I've missed a few days in posting so this one will be a little longer. It has been quite a hectic and very tiring few days. For one, when I was getting back to the hostel I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to turn on the computer and the last couple of days have been in transit. I'll describe the transit part later...
First though I decided to wrap up my Urumqi experience a bit early. To be honest there is not much of interest in the city that you can't experience better and more genuinely elsewhere around Xinjiang. The only real draw to the city was its diversity but even that gets better outside the big city. So, I saw the major lonely planet attractions (the international bazaar at Erdaoqiao was pretty cool), and then I left.
I decided to take the train next to the southwest to a place called Kashgar. Kashgar is singularly well known for its importance in the silk road trade and much of the city looks as it did hundreds of years ago. Kashgar is the last settled area in China going west before you've reached the border and so Kashgar becomes a launching point for travelers planning on going to either Kyrgyzstan or Pakistan. In fact, Kashgar is closer, both geographically as well as culturally, to Iran than it is to Beijing.
You should also know however that right now is the official winter holiday period for all Chinese people (certainly all students and most work places). So every ticket of every mode of transport is booked everywhere. So when I showed up to the train station in Urumqi and said I wanted a hard sleeper ticket for the next day to Kashgar, the woman behind the counter looked at me as if to say, "Seriosuly? C'mon, silly foreigner. You know better than that". So, realizing my error and poor planning, I checked for any tickets, seat or whatever, and she said I could buy a standing ticket. For a 25 hour train ride. So I bought that one.
The next morning I went to train station and waited for the train in the waiting hall and watched as hoards of Uighur college students filtered into the hall around me. Apparently they were all just on break and were headed back home. As I was sitting, one of the students near me asked if I spoke English and then we were talking awhile. He told me that most of the students here could not speak English, just Uighur and Chinese. But his major was Business English and he was the sole Uighur in a class full of Chinese students with this major. And his English was very good. His name was Maimaiti.
So, when the train arrived I dutifully took my spot in the middle of the aisle of the 3rd class cars along with some other very unhappy looking standees. And then the train started and I just continued to stand there accepting my fate for the next 25 hours. Then Maimaiti showed up from his car a few up from mine. He was wondering if I had any luck finding a place to sit and seeing I had not told me to follow him. Apparently he knew just about half the people on the train so he was able somehow to hook me up with a seat. That was a relief.
The train was unlike any other I had taken in China. Well, the train was the same, but every single passenger was Uighur. And almost all of them were college age students. So I was sitting in a group of five, 23 year old girls, one of them whom of which spoke English and she did a lot of translating for me. Her name was Songsa (which she told me means flower in Uighur) and she was an English major and was also just starting to learn Russian which also goes a long way in Xinjiang. They were all interested in the fact that I was traveling and after learning that none of them had ever left Xinjiang and most never will I was almost embarrassed to tell them all the places I had been after they asked. But they were a really fun group. They made me sing them a song in English (which was really hard for me by the way) and translate a joke for them into Chinese. They reciprocated with some Uighur songs. Their songs were far more impressive. It is a strange thing to say, but the Uighur people behaved in a manner much more relatable to westerners than the average Chinese college age student (I mean that not in a demeaning way, only to mention that it was a remarkable thing to notice). Often I find myself talking with a Chinese student and I just have no idea what they are thinking, through body movement or speech or however. But I knew what the Uighurs were thinking both through body movement and behavior even though I couldn't understand their language. Anyway, off point. The train car itself was a very lively place. The central Asian culture is very strong with the Uighur people and the whole ride was filled with music and song. A few of the students brought these instruments that looked like a mix between a guitar and sitar and they played and sang while others sang along with them. It was awesome. Everyone seemed to know these traditional songs. With the company and the festivities it was probably the best train experience I have had yet.
So, I arrived this morning in Kashgar and since I got almost no sleep on the train ride last night, I crashed for a few hours at the hostel and spent the day meandering about the old town, the section of the city that still looks like the Marco Polo days. There are camels and donkeys roaming about the alley ways and the town genuinely has a market/bazaar feel. All day people are hawking goods in the streets. I feel like I'm a character in Aladdin except replace Arabs with Central Asians. Apart from the characters on the signs, you wouldn't know you were anywhere near China.
Today I just walked around but tomorrow I plan to head to the weekly livestock auction with a few people I met at the hostel. Apparently every Sunday, farmers and herders from afield come together in Kashgar to sell their sheep, donkeys, camels, horses, etc. at auction and it is supposed to a pretty unique experience. So to auction I will go!
Sorry, last thing. The post is titled "The American" because I guess in every language on the planet the word for America is America (except Chinese, meiguo, 美国) and so I knew whenever Uighurs were talking about me on the train, which was a lot of the time, because I kept hearing, America, America, America mixed into their conversation. That and the side glances were a give away. They taught me how to say "I am American" in Uighur: "Men America-lik". Nice...
First though I decided to wrap up my Urumqi experience a bit early. To be honest there is not much of interest in the city that you can't experience better and more genuinely elsewhere around Xinjiang. The only real draw to the city was its diversity but even that gets better outside the big city. So, I saw the major lonely planet attractions (the international bazaar at Erdaoqiao was pretty cool), and then I left.
I decided to take the train next to the southwest to a place called Kashgar. Kashgar is singularly well known for its importance in the silk road trade and much of the city looks as it did hundreds of years ago. Kashgar is the last settled area in China going west before you've reached the border and so Kashgar becomes a launching point for travelers planning on going to either Kyrgyzstan or Pakistan. In fact, Kashgar is closer, both geographically as well as culturally, to Iran than it is to Beijing.
You should also know however that right now is the official winter holiday period for all Chinese people (certainly all students and most work places). So every ticket of every mode of transport is booked everywhere. So when I showed up to the train station in Urumqi and said I wanted a hard sleeper ticket for the next day to Kashgar, the woman behind the counter looked at me as if to say, "Seriosuly? C'mon, silly foreigner. You know better than that". So, realizing my error and poor planning, I checked for any tickets, seat or whatever, and she said I could buy a standing ticket. For a 25 hour train ride. So I bought that one.
The next morning I went to train station and waited for the train in the waiting hall and watched as hoards of Uighur college students filtered into the hall around me. Apparently they were all just on break and were headed back home. As I was sitting, one of the students near me asked if I spoke English and then we were talking awhile. He told me that most of the students here could not speak English, just Uighur and Chinese. But his major was Business English and he was the sole Uighur in a class full of Chinese students with this major. And his English was very good. His name was Maimaiti.
So, when the train arrived I dutifully took my spot in the middle of the aisle of the 3rd class cars along with some other very unhappy looking standees. And then the train started and I just continued to stand there accepting my fate for the next 25 hours. Then Maimaiti showed up from his car a few up from mine. He was wondering if I had any luck finding a place to sit and seeing I had not told me to follow him. Apparently he knew just about half the people on the train so he was able somehow to hook me up with a seat. That was a relief.
The train was unlike any other I had taken in China. Well, the train was the same, but every single passenger was Uighur. And almost all of them were college age students. So I was sitting in a group of five, 23 year old girls, one of them whom of which spoke English and she did a lot of translating for me. Her name was Songsa (which she told me means flower in Uighur) and she was an English major and was also just starting to learn Russian which also goes a long way in Xinjiang. They were all interested in the fact that I was traveling and after learning that none of them had ever left Xinjiang and most never will I was almost embarrassed to tell them all the places I had been after they asked. But they were a really fun group. They made me sing them a song in English (which was really hard for me by the way) and translate a joke for them into Chinese. They reciprocated with some Uighur songs. Their songs were far more impressive. It is a strange thing to say, but the Uighur people behaved in a manner much more relatable to westerners than the average Chinese college age student (I mean that not in a demeaning way, only to mention that it was a remarkable thing to notice). Often I find myself talking with a Chinese student and I just have no idea what they are thinking, through body movement or speech or however. But I knew what the Uighurs were thinking both through body movement and behavior even though I couldn't understand their language. Anyway, off point. The train car itself was a very lively place. The central Asian culture is very strong with the Uighur people and the whole ride was filled with music and song. A few of the students brought these instruments that looked like a mix between a guitar and sitar and they played and sang while others sang along with them. It was awesome. Everyone seemed to know these traditional songs. With the company and the festivities it was probably the best train experience I have had yet.
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| Uighur musicians on my train |
Today I just walked around but tomorrow I plan to head to the weekly livestock auction with a few people I met at the hostel. Apparently every Sunday, farmers and herders from afield come together in Kashgar to sell their sheep, donkeys, camels, horses, etc. at auction and it is supposed to a pretty unique experience. So to auction I will go!
Sorry, last thing. The post is titled "The American" because I guess in every language on the planet the word for America is America (except Chinese, meiguo, 美国) and so I knew whenever Uighurs were talking about me on the train, which was a lot of the time, because I kept hearing, America, America, America mixed into their conversation. That and the side glances were a give away. They taught me how to say "I am American" in Uighur: "Men America-lik". Nice...
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