新疆 Day 3 – Rustic Charm

In the morning we rose early and packed our stuff to leave the hotel. Our driver took us to a spot where we could catch another bus to go into a different mountainous region. As the bus lurched its way along the narrow road, we could see glimpses of the mountains and valleys through the trees. When I woke up from a nap, I was greeted with a brilliant view. The side of the road dropped into a deep valley, vast and green, surrounded by mountains that rose up and sloped gently, covered with grass and trees. It reminded me of some vague impression I have of Lord of the Rings (though I’ve never seen the movies), or some other romantic, fairytale scene like that.

 

Our bus took us into that valley, where a relatively small village was situated. We made our way among the wooden houses, down dirt roads littered with animal defecation, until we reached a bridge over a rushing river. On the other side of the bridge was the way up the mountainside, going to the lookout point. Our guide told us that the government had placed restrictions on this village, forbidding them from building in stone or brick in order to maintain the traditional log-house feel for tourists to see. The local people get around this by putting up walls in brick and then covering them with wood on the outside. Most of them are of ethnic minorities, living off business from tourists who pay for tours, souvenirs, and meals. 


The dialect the locals speak is pretty, with rolling and bubbling sounds that are a little bit like what I remember of Russian. Their Mandarin is accented, and hard for me to understand, although they can understand our Mandarin perfectly. They tend to swallow syllables when they speak, making Mandarin flow more smoothly than it usually does. 

 

新疆 Day 3 – I’m on a horse!

My uncle magnanimously agreed to ride a horse up the mountain with me, so we hired two horses and a guide to go with us. My dad and my cousin opted to go up on foot in search of more opportunities to take photos. The trails up the mountain begin on the banks of a small river.

 
Here’s a picture my dad took of me when he met us on the way back down. The horses are closer to ponies, short but powerful, probably adapted to mountain-climbing. My guide was a woman who seemed young to me, despite her sun-darkened and creased skin. She spoke lilting Mandarin to me, curious to know where I had come from and what I thought of China. I thoroughly impressed my uncle by managing to carry on a halting conversation with the guide, telling her about myself and asking some basic questions.

新疆 Day 3 – Go Tell It on the Mountain

The view was breathtaking when we walked out across the lookout area. The village below became a toy village with little toothpick houses and ant people scuttling about. These pictures are from my dad’s camera, with some post-processing, but the sights really were that impressive in real life. There was an area fenced off for the tourists, but beyond that fence the grass went on and on until it disappeared into the base of a dark looming mountain. The mountains seemed at the same time so close and so far away, both within reach and impossibly high. I could not stop staring, did not know where I should fix my eyes, because the beauty was so astounding and incredible. Part of my heart ached, cried that I should never leave this place, that I should stay where I was and spend the rest of my days drinking in the view. This is the grandeur of Creation, in a place so remote and almost forgotten, where civilization still respects the rules of nature and where the beauty of the earth is still unspoiled.

新疆 Day 3 - Golden Afternoon

Our next stop was a place they call the Rainbow Beach, which wasn’t very rainbow when we got there in late afternoon but is supposed to shine all different colours in the early hours of morning and also at sunset. There was a very clean washroom, and a walkway that looked like it was freshly paved. A stand sold melon slices and snacks, including the provincial trademark lamb skewers. 

 

 I wandered sleepily away from the others, following the tangle of boardwalks that went through the rock formations of the “beach”. There were quite a few other tourists, but not too many since it was nearing the end of the day. Here and there guards watched me passing by, smoking and chatting in their little shelters by the boardwalk. I tried to take pictures with my phone as I went, but the afternoon sunlight was surprisingly strong and left me unable to see my screen at all. In some places the rocks rose on either side of the walkway like waves of gold and sand that gave a deserted and isolated feeling, and in others the boards crested those waves to review a view of the brilliantly shining river. There was a stiff wind blowing off the water, keeping the heat away leaving me almost chilly in the otherwise warm afternoon air. I went all the way to the end of the walkway and saw a pretty bridge spanning the river, and some other buildings where the rocks levelled out. I stood and watched a man throwing rocks into a murky yellow puddle with two children, a laughing and squealing moment crystallized in an endless afternoon moment.

 

 

新疆 Day 3 - Ghost Town

After another long sleepy ride, we arrived at the “Ghost Town”. It’s in the desert region, similar to some of those places in Arizona and Nevada where the wind and sand has carved out eerie rock formations. The sun was just setting as we got there, and the place was almost empty. Still, we managed to have about five other people join us on the tacky little shuttle/train that carried us into the park along a well-paved road. 

Looking back at the pictures, the atmosphere was pretty ghostly indeed, but at the time it was so windy that I stood in the haze with my back to the blowing sand and my hood all the way up. I was actually stuck holding the camera and tripod bags so I was a little bit despondent at the time.

There were camels there, and the guys called out to me “Want a ride, pretty girl?” and I really wanted to say yes but my cousin had told me there would be no time and told me to stay where I was. I had 3000RMB in my bag, I knew how to ask in Chinese, and I ended up staying there ten minutes before the group moved on. My hesitation might have made this lost chance one of the top three regrets in my life so far. ;) I mean, how many chances do you come across to ride a camel in a legit desert in the middle of nowhere? 

The resident photographers...

新疆 Day 2 - Breakfast

We rose really early in the morning thanks for last night's adventure. I felt quite refreshed though, and walked over to the central building from where our rooms were to have breakfast. 

There was a buffet of traditional/local food, which was quite tasty at first despite being unfamiliar and either very salty or very sour (I would, over the course of the next few days, discover that I really didn’t like the food at all, but that’s life). 

 


Outside, there were numerous other buildings making up the little village in the mountains, mainly whitewashed buildings with peaked roofs that had a strangely western sort of feel. It reminded me of the fjords in Norway, or the mountains in Austria, and the air was fresh and cool like spring mornings in Canada. There was this animal pen with chickens, turkeys and rabbits, as well as a stand selling something like naan, freshly made. The lady kneaded the dough tirelessly, while two men manned the oven at the back. It was extremely good, piping hot out of the fire and crispy with sesame seeds on top.

om nom nom

新疆 Day 2 - Mountains

We boarded a large tour bus that took us into the mountains since private vehicles are not permitted into the designated scenic areas. It was filled with other tour groups from different places in China, and the people were very excited and very loud. Our first stop on the mountain road overlooked a river, and we all got off for pictures. I found a walkway leading down the valley towards the water. There were wildflowers everywhere, yellow and white. Trees I thought looked like aspens swayed in the wind, leaves flipping back and forth, the whole tree shimmering in the sun. Clouds cast their own shadows on the mountainside as they floated by overhead.

 

My dad and my uncle

It was breathtakingly beautiful at that first stop, and I was so in love with the view that I was sad to board the bus once more. We stopped at numerous other places too: there were platforms perched at the edge of a cliff, walkways looking out at green fields sprinkled with flowers and dotted with cows and sheep. Here and there, the local people of ethnic minorities had their cloth tents and wooden houses, smoke rising into the clear mountain air as small, brightly-dressed children stood in doorways to stare. At some stops, we stayed for a long time, but at others we moved on after five minutes or so. 

hmm, bonus picture

新疆 Day 2 - The Climb

The bus finally brought us to the very highest point, where we would be able to look back down at the river and the valley. The way was steep, narrow and winding, so the people in the aisle seats were told to put on their seatbelts. The bus rumbled and bumped its way up at an alarmingly high speed, coming to a few very close encounters with opposing traffic. It always seemed impossible that both buses could pass each other, but somehow the drivers would honk and manoeuvre their way, squeezing rather treacherously side by side on the narrow road.

At the top, we had to make our way up 1050 or so steps set into the mountain to get to the viewing tower. The way up was sunny, windy, and quite exhausting at times, but the view all along the valley and mountains beyond was amazing. We stopped to take pictures of course, and finally reached the peak and its glorious scenery. I was dying a little bit by then, since my feet were tired, but otherwise I felt really fresh right there.

On the side road down the mountain, my feet trembled and my eyes threatened to close. The fatigue rolled in and bore down on me in waves, and so I stumbled my way back to the buses as we returned the way we’d come. As I dozed off in the bus, I started leaning against the window beside me despite the bumping of the bus, occasionally waking up when my head smashed into the window particularly hard. Once, I opened my eyes to find passengers of another bus staring at me from their windows, only a few inches away from my face. My sleepy mind couldn’t comprehend how it was possible, but I realized it was just another bus we were passing, and that was how close they cut it. O_o
Panorama from the top from my dad's camera

新疆 Day 2 - Riverside

After a late lunch at one of the only restaurants in the area, we went down to the river we’d seen from the mountaintop in the morning. There was a dock for small boats, and a wide area along the shore with boardwalks and benches. With only a gentle breeze and the waves lapping against the shore, the atmosphere was very calming and serene. Looking up, we could see the tower we had climbed to, and I was pretty proud of myself for having survived the climb because the mountain looked especially high from where we were. Strolling along the river bank, we stopped periodically for the resident photographers (my dad and cousin, along with my uncle and his camcorder) to get the shots they wanted. While waiting, I saw an eagle swoop down to grab a fish from the water, flopping and shiny in its claws. Later on, I watched a mother duck taking her ducklings for a swim. The little duckies were trying to swim upstream, straining and straining, swimming together towards their mother as she waited on a rock. I didn’t manage to get a picture though, since I’d left my phone in the car.

新疆 Day 1 - Airport Hopping

We rose early (5:45am) to drive to the airport. There is something about waking up in an unfamiliar place that makes me awaken faster, as though there are unknowns that I need to be alert and prepared for, things to be discovered, battles to be fought. The traffic of early morning wasn't as crazy as the night before. Though it was a Monday, the workday in Guangzhou doesn't start until 8:30. The highways were cool, there are trees and bushes planted in the middle divider between opposing lanes. It has a neat feeling of driving down a boulevard lined with forest, where Toronto would simply have been gray and urban-flavoured. Of course, seat belts are a joke here.

Our first flight was from Guanzhou's Bai Yun Airport to Urumqi (capital of Xin Jiang I think). The airport was pretty modern-looking (see above) but my uncle and cousin were nervous wrecks already, taking two "esteemed Canadian guests" on a trip.

The customs are pretty slack in China. The officer found a little screwdriver my dad had left in his camera bag, and then waved it around and told us not to use it before giving it back. Waiting to board the plane was conducted outdoors in the heat rather than in an air-conditioned waiting area inside. The tunnel/walkway thing that typically leads from the terminal to the plane was there, but we weren't using it for some reason. The crew and pilot had to squeeze past the crowd of passengers to get on the plane themelves.

On the plane, the seats were definitely not as comfortable as I was used to, but it was a domestic flight anyway. They did hand out drinks and a meal shortly after take-off. There is nothing much to be said about the service as it was mediocre, and the most notable thing was one of the girls dropping a lunch box foil-cover-down onto my dad's leg. At least the foil cover was intact...

We were supposed to catch a connecting flight from Urumqi to the small city of Altay, but the flight was delayed so we ended up with five hours and nothing to do. My uncle and cousin being too timid to venture out into the city in that short span of time, we had a very long and drawn out lunch at the Urumqi Airport's KFC instead. My dad went to buy a cup of coffee which was both pricey and vile-tasting (88 yuan, making it a >$10 cup of coffee, served in a plastic bubble-tea-type cup FTL) I exhausted the possibilities of the airport (there are two very small floors in the terminal, both of which can be navigated in under ten minutes probably), and left the building on my own while trying to dispel a headache. I wandered around the parking lots until I lost the sense of being very vulnerable, somehow crossed a highway after seeing an old lady do it, wandered around a hotel lobby on the other side, crossed back, and made my way back to KFC where I was met by my uncle in a state of crippling anxiety. We then had some really spicy noodles and some really expensive water, and finally got to board the plane.

I'm guessing some of the Mainlanders more accustomed to the inefficiency of their airports choose to pass their time doing things like paying for a 5 minute session in a massage chair and proceeding to fall asleep and remain there for hours. Before boarding I also had a somewhat horrifying encounter with a Chinese washroom, made horrifying mainly by the fact that some of the stalls were missing doors and yet people used them anyway...also the odours were so strong I couldn't stop sneezing, then breathing in more, than sneezing even more.

Finally we got to Altay's airport sometime in the evening, where we were picked up by our guide and our driver with his minivan. The airport was very very very small. The planes parked in an area probably smaller than my school field, and the terminal itself was probably smaller than my school building. Picking up our luggage from the conveyor belt thing was a quick and painless ordeal. =)

新疆 Day 1 - On the Road

After arriving, our guide and driver took us on our way to where we were supposed to spend the night. As the day cooled down to a comfortable temperature, the sun set a brilliant fiery orange over the mountains. We passed shining golden fields of sunflowers, interspersed with empty dirt fields. Then it was into the mountains, rolling hills at first which rose in and out of patches of desert. In the desert segments, perhaps they’d tried to plant stuff, sparse little trees whose greenery was only little tufts stood sadly here and there. It made me think of the hair on those creepy troll dolls.

The hills and mountains were beautiful too, in a plain sort of way. The smaller ones looked like a bulldozer had simply piled dirt and sand at a construction site, but then they got higher and higher, until it was impossible to say they were anything but mountains.

As we drove on, the moon rose, glowing and swollen in the night. I swam in and out of sleep, as by this time it was nearing midnight at the end of a very long day, and each time my eyes managed to open it was darker and darker. The sun sets impossibly late in the summers of this place. We drove through mountains, the only road for miles winding back and forth with no lights whatsoever, save for our own headlights. It was a mysterious sort of thing; I kind of liked it. It was almost like being on an airplane, where nothing can be recognized or defined outside the windows, but unlike the sterile and detached capsule of a plane, the van had many windows through which the night could seep in and consume us.

新疆 Day 1 - Midnight Madness

We drove until we finally reached a point where they’d closed off the road for construction, and we were stopped by a soldier. We parked the car, being told it was blocked for an indeterminate amount of time, and got out one by one to stretch our legs and assess the situation. The tour guide seemed calm as he spoke to the people there, and our driver was simply tired and quiet. My uncle and cousin got briefly out to relieve themselves, then quickly retreated to the safety of the van. The guide brought out a melon from somewhere and had one of the locals help us cut it open. I had two pieces since I was hungry, but I never really liked melon and this one tasted strange to me. Perhaps it was just the hour of the night and the tense, unfamiliar atmosphere.

I wanted to go back to sleep but the situation was getting a little bit exciting at this point. There is something wildly exhilarating about knowing that you are stuck in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in a country you do not understand with people you do not know well. I wandered further and further away along the moonlit road, away from where we had stopped. There were low dwellings for the local people, in which lights occasionally flashed and wobbled. The stench of animals was floating around, but the clear night breeze carried it along without giving me much trouble. I was getting pretty chilly in just a raincoat, but the moon was absolutely stunning, and everything was strangely lit, like an afternoon in negatives.

There was a creek that came down from the mountain on one side and tumbled its way through the five-house village. I stood at the “bridge” where the road passed over the bubbling water and tried to stick my hand in it (it was cold). I noticed something moving by my foot, and bent down for a closer look whereupon I saw some kind of rodent sniffing around. It was probably the size of a hamster or rat, but very sleep without much of a tail. Just then, a truck rolled by with materials for the roadwork, and when the headlights shone on it, the rodent squirmed back and forth, as if suddenly confused and intoxicated. I went back to the car for a flashlight but when I came back I didn’t find any others.

While we waited for the signal to pass through, a local Kazakh man treated us to tea. My uncle and cousin opted out, but the tour guide took my dad and I to the man's tent/house. It was round, made of cloth draped over a metal frame, about 4-5 meters in diameter. Inside there was a little wood stove warming the whole place, a small bed, a table, and a chest of drawers. He gave us tea in bowls--local tea. It wasn't the Chinese tea I'm used to. It was thick and rich, almost like broth, and slightly salty like it was fermented (I found out later they put salt and stuff in it because it tastes good when you have it together with the locally produced goat cheese--which, by the way, I also tried there but it is smelly and sour and hard and I saw a white hair sticking out of the side of the chunk they gave me). The tea was kind of filling, and it was nice that it was hot.

Finally, we got the all clear to move ahead from a soldier in a long Soviet-style overcoat. Somehow we drove over/around the newly paved part, singeing our tires and leaving a smell of burning rubber inside the car, and when I woke up again we were at the “hotel”. In the dark, it appeared to be a complex of many different buildings, with the main common one for meals in the center.

Our room was clean and cozy, although with a strong odour. In the closet where most hotels offer bathrobes, we found two of those Russian coats. So of course, we got silly since it was almost 3am by this time, and I found out how well that coat goes with a side helping of Default Face.

(It was also very useful later on for helping to make my bed feel softer…)

新疆 Prologue

My dad and I were in Hong Kong this year to visit family and stuff and today we took the "Through Train" from Hung Hom Station to the city of Guangzhou in Mainland China. My dad was born there, and his brother's family lives there now. It's only about a two hour train ride away from HK, but my dad hasn't been back there in six years or something. The trains are pretty clean and comfortable, so it was a pleasant ride.

As we sped along the rails through the changing landscapes, rainclouds came and went. I loved the strange, isolated feeling that came from opening my eyes after dozing off and being greeted by a window almost completely obscured by the raindrops running across it and the steady pitter-patter of the storm outside. Once, we passed through a city in China where they had put up a concrete wall beside the tracks to keep people form trespassing. On the top of the wall they had poured concrete and stuck in glass shards that act like barbed wire to discourage climbers. The sun was out right then, so as the train rolled past I kept staring at the glass, glinting all different colours in a strange dance between ugliness and beauty. I tried to imagine the person who had to make it, wearing thick gloves and carrying a bucket of broken glass collected from who-knows-where, slowly working his way across the wall, sticking the shards in pointiest side up with a pattern he thought most advantageous. Interesting job?

We arrived in Guangzhou in the afternoon. My aunt and uncle and cousins came to pick us up, and on the ride to their apartment I got a taste of China's epic traffic conditions. When turning from the small street onto a main road, this little blue car passes by like an inch away from the back corner of our car. I was sitting right in the back of our minivan so I watched it just slice by horrifically. Of course, there was also another spot where we had to U-turn to get to the other side of a street the size of the 401 with lane dividers down the middle. There were about 6 other cars also trying to do the same thing, in both directions, and right beside there we saw a NO U TURN sign.

My dad pointed out places he still recognized all along the way, but I couldn't recognize anything even though I've been there more often than he has in the last 10 years. It gave me a slightly harrowing feeling of being in a completely foreign and unfriendly place (as my preconceptions of China dictated to my mind), and this was the first day of a rather lonely trip for me.