Kashgar's Bizarre Bazaars

Anyone interested in a donkey? Hundreds are for sale at Kashgar's
"camel" market (where there wasn't a camel in sight), along with
herds of fat tailed sheep and the occasional horse. Kashgar is the
terminus (or the beginning) of the Karakoram Highway reaching to
Islamabad and it's proximity brought a bit of the devastating
earthquake in Pakistan to the lively Chinese outpost for a few
nervous moments. I've seen Chinese construction techniques in
action, and would recommend being anywhere but inside in a shake!
Kashgar is also the place (in China) to buy a carpet, silk or wool,
or wickedly sharp Kashgari knives, some of which will certainly serve
a Klingon well in future generations. It is the least Chinese of all
the places we've seen, in appearance, temperament, pace. This is the
only place where we've seen veiled women, and a cab ride is surely an
adventure born across the mountains, in Pakistan. There isn't a hope
of hearing Chinese music from the street vendors: it is all Paki-pop
and Bollywood.

Dolkun took us for a walk through the old city, and a visit to a
Uighur family home there. Again, any vestiges of China were cast
aside in the richly carpeted room surrounded by walls carved into an
intricate fretwork of screens and nooks through which emerged family
members bearing trays of fruit and drinks. The patriarch was
distracted by his wife's hospitalization, but was kind enough to sit
with us for awhile and answer our questions. In the fine Kashgar
weather, he was still sleeping outside on the porch, but guessed that
in three weeks he'd move inside as the weather cools. In the hustle
and bustle of the Old City, the Uighur family courtyards were
private, cool and a comfortable oasis, and I imagined that he'd
rather be sleeping under the old fig tree than anywhere else.

As we entered Xinjiang Province, Ramadan was just beginning, so even
this town given to bending the rules of Islam was a bit subdued. It
was difficult to find a restaurant, and we were forced to the kabob
vendors again and again until everyone but Dolkun was feeling a bit
toxic from an excess of meat, which none of us was used to. But the
exceptions were delightful! Fresh yogurt, pitas which resembled
calzones or empanadas, onion-laced nan bread, tasty pilaf, fresh
squeezed pomegranate juice. We took lunch in understated elegance on
the verandah of the former British Consulate where the Great Game was
played out between Czarist Russia and the British Empire for
supremacy in Central Asia. We then returned to our hotel, the former
Russian Consulate, whose decor can only be described as a blending of
Byzantine baroque and ticky tacky Turkish, where a dormitory wing
hosted a constant stream of Eurotrash in blonde dreadlocks using the
slowest internet service in Asia or changing money at the Russian-run
usury counter.

Dolkun told us that our flight back to Urumqi would be delayed, and
when asked for the reason, he said that it was due to weather (this
was better than 30 hours before the flight, and there are a lot of
people who'd like to have such an accurate flight forcasting plan).
When pressed, Dolkun suggested that perhaps the pilot has been
drinking and needs the time to recover...hmmm...either the weather
will be bad or the pilot will be drunk! I think the truth has more
to do with China's own War on Terror against Uighur separatists and
the sensitivity of travel during this National Week stretch. Ah yes,
that brings me back to the real world!

What to do with Excess Labor

Imagine driving along the most desolate and remote desert this side of the Mojave and seeing some poor schmuck sweeping the highway with one of those wretched Chinese brooms that requires (or develops) a constant stoop. It's a never ending task, to be sure, a real "iron rice bowl."

Driving out of Urumqi to the old central Silk Road route was a fascinating study in geology: the former seafloor has experienced violent interaction at some point and the magnificent twists and folds make a unique landscape. Along the Tienshan Mountain pass, it could be Afghanistan, from what I've seen of the pictures in the news: not a shred of vegetation, not a hint of water, but bitterly cold in the Winter and unbearably hot in the Summer. And Tienshan in English means "heavenly mountain!"

Sad to report that my years-old China notebook was lost somewhere along the way, including my choice menu translations. I can only remember my favorite: Six Flavor Match the Color! But I do have some cute "Engrish" quotes from our Muslim Uighur guide, Dolkum: Crossing the mountains, he pointed out cell phone minarets. He told a story of how the Mongolians on the area preferred to have sky burials, where relatives took the deceased into the jungle (clearly, there is no jungle between here and the Burma border) and a local delicacy is jungle kabobs, made with mutton. We could pass our free time at the Beauty Saloon if we liked.

Food isn't very exotic here: no coconut grubs, baby bees or ant eggs. In Shanxi Province donkey meat was a delicacy: I did try it, but as it was served with Shanxi vinegar, the unique taste was rather subverted. In Kanas, we tried the local fish from rivers that flow to the Arctic, and at $25 a plate, it was the priciest thing I think I've ever had in China. Mutton is of course the common culinary denominator here, a thread of commonality between Buddhist Mongolians, Muslim Uighurs, Kazakhs and Uzbeks, and Han Chinese.

The first stop as we skirted the Taklamakan Desert was Korla, a town we all expected to be a dusty backwater, but lo and behold, it is an oil center and as such has direct flights to Beijing, and one of the loveliest riverfronts this side of San Antonio. What a pleasant surprise! The weather continues to be warm, even at night, and we continue to enjoy what must be the best time to visit Xinjiang Province. Kucha was smaller, but I'd put the hotel there up against anything in the States below the Ritz Carlton level, but Aksu's finest is a Soviet-era Friendship Hotel, everything you'd expect from a Friendship Hotel: dank bathroom, shower curtain too short, rock-hard mattress. Actually, since our other lodgings have been so nice, and exceeding my expectations, Aksu was the only expected thing on the Silk Road so far!

I am just enchanted with the poplar-lined roads wherever there is agriculture or a town: I'm sure I've seen the scenes in Dr. Zhivago. The most popular mode of transport is donkey cart, and well-tended donkeys trot along pulling skullcap-wearing grandfathers and their loads of corn, or women wearing babushkas and knee-length skirts (but no veils). Really, it could be Russia except for the occasional camel ambling along the roadside. The Northern part of the Province is officially trilingual, so all signage includes Uighur, which looks like Arabic and sounds Turkish; Mongolian, which looks and sounds Tibetan, and Chinese. And of course, Western writing is also popular.

I'm looking forward to Kashgar and the Sunday camel market there, but I have little room for carpets, knives or any other specialty of the region. That's the end of the trip! In a province with about as much environmental diversity as California, I feel as if I've been all over China on a magic carpet (which is about how our driver conducts his car: he's received two speeding violations so far).

Kanas Lake Monster Replicates Itself!

National Week in China's recreational areas: Be Afraid! Overrun does little to describe the anthill that the most remote area in China became when we visited Altay and Kanas Lake. But I digress...

The drive from Urumqi to Altay and on to Kanas was lovely. In Xinjiang Province, wherever there is a city, there is an oasis of poplar trees, reeds, marshes and a greenbelt. Outside of the city, it is a grassland with cows and sheep grazing together in defiance of the Range Wars mentality of our Old West. In fact, the scene could be a ranch in Colorado or Montana but for the occasional herd of Bactrian camels or yurts standing in the fields.

We stopped to have a look at some deer stones, petroglyphs and rock carvings that looked Celtic to me, and were drawn to a nearby yurt where a family in residence invited us in to the communal home. Like the arbor-covered courtyards of Turpan, the interior of the yurt was carpeted in brillian carpets, all the way to the high ceiling, and a little boy was working on his homework, a baby was playing on the floor, and we were all nibbling on rock-hard pieces of tangy yogurt offered to us by the lady of the yurt. It was a nice bit of serendipity!

The undulating landscape offers a new vista at every turn. Sandy dunes yield to grasslands and then to a rocky moonscape, and then to a poplar-lined promenade in towns: if you don't like the view, wait 5 minutes. Altay prefecture is a textbook case of glacier geology: a wide valley embraced by dagger-sharp mountains, complete with cirques, aretes, pushing down moraine and till, and leaving a loess area where big round sheep pick their way around big round rocks. The river which runs to the Arctic is brilliant turquoise, and the lake itself is stuning in blues and greens, framed by golden birch trees. That is, when you can actually see the lake through the swarm of humanity! Our accommodations at the lake, for one night were old Russian dachas converted to modest Chinese dorms: not recommended.

Russian culture here is prominent. Architecture, language, ethnicities...our Khazak guide got us through the worst of the crowds as a highly-placed member of the tourism ministry, and we were treated to the honored guest routine (toast after toast) at a Russian Dancing and Sinning (sic) restaurant.

The 7-hour flight delay for our return to Urumqi was the unfortunate conclusion of this leg of the trip, but a noisy group of Cantonese travellers who demanded compensation for their trouble provided a high bit of drama and entertainment: in the end, everyone received a $25 refund on their $60 ticket, which turned into a nice tip for David and our local Uigur guide, Dolkun.

Back to the Silk Road...

Night Train to Turpan

Lots of people can't sleep on trains, but I find them relaxing. It was quite a difference waking up in the sandy dunes of Turpan. This is a grape growing center, despite the arid desert environment, with water provided from a series of underground wells, a technology borrowed from the ancient Persians. Water from these wells is considered zamzamsu in Islam, worthy of a Haj to Saudi Arabia.
The ubiquitous grapes are a part of every home here, and a peek into the family coutryard reveals a lovely outdoor room covered by a grape arbor and carpeted in the vibrant reds of their Persian carpets. The music is Middle Eastern, the dress Central Asian, the donkey carts could be from anywhere in eastern Europe 100 years ago. The most common food is shashli kawob, more familiarly known as shish kabob to us, beef or mutton.
What is striking here as a contrast to most of China is the single story buildings: in Datong it was due to the honeycomb of coal mines under the streets, but here it the style in a land that can accommodate larger homes, yards even, and graves with a tomb and a yard. The architecture is basically mud, as it has alwys been, something that has made preservation of ancient sites a challenge.
We visited a raisin merchant's home, taking tea under the bright green ceiling of the grape arbor and sat with a 108- year old woman. Encouraged to ask her questions, the group complied:
Do you still dream?
What was the furthest you've travelled from home?
What do you think of the young people today?
For your information, she eats little more than a handful of dark raisins every day, or so she says, clever girl!

Road Trip

From Beijing to the trail of UNESCO World Heritage sites en route to Xian. The adventure began in Datong and the Yungang Grottoes and a few of the 50,000 or so statues carved into the rock cliffs there. It was a three-hour drive from Beijing, not bad, with Great Wall sitings all the way. The most impressive was a 70-meter Buddha sitting cross-legged. Other than that, there is not much to speak of in Datong, a coal mining capital, just a few poor temples trying to act as tourist attractions. The wooden pagoda in Yingxian is the oldest wooden structure in China and is lovely, made without nails, all 9 stories.
Leaving Datong for the Wutai (5-terrace) mountain was a bit of an ordeal. Just out of Yingxian our game of playing chicken with oncoming traffic was stopped by an endless line of coal trucks, overloaded, inching their way up the mountain until all traffic was stopped: it seems that trucks carrying three times their legal weight often break down, and such was the case. During our wait we learned that the truckers had been there since 2:00 AM the previous day. The police that arrived were playing cards, everyone was standing around the broken down trucks as if waiting for them to fix themselves. Our local guide was fatalistic: nothing could be done, we would have to wait all night, maybe two more days. Bullshit: David took charge and got the cork out, directing traffic until the police decided to take credit and show some initiative. Back in the car, we had a vocabulary lesson around officious versus official. And sometimes officious officials. Later traffic jams with herds of sheep were easier to manage.
On Wutaishan sacred Buddhist mountain we took in some of the 108 temples by starting at the top and walking down the 1080 steps...seemed like cheating, but David said that we earned our pilgrimage in the traffic jam. Well, he certainly did. In the mountains above the coal mines and traffic, the temples sat in that autumnal glow of sunlight filtering through cottonwoods and poplars turning gold and orange. With the National Day holiday coming up there were plenty of visitors, but mostly Buddhist monks and nuns. We caught a service (if that is the word) at a temple and heard the chanting monks and pilgrims, and then looked down into a courtyard performance of Cantonese opera being performed. No tourist hype could have guaranteed that, and it was magical.
One of our group, June, had the misfortune of being THE one in our group that the local guide Nelson imprinted on, and she was highly strung by the end of the day by Nelson's constant attention and impromptu English lessons. He is a bit wearing. My duty today was to deflect Nelson's attention elsewhere, namely to myself. I scare him, though, so he's been a bit quieter around me.

Pingyao

It's always interesting when your room comes equipped with a flashlight. In this case, not surprising, because the few hundred years the Heavenly Garden Inn has experienced have been a bit hard on the lighting and plumbing. Heat was courtesy of a kang, a stove on which the bed platform was placed: I imagined feeling like a menu item by the end of the night, but it was actually quite comfortable, and the old walled city of Pingyao was so charming, and authentically preserved in the old pre-Republic fashion, I had to agree with a traveler that were it not for the funny smell I would have liked to stay longer. The inn was a former residence of a wealthy family and my smallish quarters suggested a concubine's room: the red lanterns reinforced that.
Another UNESCO site, Pingyao is not the Disneyfied walled city that many similar towns have become. It has warts, some of its labyrinthine walls are crumbling and a peek into residential courtyards reveal the Chinese version of a Chinese still life, laundry drying on the line, children's plastic toys, kitchen bustle, chickens picking through piles of straw. It's not a museum, it is a living town and it feels like it.
I'm sitting out the afternoon in the hotel's internet cafe, looking at the old gray-roofed city through the filter of what in San Diego would be a soft winter rain. From here we fly to Xian, overnight there, fly to Dunhuang, overnight train to Turpan, and begin the ultimate road trip over the Silk Road immortalized by Marco Polo and the Tang Dynasty monk Xianzang before him. We'll end in Kashgar's bazaars, spittin' distance from Pakistan, and take a final detour to Altay, China's peninsula of land poking into what should be Russia in search of the Kanas lake monster, Nessie's cousin.

Hi Nan!

Well, the first thing I’d say is that Hainan is NOT the Hawaii of China. Grenada maybe. Of course, it’s not as enchanting this time around, and the long distances traveling in a taxi are irritating, and the stuff the Chinese call seafood is the same chopped up protein solids in a ginger sauce, with the single exception of coquilles Sainte Jacques served up in one of the garage-type diners. In any case, I don’t want to look at another peel-n-eat shrimp!
You can rent off road vehicles, jet skis, scuba gear but are then confined to a crowded holding pen for your activities-way too much control for Western tourists of this sort. The good part is that it really is true that the air is clean, the water is clean, and the ecology is better preserved here than anywhere else in China. Shallow water great for snorkeling and
white coral beaches make the outer islands off the main island a great place to play. The weather is lovely, this being winter in the tropics.

Freakish architecture entry #21: a hotel built in the style of an English castle, crenellated walls and all, “­but with a mirrored glass tower. Oy!

Next stop was Jiuhuashan, another sacred Buddhist mountain in Anhui Province (more spiritual than the nearby Huangshan) which means climbing the usual 999 temple steps. We had to fly into Hefei, the most dismal town I’ve seen in China and take a bus to Jiuhuashan. Once there, everything was blanketed with snow and hoar frost, which looked cool but 999 temple steps are dangerous on the best of days.
Freakish menu translations from Jiuhuashan Sacred Buddhist Mountain:

Numb and Sore Sausage (read that hot and spicy in the States)
Spongy Chicken Feet (marinated)
Brew the Hands of Pig (sauteed pigs feet)
Soil Chicken Fort with Tea Mushroom (no clue!)
Foul Fish of Anhui Type
“­and the winner is”­
Fat Bowel of Bacterium (Intestines with fungus)­

And finally, Shanghai! After the disappointment of Hainan and the dank and dismal Anhui Province, I was thrilled to be cruising down the Bund, admiring the stately colonial buildings on one side and the flashing neonopolis across the river, once again a growing, dynamic, exciting city of capitalist virtue. Here’s a contrast: David glanced at the buildings that once made up the German concession of Shangahi, those imposing Eurpoean mansions, and remarked that he shouldn’t feel proud to see those remnants of the colonial past: they are a scar that remains in China. My weak reply was that they are now all flying the Chinese flag. We were installed in the most famous scar, The Peace Hotel, having been upgraded to cavernous accommodations, gratis. This suite isbigger than my house. The bathroom is bigger than many hotel rooms.
The bathtub, not one of those dinky, bottom pinching numbers elsewhere, is as deep as a Jacuzzi and has a cascading water spout. There is a walk-in closet. I think I won’t be returning home!

Shanghaied

"It seems we have been sold" are not necessarily comforting words in a foreign country, removed from familiar elements and devices. David and I had taken advantage of an underground taxi (smoking allowed) from Shanghai and, short of the first toll gate, we were “sold” to another driver. The transfer involved scrambling up an embankment and over a K-rail onto the freeway, from a leather-interior of an Audi sedan to the all-purpose utilitarian blue "bread loaf" taxi that is ubiquitous in Asia, and once again I was giggling at the absolute silliness of travel in China. Or rather travel with David in China. (I should point out the obvious, that this is not group travel, not paid-lots-for travel, not a “guest” experience).
Suzhou was interesting...its beautiful classical architecture has been celebrated to the point of being duplicated in every new structure in
the old part of the city (not unlike Santa Fe, Santa Barbara, etc.) This could only be an improvement over the tenements-covered-with-bathroom-tile approach of China’s Great Leap Forward, and more tasteful than the current trend in blending euro-classical architecture with Chinese Bauhaus: it can’t be described, really, but I have vowed to do a photographic study of freakish architecture one day. Anyway, Suzhou has a lot of what were once private gardens, by our standards small parks, that are beautiful and quietly appealing. Always with tufa-like stones from Tai Lake...there’s a solution to the Mono Lake crisis: it is a ready-made classical Chinese garden! It is also the first time I heard the awful phrase “lookie lookie” called out at the tourist gauntlet shops, despite the Hollywood stereotype. A nice silk factory/museum with good prices and an odd Vegas-style extravaganza a la Cirque de Soleil (or their expansion troupe) called Suzhou Dream, which has nothing to do with Suzhou at all. It was very cold though; Gobi winds that were playing havoc with Beijing life were affecting “south” China as well, but without the sand in our teeth. I braved a shopping excursion to a department store to buy long underwear there.
Hangzhou, China’s Heaven on Earth according to the Poet, has suffered from overdevelopment and rapid development and places an awful lot of faith in the words of the past. The western lake is beautiful, and you could spend a happy day wandering at leisure if you can ignore the
astonished stares from people who should be well used to foreigners by now. My hair seemed to be the chief culprit in this area where a lot of
people had chosen the orange-Asian look: they probably thought I had a bad stylist. The Silk Museum is well done here, very nice, with a
competent interpretative consultant.
Between the two cities is an old, living-history city called Tongli built around canals, so very much like Italy’s Venice without St. Mark’s Square and Murano glass, right down to the unlikely prospect of delivering a piano to a residence downtown. No doubt that is what has saved it the Sovietization of other communities. It was beautiful, on UNESCO’S world heritage list, so of course admission is charged to tourists. Admission to a city! So far it seems to be off the Western tourist circuit, though, and there are more vendors who literally drop what they are doing to see a laowai rather than call “hello!”
Dinner with `David’s local contact was in Suzhou, in an upscale teahouse with private, curtained rooms that met my every expectation of a stereotypical opium den. I thought it was enchanting; David has no patience for opportunistic fakery and found it overpriced and overrated. Hero, David’s friend, was all business: he handles all the American tour business, and has accounts with Globus Gateway and other
large tour mills, quite successful. I imagined he spends a lot of time in the teahouse, curtains drawn, as he seemed reluctant to go home to
his wife and child as David suggested.
The last bit of the trip was a mad chase to get to Mt. Putuoshan. This is one of four sacred Buddhist mountains, a place the Lonely Planet
describes as “the China we all dream about.” There has been no development on the mountain, the temples are intact, the trees very old and very big, cobblestone streets, ocean views abound as it is on an island. Getting there satisfied David’s conception that a visit to a sacred place should be a pilgrimage, and a pilgrimage should not be easy. A four-hour bus ride and a ferry got us there; a return ferry and a six-hour bus ride got us out. David paid his respects to the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, and to my utter surprise, filled his suitcase with souvenirs such as dried fish and a collection of the Four Famous Shells (conch, nautilus, something, something else). We ate seafood all day...or he did, and I picked at veggies. I am still seasick.
We arrived in Shanghai by bus, snaking our way downtown through a maze of 60-storey highrises, advertisements in English and Chinglish, past a Bentley dealer (a first for me), Gucci, Versace, Dior...it could have been downtown San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Rodeo Drive. David was
innocently unaware of the monetary value represented there, but he did look disgusted and I knew he was thinking about the people in Yunnan
province; poor, undereducated, without medical care, denizens of the Burma Road and other byways of Old China. As exciting as it was for me
to be in this overwhelming (an understatement) but somewhat familiar civilization, it was an unfortunate conclusion to his pilgrimage to
Putuoshan. I sealed the experience by treating him to dinner: I had planned on the Hard Rock Cafe but as it was closed, we went to a churrasco restaurant called Brasil Steakhouse instead. Carnivores take note: $12 buys you a salad (salad!!!) buffet, a dessert buffet and all
the grilled meat (beef, pork, chicken, beef, beef) you can eat, sliced off the spit at your table and served with salsa. The place is run by
Brazilians, with waitstaff and cooks from Brazil with whom I chatted giddily in Spanish. The clientele is largely Western refugees from the
expat community. David was intimidated and overwhelmed: he ate too much meat and drank too much red wine and suffered correspondingly from it. I told him. "Welcome to America!"