MAY 1st HOLIDAY, Part SEVEN of SEVEN: Urumqi (乌鲁木齐) and Heaven Lake (天池)

Apologies for the delay in posting this last installment. I've been waiting to nick some of Dan's great pictures of Xinjiang's marvelous capital. I haven't been able to get my mitts on the pictures yet, but will try to add them shortly. (Update: they're finally up!)

Xinjiang is a fascinating place to visit; a vast inland expanse of otherworldly landscapes and dramatic climate changes (you can drive from the hot desert to snow-capped mountains in just a couple of hours). The land is oil and mineral-rich and shares borders with more countries than any other Chinese province (for the record, seven). Although it is culturally and geographically distant from China's eastern coastal cities, Xinjiang has received billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure and development. The highways are broad and modern and the oil drills rapacious. The government-controlled price of petrol, was however higher than it is in the capital, and we saw several gas stations with lines of cars waiting to fill up. Perhaps all the wind power is a conciliatory gesture:

Visually, Xinjiang makes it easy to forget that you are in China, but reminders, both subtle and grandiose, are always present. Although Urumqi is at least as far away from the capital as Seattle is from Bloomington, China's country-wide standardized time means that it is always Beijing time, despite the persistent contrariness of the sun's position. When you make plans with anyone or set the time for a departure or check-out you always have to specify whether you are talking about "local time" or "Beijing time". I found it a little confusing and a real pain in the ass. But apparently it keeps the country united or something.

The Uighur language has a script that looks very similar to Arabic, but is more closely related to Turkish. The Uighur people look much more like Central Asians than Chinese, and if they speak Mandarin it is often heavily accented. Still, this placard at the Urumqi museum would like to remind you that Xinjiang "has been an inalienable part of the territory of China".

Thanks placard!

China tends to have either megalopolises or villages, and Urumqi is a pleasant exception. With a population of about 3 1/2 million, the city manages to be both easily navigable and tremendously vibrant, not an easy combination. It may very well be my favorite Chinese city. The excellent parks, bustling polyglot markets, and streets in the Uighur part of town are all fascinating places to wander around. No other city in the world is as far away from an ocean as Urumqi, but it is a very important center for overland trade with Mongolia, Russia and the Central Asian republics, making it both isolated and thrillingly cosmopolitan.

The necessity of multilingualism in the city is clearly apparent on signs, especially in the Uighur area. The hotel where Dan and I stayed, had a neon sign with Uighur, Russian, Chinese, and English. Funny how the font sizes increase from top to bottom. I'm sure that has nothing to do with language policies.

This is the luxurious suite where we spent our first night at the Aksaray. They were out of basic rooms so for about $15 each we got this deluxe room, which was so lavish that it made me giggle almost every time we entered (what you can't see is the bedroom full of ornately carved wooden furniture, the elaborate light controlling device, or the screen in the shower that could be lifted to reveal a wall-sized window into the bedroom. yikes).

Dan took a lot of great pictures of the city and its street life - particularly vibrant in the Uighur part of the city where we stayed. Most of the following are his.

A giant outdoor grill.


Dried fruit and nuts were everywhere. Each stand had at least 10 different varieties of raisins, small and large figs, apricots, and fruits I'd never seen before.

Xinjiang has delicious bread. This was kind of like challah, but elsewhere there were many many varieties of nan, baked in clay ovens and sprinkled with onions, fennel, or sesame seeds.

I blend in so well.

The pedestrian underpass leading to the grand bazaar was always almost completely packed.

On one side were Uighur posting for jobs and housing.

On the other, small booths selling make-up, incredibly gaudy jewelry, sweets, books, and traditional medicine made from various dried reptiles and animal innards.

One highlight of Urumqi was the Mongol Bar, a place which vies with establishments in London and Bellingham for the title of My Favorite Watering Hole in the Whole World (although to be honest, the bathrooms at the Mongol Bar might necessitate its disqualification). I'm not sure the place has an actual name, but if you go, look for a nondescript building in the university area with half a yurt extending onto the sidewalk.

On our first night in town, Dan and I met up with my friend Eric, an anthropological linguistics student at IU, for dinner, ice cream, and relentless queries about the region's history and language. It happened to be the 1st of May, the actual holiday for which I was granted a week's vacation to go gallivanting about the country, and Eric said it would be a special night at the Mongol Bar (though based on my second visit, I think I can confidently say that every night is a special night at the Mongol Bar).

Oh Mongol Bar, how I love thee, let me list the reasons:

1) The owner: The 6'8" current chief of police and former player on the Inner Mongolian basketball team spent much of the evening confiding in Eric about how hard it was to find love because women were so intimated by his height.

2) The decor: Huge murals of horses and grasslands, tinsel and santa-heads left over from x-mas hanging from the ceiling, and a large Genghis Khan portrait at the head of the stage ringed in flashing lights.

3) The music: A combination of Eastern European club hits (Numa Numa made its required appearance), wacked-out, speeded-up, and remixed Central Asian folk music (exactly what I would imagine would be played at a Kazakh wedding), and heartfelt songs of love and loss sung by the talented employees and owner of the bar and accompanied by the DJ on synthesizer.

4) The dancing: For the club hits, a mixture of Central Asian folk dances and the usual spastic twitching. The boys got extra points for being totally into it -- it seemed that being a good dancer was a mark of machismo, not, as in much of the West, an indication of its absence. For the slow songs, the whole floor was taken over by couples of men and women or two women together (Eric told me that he has seen men dance with men but it is comparatively rare). The style was pretty much identical to junior high slow dance: bodies were at a safe distance and hands were affixed to assigned places. It was lots of fun to sit and watch the slight variations on the theme; some couples covered a lot of ground on the dance floor, while others mostly rocked back and forth in the same place, and a few mavericks threw in some extra moves.

Eric demonstrates some hybrid dance moves. When I tried to imitate him I was remonstrated by a Russian fellow who told me in English: "you, woman, dance like this!" demonstrating a subtler rotation and movement of the hand before excusing himself to vomit in the bathroom sink.

Eric, his Mongol cab driver buddy, and an English teacher friend tear up the dance floor.

Eric, his cab driver friend, and someone who appears to be doing a Frankenstein dance, with Genghis Khan's portrait in the background.

Dan with his new pal.

Me with my handsome slow dance partners.

While I'm rhapsodizing about nightlife, I should mention Urumqi's bountiful night market culinary delights. My favorite part of Xinjiang cuisine is lamian, or pulled noodles, which can be ordered in all sorts of widths and textures and topped with spicy tomato- or chili-based sauces, chickpeas, and veg. Polo, a flavorful rice and pepper pilaf made with mutton stock, is also a staple.

Wuyi night market (to the left are heaps of brightly colored dried fruit).

Lots of street stalls had giant heaps of noodles and various spice and pulse/vegetable topping that you could mix and match. Chopsticks are stuck in the heap to prevent the noodle tower from collapsing; you can see a few on the right.

Freshly churned vanilla ice cream. So good.

Freshly squeezed (or maybe squashed?) pomegranate juice.

Helmeted and armed riot guards were stationed outside the Grand Bazaar in a triangle formation all day. The French department store Carrefour had a branch inside and because there had been boycotts and protests of the store in other parts of the country (because of the disruption of the Olympic torch in France) the guards were there to y'know, preserve the peace and all. I bet standing there all day made them really want some ice cream.

A woman preparing one of the most famous of Urumqi's gastrononomic treats, opke, a broth of goat's heads and stuffed intestines, which I was repeated told was mind-blowingly delicious. I was strangely tempted but did not succumb.

Fresh lamb and vegetable stuffed tortellinis.

Roast flesh, ready to be chopped.

A kebab stand.

Eric at a Xibei restaurant, about to sip some ji jiu (鸡酒); literally and actually, chicken liquor. The restaurant had large containers of the stuff with whole chickens slowly marinating inside them. It tasted like chicken boullion dissolved in everclear.

The morning after this memorable treat, Dan and I took a bus a couple hours out of the city and up into the Tian Mountains to visit Heaven Lake (天池) and the Peak of God.

The climb felt great and the scenery was so reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest that my heart ached a little.

The crystal clear water of the Dragon Pool we passed on the way up.

Heaven Lake, with boat:

Heaven Lake, with tourists:

Heaven Lake, with engrish (reads "Please have mercy on the green grass!"):

Heaven Lake, with scrunched nose:

Heaven Lake, with deliriously happy sun-deprived Beijingers:

The next evening, after Dan narrowly escaped the death clutches of a violent stomach bug, we boarded a Beijing bound plane, flying over Aydingkul (艾丁湖), the 2nd lowest lake in the world after the Dead Sea.

It was one heck of a week and a half. I've never enjoyed traveling in China so much, nor have I ever learned so much on a trip. I hope I never forget many of the conversations, short and long, silly and profound, that we had with people along the way, and I will certainly fondly remember the long dinners with the Yale Book Club crew and with Alan, Rachel, and Dan in Linxia and Xiahe. I wish mealtime chatter was always so enthusiastically political, compelling, and smart.

I am eternally grateful to Dan for inviting me along on a whim, and for being a fantastic traveling partner who has fast become one of my favorite people. I can forgive his associations with a certain disreputable funding association and his inability to copy his pictures for me, as the kid is brilliant, principled, kind-hearted, and in possession of a fine sense of adventure.

Thanks for reading. I can imagine that it might get a little tiresome as I prattle on about all of the exciting places I've been (hell, I live in an interesting place and I still get jealous reading about my classmate's travels), but it's the only substitution I can feasibly manage for talking to each and every one of you. It has taken some time to get this all down but now I am finally going to take a break from blogging in order to concentrate on starting my feasibility research and making the most of my remaining time in China.

See you in July.