新疆 Epilogue

This was a trip of learning to be alone, of appreciating the company of my friends whom I missed so much, and of survival in an unfamiliar place. 


On this trip, time flowed strangely. The sun goes down at around ten, and we often didn't have dinner or stop for the night until midnight so that we could cover the maximum distance during our waking hours. This means that I usually never got to sleep until long after 1 or 2 am. During the day, I was drowsy, and slept ridiculous amounts in the long car rides. Often, it felt like time passed by too quickly without me noticing. I would wake up to find that hours had passed, feeling like I had only dozed off for several minutes. Sometimes I would get back into the car after what felt like a leisurely afternoon stroll at some sightseeing destination, only to realize with a start that it was nearing 8pm, not 3 as I had imagined, with the sun swollen yellow in the sky. Then there were times in the car, in between naps, where I felt impossibly 100% awake and could not possibly sleep a second more. The dusty unfamiliar landscape would slide by alarmingly fast as the driver sped along the backcountry roads, but the minutes would tick by at a snail's pace. I felt as though I never could stay awake for more than three hours at a time, and never was allowed to sleep for more than 5. If it weren't for the photographs to remind me of the vivid realities of the sights I had seen, my memories of the trip would be only hazy at best, as I felt like I sleepwalked through the whole ordeal. 


There was an element of culture shock, of course, and I felt isolated as my uncle and cousin were in their own country, my dad was returning to it, and I was always left on the outside as the little girl who could not understand. My grasp of the language was often misunderstood, and this made for awkward spots where I could understand everything they were saying about me-- the fact that I was a foreigner, a woman, a child --but I was not able to respond at all. It did help me to feel a bit more confident in my comprehension abilities,  I suppose.  


Overall, I found this place to be unnerving and repulsive on some occasions, but immensely pure and beautiful on many others. I would come again, on my own terms though, and hopefully a little bit more awake. 

新疆 Day 7 - Foggy Mountains

In the morning the rain let up, and we drove up the mountain. Then we switched from a large tour bus to a golf-cart-like thing to travel the narrower roads. Yesterday’s clouds still lingered on the hills, floating along through the trees as though it were a living thing. The grassy hillsides were curiously ridged, like a fork pressed into cookie dough. Our guide informed us that these were created by herds of sheep being driven across to new grazing grounds. Horse, sheep and cows dotted the landscape here and there, with local dwellings set up along the way. At one stop, a crowd of local children pulling tiny goats on leashes came up to the touring vehicles. The goats were dolled up with brightly coloured ribbons and sashes, and the children with their shrill voices called out to the tourists offering photo ops in exchange for small change.

It was quite chilly on the mountain, the cold made worse by the dampness all over. By the time we returned to our car, I had lost feeling from my feet to my calves, and my fingers could barely move. We went for lunch, at the same restaurant for the third time, and warmed up with our final meal on the tour—complete with my favourite spicy roasted lamb. 

so cold.

新疆 Day 7 - Dreams and Departure

On our way to the airport, we stopped to take pictures by a golden field of wheat. I was my first time seeing wheat in real life up close. After this trip, I have two new things to dream of doing in life: to run through a wheat field and stand in the middle; and to do the same in a sunflower field.

At the airport, something went wrong: They had combined two flights into one without taking into account all the people, so us checking in so last minute left us without seats. We were informed that there was nothing to be done about the flight, so we would have to wait for the next and then stay at Urumqi for one night since we would have missed out connecting flight back to Guangzhou. 


To atone for their incompetence, they let us into the "VIP" area, but it was really just a musty little room with mustard yellow couches and a tiny TV which, for reasons unknown to me, my uncle used to watch infomercials presented in a local language that none of us understood.

新疆 Day 3 – Stranded

They let us into the lounge/waiting area labelled VIP, but it was really just a musty little room with mustard yellow leather couches and an ancient TV (which for some strange reason my uncle used for watching a channel that only seemed to show Uygur infomercials). I ended up going for a little walking tour of the tiny little airport, and had a look at some of the souvenirs they were selling. I finally bought a pack of playing cards because I didn’t have any on the trip before.

 

Our boarding call finally came and we made our way onto the least populated airplane I have ever seen. I wonder how much of a waste it is to fly across a province with like 10 people on the plane. Once we got back to Urumqi, we wandered around the airport until we found a service desk that knew what to do with us. I was frustrated because the light board displaying flight statuses said that our plane was still boarding…which meant that we probably technically would’ve still made it on. In any case, we were herded onto a shuttle bus (again, ten people riding a full-sized tour bus, but of course China’s not that eco-friendly I suppose) and taken to a hotel owned by the airport, aptly named something like The Petroleum Hotel. We would have to stay in Urumqi for a night in order to catch the next flight to Guangzhou. 

 

新疆 Day 7 – Night Market

We heard of the night market that happened to be going on at the time, so we hailed a taxi to get there. On our way out, the concierge girl gave us an interesting tip. Apparently in Xin Jiang, only females can sit in the front seat of the taxi. They’re scared you’ll attack them…and apparently females are too soft to do that ;) Anyway that’s how I ended up getting shotgun while my uncle, cousin and dad were squished into the back. It made me a little happy, because typically I’d be shafted to the back automatically.

bahaha..

We had dinner at the night market, where the vendors had a vast array of food items we could choose from and have them roast on the grill for us. The meat was pretty good, and we even got some quail. There was also some other rather questionable stuff that we didn’t dare to try…

crayfish..

ew...

After that we walked through the market and looked at the other stands selling things like clothes, decorative items, toys, automobile paraphernalia, and fruit. Parts of Xin Jiang province are well known for production of fruit, because the climate is suited to growing things like melons and grapes. I was able to eat the sweetest little green grapes I had ever tasted in my life, and we also got to try some other interesting locally grown fruits. 

Those yellow things in the middle shouldn't even be called fruits,
I think they are actually some kind of squash >_>

新疆 Day 6 - Into the Mist

We woke up to a gray, drizzling morning. After a discussion at the breakfast table, it was decided that it wasn’t worth going out to see anything because in this weather none of the sights would be very nice. I persuaded my dad to sneak out with me anyway, while everybody else retreated to their rooms. We went a little way out from the hotel to the tourist area where we took some interesting pictures of what looked like the Chinese equivalent of totem poles. We didn’t get very far because the rain came down harder and harder, and my pant legs were slowly getting soaked due to the hem dragging a bit on the ground.

What my dad does on rainy days xD

 



We reconvened at lunchtime after I’d spent the rest of my morning folding paper in my room (a la Chatter at Btowne ;D). Afterwards, we all went for a leisurely ramble around the outskirts of town, but it was rainy and the mountains were all covered with clouds. We went through the tourist area with displays of the local minorities’ cultural stuff. 

the honting ground, the house race track, and the untranslatable.

While walking along the mainly empty roadway, I was literally bored silly (much to my uncle’s intense concern and horror).

WHEE

I paid an old Kazakh man 5RMB to take a picture with his eagle. It was actually massive and extremely heavy. Good thing I’m so TANK ;)

aww yeee.

Soon after that, a thick fog descended upon us like a blanket being drawn up over a bed. Mist fascinated me, because we don’t get much of it in Canada, and I got a few ghostly pictures before hurrying back to the hotel to change into dry clothes again.

 

Dinner was uneventful for the most part. We ate in the same restaurant that we’d had lunch in, it being the only “proper” restaurant in the area. I tried “horse milk wine”, which was a sort of yogurt flavoured white drink that supposedly has similar alcohol content to beer, made from fermented horse’s milk. As we were getting ready to leave, a table full of locals started to sing traditional songs as they passed some kind of intense alcohol around and raised glasses to the elders. That was kind of beautiful. 

新疆 Day 5 - Walnuts and Wildflowers

We drove all morning until we reached some place in the middle of nowhere. Taking a shuttle bus into the valley, we were dropped off at the start of a trail. It’s a mountain that grows wild walnuts, valuable for Chinese medicine. We hiked up a long trail of very steep steps all the way to the top of the mountain. There were apricot trees all along the way, so our hike was fragrant and accompanied by the lazy buzzing of insects. At the top of the trail, one can look down upon the entire valley, which is actually a spot where a mountain range splits in two like a Y-shape, creating a little triangular dip in between.

Yay! I survived the hike!

The view wasn’t that nice, I suppose, because the sky was hazy and the mountain was not as beautiful as the other we had seen. Interestingly, the wildflowers we spotted growing by the path were almost identical to those we have in Canada. I think the latitude is around the same, and many of the plants are remarkably similar. They are often bigger though, and more lush, but I'm not really sure why.  

On our trek back down, which was much easier than the way up of course, we ran into these locals. They were very friendly and open to us taking pictures of them. Aren’t their clothes wonderful? There were also these random tourists who look like Russians but spoke some Chinese dialect, also very happy to pose for us.

happy old ladies

no creeper...

Ominous warning for hikers

On the way down

新疆 Day 5 - Owned.

We stopped for more photography at a village in a valley with a river running through it. I grabbed a new bottle of water from the package as I got out of the car because I had finished my bottle from the morning. We had been buying those 24-packs of bottles from the supermarket since tap water isn’t drinkable and we have no means to boil and store enough for a day. Anyway I had the bottle in my bag while going out along the river with my dad to take pictures. On the way back to the car, I was thirsty, so I took out the bottle of water, opened it, and took a big swallow. It occurred to me that it tasted different from my water this morning, almost sickly sweet, so I immediately spat out the second mouthful. I remembered suddenly that this was supposedly a brand new bottle, an yet there had been no clicking sound of the seal breaking when I twisted it open.

“HOMGSH DAD THIS IS LAKE WATER T___T”

My dad had a sip to taste it, and we compared it to the water in his bottle, and began to laugh uncontrollably. Walking back to the car after emptying the bottle on the rocks, I kind of started retching and feeling a little gross, but maybe it was just a psychological effect. I spat out the taste as well as I could, and my dad told everybody back at the car what had happened. The guide died of laughter, and the driver told us he’d probably put the filled bottle from the lake back into the water pack thinking it was just a new bottle that had fallen out. 


In other news, Dad's cool picture of the place where this all happened is here.

新疆 Day 4 - Miscellaneous

We had breakfast at our “5-star” hotel, and I was ridiculously happy to taste familiar things like steamed egg, fried dumplings and noodles in soup. I’m not usually picky about what I eat, but it was a welcome change from the strongly flavoured local food we had been eating thus far. After leaving the hotel, we drove out through Xin Jiang’s oil fields. The road was dusty and bumpy, and the view was simply a wasteland dotted with slowly moving oil pumps. After passing through that region, we turned onto small country roads and drove between endless fields of what the guide told us was cotton. Occasionally, there would be one or two fields of sunflowers, all the little yellow faces turned away from the road as though trying to avoid the dust.

We stopped in a small town to go to a fruit stall, where we bought a locally grown melon—similar to a cantaloupe but more elongated in shape—and the man selling it cut it in slices for us on the spot. While we were standing around eating, an extremely old man tottered up to look at us curiously, and the shopkeeper handed him a slice of melon for free. The old man smiled a little bit, ate it, and then settled down on his haunches by the side of the road for a cigarette.

The guide told us that most of the villages in Xin Jiang were settlements that the Chinese government created deliberately in a previously largely unoccupied desert region. At the time, most of the locals were of ethnic minorities, and the government did not have enough control over the area. They sent in people of the Han ethnicity—what many Chinese consider to be pure— in large numbers, divided them up like army platoons, and settled them into government-owned lands to farm and develop the province as a service to the country. 

新疆 Day 4 - Clouds on the Lake

We arrived at a lake in the mountains, and our driver took us in along the road that follows the shoreline. Still drowsy from the car ride, I left them standing at one spot taking pictures and set off on foot down the road. I walked and walked, passing by cows and sheep grazing in the grass beside the road as well as the local people’s tents. The air was fresh and clean, and a thin haze of cloud veiled the mountains beyond. I actually walked a very long time before the car caught up with me to pick me up again. Since the weather and lighting weren’t very good for photography we left right after that. On our way out, the guide filled up an empty bottle with lake water to show us how perfectly clear it was. He told us that this lake has the cleanest, purest water in all of China, still free of pollution.

My cousin creeping on some animals

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.