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| Urumqi |
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| Buying grapes in Turpan |
The day started with a three hour drive
from Turpan to Urumqi. The driver appeared to go the wrong way at first, but
Tony (our local guide) said he wanted to buy some local Turpan grapes. He then
presented us with a big box of them as a present! The drive to Urumqi was very
scenic – bare mountain and desert, following by a river valley.
After two hours we came to a large wind
farm, where we stopped
to take photographs and I encountered my first really disgusting
pit toilet – even the flies recoiled. Later we passed a salt lake (which
allegedly had similar properties to the Dead Sea) then a freshwater lake and a
reservoir.
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| Wind farm |
Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province,
is a very modern city, which has only been built in the last fifty or so years
and looks a bit like a sort of Gotham City in the middle of the desert. Our
first port of call was the museum, which is best known for the mummies found in
the desert. We were first shown an exhibit of the different peoples of Xinjiang
(Uighur, Kazakh, Mongol, Manchu etc.), before being taken upstairs to see the
famous mummies with European features, including the Loulan beauty; a woman who
was buried with a small mask containing human teeth; a four year old child; and
a couple from 1800 BC (she of mixed European and Mongol ethnicity, he of
European) – the textiles they were wearing were finely woven and very well
preserved. The way out of this exhibition passed through the inevitable gift
shop, which included reproductions (and allegedly genuine antiquities) as well
as very beautiful, but heavy, books about the discoveries.
Tony then took us to lunch. We told him
that we were not too hungry, so he only ordered beef with vegetables; chicken
with peppers and mushrooms (very bony, but the mushrooms were good), Chinese
leaves; cabbage with prawns (slightly worrying in the city that is distinguished
for being furthest from the ocean) and soup with tofu and leaves. Goodness
knows how much food we would have been offered if we had said we were hungry!
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| Bazaar in Urumqi |
After lunch we went to the bazaar. There
were lots of raisins from Turpan, dried apricots and spices, but overall it was
more like a modern shopping mall than a traditional eastern bazaar.
Tony then asked what we would like to do
next, as we had time to kill before our flight to Kashgar. Having been in China for a while by this point, I now knew the ropes so I vetoed his suggestion of a visit to a
carpet factory, and suggested the park which he had pointed out to us as we drove into the city. I think he thought we were mad. He said he hadn’t been there since he
was ten years old, but he complied with good grace. The park turned out to be attractive, with flowers,
amusements for children, stands celebrating every modern Olympic games,
refreshment stands but toilets that were only marginally better than those near
the wind farm.
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| Red Hill Park, Urumqi |
We had a cold drink on a terrace with a
great view of the city, where a PA system was (bizarrely) playing Una Paloma
Blanca and then visited a pagoda which also had a good view of the city, and
another smaller pagoda which marks the spot where the head of a serpent is
trapped. The serpent’s tail is trapped by a pagoda on an opposite hill – if the
buildings collapse, the serpent will be freed and Urumqi will be destroyed by
flood - (allegedly).
After that, Tony got his revenge saying
that as there was still some time to kill before our flight to Kashgar, we
could visit the government gift shop.
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