did you know that the northern first century invaders, the Huns, moved to a special region called “Hungaria”? WOW, since my grandfather is Hungarian, could I have a bit of Chinese blood running through my veins? The ancient drawings in the caves sure look like all the nations peoples passed through this way! Maybe we really are all related!
Camels. They smile, they squeal when irritated, and they love to have the area behind their ears scratched. I guess they spit, but we never witnessed it. Raising and lowering is a bit tricky, with a rocking motion kind of like the supermarket penny horse. We just can’t stop laughing. My camel has a Mohawk and reminds me of Ty. “Zha! Zha!” - and I’m off on a bumpy gallop across the dunes, giggling as Matt and Jessie try to coax their camels to catch up. What a day! We didn’t know that by nightfall, we would be dining and dancing beneath more stars than we
Inspiration
Jessie's art teacher's assignment for the vacation: "Use this time to be inspired" ever imagined possible - the entire milky way arched across the sky - along with a party of new friends from Dunhuang. There’s gourmet camp food, bai jiu, fireworks, wish lanterns, music, sing-a-longs, campfire, and buns that remind us we’ve spent at least 6 hours that day traversing the desert in a way we can only now dream about.
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