AVALON - 'Urumqi-Kashgar 2006' expedition - All winds blow to Kashgar

The train Almaty-Urumqi, full of Kazakhstani students going to China to study Chinese and various sciences, passed half a day at Druzhba Kazakhstan Frontier Station and already at dusk was slow and pain crossing the frontier.

Pagoda on Red Mountain.

Talking about what you can and cannot bring into China, accompanied by advice of the ‘old experts’ to eat all the food for it will be taken out any way; discussing Chinese sanitary cards which had been presented in Kazakhstan to be filled in on the way; controversy whether all the truth should be written in them; jokes concerning where and how the thermometer will be put to take the temperature…

Perhaps, many will agree with me that the first thing China strikes with is its ‘scaleness’ inherent in everything. For example, the building of Alashankou Railway Station: the really main gate of the country which is not a shame to show to the visitors. The feeling of solemnity was intensified by Chinese frontier guards saluting to the sounds of impressive march to meet the train.

The topographical maps we brought in were immediately ignored after we have said that their scale was 5 km to 1 cm. Nobody looks at food, the expected total search does not take place, as well as taking the temperature in any form. Everything ends up rather quickly, only one moment is not clear enough – passports are taken out (as it turned out, it is a popular practice in China, when for some pretty long time you stay without documents identifying your personality while these documents are being checked and enriched by necessary stamps). Passportless we are walking along the platform, absorbing the first impressions of being in the strange country.

‘Urumqi is the first trade city in the Western Region. It exports goods to Kuldja, Chuguchak and Chinese Turkestan via Komul. There are many capitalists in it, who buy up herds of goods and sell them’, wrote Valikhanov long ago. Urumqi is still the same, but one should not try to confine its role to that of a huge bazaar as it often happens.

Urumqi. View from
the Red Mountain.

Actually, Urumqi makes one ponder over how rapidly a city can develop. But when Kazakhstani and Russian people get here, they usually see but a great market Bianjiang and the district of the same name, which are intended only for Russian speaking public, whose aim is buying up various goods. And very often when I hear such people relate stories about the city that reveal only one side of the reality, I tend to compare them with the fantastic tales of medieval pilgrims (surely in present-day context) who described dreadful sea-dragons and other nonsense due to their ignorance. But, Urumqi is not only Bianjiang. It is green parks, the most beautiful of which is Hongshan, the park on the Red Mountain (though there is an opinion that Urumqi is an absolutely grey city deprived of any green plantations), and the Uighur district where life still goes according to old traditions; and ultramodern center with its skyscrapers, each of them having its own distinguishing features of Chinese or Muslim style. Here you can meet a girl wearing an orange robe of a roadman, her face almost completely covered with a veil, but her hands holding a mobile phone. In my opinion, this picture strongly reflects the connection between to- and yester-days, which makes Urumqi so remarkable.

Side-street of Uighur district

The solution of three most important problems that bothered us on our first day in Urumqi dragged on for about half a day. The first problem was money. The banks would open only at 10, and before that time we could neither buy some food nor get settled in a hotel (the last day in Almaty we were greatly surprised that yuans in the southern Kazakhstani capital were deficiency, and we did not want to exchange money on the frontier). When the time came, the dollars were successfully turned to yuans in one of the numerous banks due to a few phrases from a phrase-book, which contrary to my expectations had been understood by the Chinese. Thus, the problem was solved.

Some hotels where we ventured to show in order to know the price, turned out so expensive that we began doubt whether it was China. However, the Chance came to our help, as usual. A guy in the street addressed to us in English, and from a conversation we knew that he was a tourist guide and therefore knew the city well, where we could stop and was able to help us. He wrote names of several hotels with the prices which suited to us according to him, and showed approximate way. We walked for a long time; then we decided to take a taxi to get to the first hotel in the list (this was not a bad idea, considering that taxi-drivers could read Chinese, and the hieroglyphs written by our helper were not just a set of signs for them in contrast to us). It is nice that taxi is rather cheap in China, very cheap I would say. But when I was getting into the car I did not know how much they will take from me. Sanya with his bicycle had to stay at the crossroad where we were to meet after I settle down in the hotel and heap all our stuff there.

Street of night cafes

The taxi was quickly carrying me along the unknown city farther from Sanya, and I was looking around spasmodically and prayed there would be less turns on the way I had to recall afterwards. Still, the prospect to lose each other in an alien city without any means of communication seemed unattractive. Fortunately, the road to the hotel was straight, and the taxi never turned. In a small hotel situated in the Uighur district of Urumqi, I was astonished by a somewhat Russian-speaking administrator. Having rented a room and dragged our rucksacks in it I walked to Sanya.

The interesting situation turns out with the keys in Chinese hotels. In Urumqi as well as in any other place we stayed later on (excluding Kashgar), nobody would hand us keys. On leaving you just shut the door; when you come back you go to open it with the attendant who is the keeper of the huge jingling bunch of keys. The price of accommodation in China struck me in spite of its cheapness (probably because of unbelievably cheap Nepal where I traveled two years ago). A double room with TV, bathroom, toilet and inevitable flask with boiling water cost us from 50 to 100 yuans (which is $6-12). Though they say that there are places with lower prices, we did not succeed in finding them.

Uighur pilaw

Now that we have roof over head, we can have some meals. This was not a question for us – we are in the capital of Uighuristan and therefore we are going to eat our favorite Uighur lagman. In one of the open-air cafes located near our hotel we ate our fill. For the first time we tried to eat with the chopsticks, and even succeeded in it (this skill was trained to perfection later on, I should say). There’s an attractive local tradition common in any cafe: no matter what the visitor is going to order, when he comes they put a pot with fresh green tea. Though we often added to this tea the nicest pine-apple beer so popular in Xinjiang.

Street life in Urumqi does not stop until 3 or 4 at night. The most interesting fact is that this does not happen due to the tourists looking for entertainment. To the contrary, the citizens of Urumqi themselves begin to visit beauty parlors and drugstores; they occupy numerous cafes and street stands. Actually, they live not a special night life but quite normal everyday one.

Night Urumqi

By the way, a few words about night life. Any Russian speaking person in Urumqi, as well as in any other city of Xinjiang visited by ex-soviet people, knows the word ‘kunya’ (the stress on the first syllable usually). Its origin still being a controversy, this word is usually considered a disfigured Russian variant of the Chinese word ‘gunian’ (a girl). Russians call ‘kunyas’ all female employees, be it an administrator in a hotel, a secretary in an office or a bank teller. However, most often when they say ‘kunya’ they mean a prostitute. This latter substance in Urumqi is a dime a dozen. When some people with whom we happened to communicate during or after the trip knew that we had not take kunyas’ service, they nodded their heads disappointedly and concluded seriously, ‘why go to China?!’ Indeed, the traditions of prostitution in Xinjiang are as ancient as Xinjiang itself, despite its centuries-old Muslim past. Even Valikhanov noted that ‘women in Little Bukharia… behave freely, that is why the number of dissolute women known to the police in the Six Cities is so high that it strikes not only Middle Asian Muslims but also the Chinese’. Nowadays any researcher may observe that East-Turkestan Islam is a much extenuated variant of its Middle East counterpart, the one that proposes certain indulgences in what concerns morality.

The point which astonished us greatly in Urumqi and surprised us later on is that in Western China it is often quite difficult to find usual for us Chinese goods. In vain tried we to find gas for a gas-jet which we did not even think to take with us considering it will be equal to taking Chinese noodles or checkered polypropylene bags. But there was not any gas and we had to look for ‘alternative energy resources’ later on. Nor did we find Chinese tinned stew in Urumqi, that is so popular among Kazakhstani people since the early 90-s. By the end of the journey we have understood (though we supposed that before) that to get acquainted with China we should go easterly – to Beijing or Shanghai. But this was absolutely another country, Turkestan in a word.

I should say that Sanya arrived in China with his own bicycle (by the way, his antipathy to Kharkov Bicycle Plant grew stronger with every kilometer of our way), so his having passed such a long way can be deservedly called a feat. As for me, I did not have a bike and was planning to buy it in Urumqi. Pottering around the city on our first day in it, we ran against a shop which turned out a dream of a bike-lover and a bicycle club in a way. We could quickly find common language with few guys who perfectly knew what a cyclist needs, regardless the fact that only one of them spoke English and his English was not a good one. The next day we came there with money and went out or, to be more precise, rode out on a bicycle Merida Warrior, which helped me get in Kashgar and to which I now entertain the warmest feelings.

Communication with the Chinese, contrary to the general opinion, is quite possible, and not only with the gestures as it was in the bicycle shop. The phrases taken from the phrase-book are also understandable. And, the Turkic part of the city’s population (Uighurs, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and so on) was a boon for us: possessing basic knowledge of the Kazakh language one can speak to them fairly good.

Mr.Chen and we

We had a pleasant encounter in Urumqi that confirmed that the whole world travels and we are not alone in our efforts. Two Frenchmen were going by train to Kashgar to buy bicycles there and cross Tibet. But our bike adventure started there, in Urumqi, so we could only wish a good trip to each other, knowing that Tibet will wait for us some time in future.

There was also another man who wished us to have a good trip, Mr. Chen who hailed us in Russian when we were cycling out Urumqi to leave for our long traveling. Over a cup of tea in an Uighur cafe where this hospitable and inquisitive Chinese invited us, we knew that he mastered Russian when working in Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. Besides, he traveled in Russia much. We shared our plans with him, exchanged contacts and got his farewell, as well as the proposal to call him up if we need his help.

All winds blow to kashgar

Chapter 1. RED mountain