Xinjiang Province

October 1, 2010

We woke up to a glorious new day in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Province. I went down to breakfast early and tried out a few new foods. Soon the other couples came down to join me. We had to get reacquainted because we hadn’t seen each other since the middle of August. It was fun to hear about the experiences of the other teachers.

As we wandered around, I noticed a totally foreign feel to the area. I felt like I was in a different country altogether. I noticed the writing on the building was in Chinese and Arabic, with a little bit of Russian thrown in occasionally. Our tour guide was named Richard. He was very good.

We finally met up with the rest of the group at the Muslim Bazaar in Urumqi. This was the place we had been looking forward to. We were all set to bargain. I hung around with two single teachers from Qingdao, Gladys and Meridene, and their teacher friend Diane. They were all buying scarves and shirts from the Ughurs (Wekkers). I hung back until I found a beautiful scarf. Diane had already bought one at that particular shop so I only bargained a little bit and bought it for 55 yuan. One of the teachers had her camera stolen out of her pants pocket. She felt him take it so she turned around and grabbed him by the shoulder, saying: “You nasty little man!” He handed her back the camera and took off. Funny incident.

We had dinner at a restaurant—fish, peanuts, vegetables, and rice. So much food. I had a roommate for the next four nights named Rachelle Gay. She is a returned missionary from Taiwan who is working for Amway in Guangzhou. She is loud, crazy and a lot of fun. We got along quite well. She speaks Mandarin very well and was a big help when we went shopping.

October 2, 2010

We left our luxurious hotel and got on the bus for our next destination—Turpan. We were traveling through the desert as our guide gave us some interesting bits of information. Xinjiang Province is one-sixth of China’s area. There are about nine million living there. That is only slightly larger than the entire population of Xi’an. The majority of the population in the province is a minority people called the Uighur (Wekkers) who are Arabic descent. They have their own dialect and some of them speak Mandarin as well. Many of the Han Chinese people have settled there since 1949.

We drove past the biggest wind farm in Asia. We stopped for a rest break and took a walk. Our first comment after getting off the bus was: “It is so windy.” Duh! I looked out of the windows at blue sky and mountains. It reminded me of Wyoming. The Heavenly Mountain Range still had snow on it. The water for the area comes from these mountains through the Karze irrigation system. The water flows from 3000 km to 50 km. It is an ingenious system of irrigation that taps into natural underground water sources by using a network of subterranean tunnels which channel water to the fields. Wells, dug at intervals along the length of the tunnels, bring water to the surface.  Since water is very scarce, they do not like it when people flip the water off their hands to dry them. They consider that wasteful.

We had lunch at a restaurant and had too much food again. It was at this restaurant that I had my first experience with a squatty potty. I had to ask the ladies how to use it. Then when I was trying to get out, I got my foot stuck. It was awful!

In the afternoon we visited the Jiaohe Ruins. The ancient city is located on a steep plateau. We were able to wander around see the various sites. The weather was very warm and I got a slight sunburn because I chose not to buy a hat from the hawkers who are everywhere selling everything you can imagine. We stopped at a farmer’s house where he served us melons and then we bought grapes at a huge price. All part of the tourist experience.

We had dinner at the Night Market and got swindled when we bought yummy bread and two mutton shisk-a-bobs. We stayed at a 2-1/2 star hotel and got serenaded by a cricket all night.