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on Thursday, June 16, 2005 - 05:20 PM AST - 3355 Reads
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For the following weeks, you're invited to follow Jeremy through his Silk Road Journey. You can get the whole story on his blog.
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Arriving In Urumqi
By Jeremy
October 12th - 16:00pm
On a plane somewhere over China
Welcome back! Well, I'm on a plane with nothing to do, so I guess I should get in the habit of writing in my journal. Nothing interesting to report so far, really. I've noticed an increase in the number of people who don't necessarily look like pure Han Chinese. I'm sure some of them are Uyghur, Hui, etc...
I really wish I had a window seat. I'm right in the middle of a 2-aisle, 6-seat-per-row aircraft (an airbus, i think). I want to see the various provinces we're flying over. The flight left Shanghai at 11:55 Beijing time, is flying over JiangSu, AnHui, ShaanXi, GanSu, and XinJiang. We arrive in Urumqi at 17:00 Beijing time. Apparently, there's also the unofficial "XinJiang time" (2 hours behind Beijing) because it's SO far west of Beijing. It would be like the west coast of the US being on the same time as the east coast. The sun wouldn't come up until like 9 or 10 in the morning. Nonetheless all official business, like planes, trains, and the like all run on Beijing time, whereas people generally go to work and run their daily lives on XinJiang time. I, of course, only know this by reading on the internet and in guide books, so if there's anything more to this, I'll report later.
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When in Shanghai, if you hear someone clear their throat, you are almost guaranteed that you will soon hear that person loudly spit onto the ground (hopefully as far away from your person as possible). But I frequently hear the throat-clearing sound on the plane.... where are these people spitting? I really really hope it's not on the floor of the plane. In my row, there's a woman trimming her husband's fingernails right there in their seats. I guess I'm not surprised, just further disappointed.
There's a movie with Gwenneth Paltrow on, but there were never any headphones passed out, and the speaker broadcast volume is way too low. Since I can't read Chinese fast enough to keep up with the subtitles I sort of have to rely on my knowledge of Hollywood standards for non-verbal communication. I'm doing pretty well, actually. I know who the good guys and bad guys are and was even able to plainly see some of the "plot twists". I deserve a prize.
I'm being picked up at the airport by the travel agency who's taking me on my 4 day/3 night trip into the Heavenly Mountains and Heavenly Lake, starting tomorrow. The important person for me at this place is a guy called Mark Zhong. He's fairly well known amongst Silk Road travelers and has quite the presence on the internet. He has a master's in geography as it relates to travel. He's written a book about traveling the Silk Road with histories of all the spots along the way, and 101 different potential travel itineraries, with routes ranging from 2 days to 88 days long (camping through the desert). Pretty hardcore.
Anyway, we're about to land, so that's it for me now. Oh, what do you know - we just landed. OH MAN, within 15 seconds of TOUCHING the ground, I immediately heard about 30-40 people unbuckle their seatbelts, and about 10 phones get turned on. UNBELIEVABLE. Are seatbelts THAT uncomfortable? I really don't get it. Are people's phone conversations THAT urgent? They must realize why cell phones are dangerous to use before we're done taxiing, as the flight attendants relentlessly tell us. Sometimes I wonder if Chinese people think that they're being taken advantage of if they follow rules, no matter how logical the rules are.
Oh well, this log isn't about figuring out the inner workings of the average Chinese citizen's mind, so it's time to get off this plane and get this trip started.
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October 12th - 22:00pm
Urumqi, XinJiang - In my motel room
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I'm in my room now, about to go to sleep. It's a nice little room in a one-star hotel. Really not bad for 100 RMB (about USD 12.00). One thing caught me *slightly* off-guard, though. In the bathroom, there was no place to wash - as in no bathtub or shower stall, but there was a hand-held shower head next to the toilet where one might expect toilet paper. So I did what seemed logical. I just sat on the toilet with the lid down, and bathed that way. Worked out pretty well, actually, except for the fact that it was really cold, and I had to put down the shower head whenever I needed both hands (and thus didn't have hot water on me .
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It's quite cold here - like 10C(50F) during the day and barely above freezing at night. Having JUST gotten used to wearing long pants in Shanghai, this comes as a bit of a shock to my body. I'm a little concerned about the next few days, where I'll be in the mountains, on horseback, and near glaciers, but in the worst-case scenario, I'll just stack on the layers.
After being picked up at the airport by a guy named Ma Bing (who was to become a large part of my life for the next few days, unbeknownst to me at the time of writing this), I was brought to my hotel and checked in. Then, Ma Bing and I went across the street to the travel agency, where I met Mark Zhong (the agency also turned out to be his home). Nice guy. He speaks Mandarin, Hui (a mostly-mandarin dialect), English, Japanese, and a couple of others, I'm sure. His Mandarin has a pretty distinct accent. He gave me some advice about my trip and where to go, what to do. I'm now considering not going to the Bird Island near XiNing, because he says that the bird season is over and it'll be too cold there to be worth it (3000+ meter elevation). If I don't go to a couple of the places in my original plan, perhaps I'll add some other spots on, instead of just making the trip shorter. We'll see how I feel.
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I saw ErdaoQiao market here in Urumqi. It's an outdoor market where they sell cooked food, fruit, seeds and nuts, clothes, and all sorts of touristy trinkets from knives to ethnic clothing.
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One of the more interesting things they offered there was boiled sheep's heads (NOTE- for the rest of this weblog, I will use the words sheep and goat interchangeably, because in Chinese there's only one word for the two things, and I have gotten used to it. In addition, when people speak to me in Chinese, I have no way of knowing which they mean). People just had buckets of boiled sheep's heads, waiting for hungry customers. People would order one, and the man would VERY skillfully make a few cuts, peel at the skin on the head, and magically pull out a bright white clean skull, completely separated from the soft parts, like skin, muscle, tendon, and brain. Then he took a large Chinese butcher knife and whacked at the soft parts about 5 times, put them on a plate, and the happy folks sat down to eat.
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I didn't get one, not because I wasn't COMPLETELY curious what it was like, but I had already eaten some other stuff (which I'll describe below later), and I wanted more protein for the day.
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Other foods available were the kebab/skewer grillers (muscle, fat, kidney, liver, whatever part you want), people selling stuffed intestines (not *quite* sausage, though), coiled over fatty whole sheep lung, racks of lamb, various cold Muslim dishes, THOUSANDS of fruit vendors with apples, watermelons, plums, cantaloupes, green/purple grapes, and a couple of fruits I don't know that I've seen before. They looked like misshapen pears that had been buried in the dirt. Oh, and let's not forget the bread-sellers. All of the bread was dense and round in shape. From flat and wide with a crust and topped with onions flakes or sesame seeds, to fairly standard-looking bagels.
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I guess I've always been sort of a food-tourist. Some people like to look at different culture's paintings, pottery, architecture, or ceremonial clothing... I like food. I guess because food is always there no matter what (sometimes in rations too small, unfortunately). In plentiful times people turn their attentions to things like art and still put quite a focus on food. In sparse times, though, they don't do much art, but they still cook food.
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Anyway, I want to get some sleep because tomorrow I start my 4-day trip into the Heavenly Mountains/Heavenly Lake. Not something I wanna be tired for.
Jeremy
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Episode 3: Heavenly Lake? Is Heaven Freezing Cold?
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