Travel Stories - China

In the town "Liyuan" I am waiting with another western traveler for the train that hopefully brings us to Turpan. This town looks more like a place in the former Eastern Bloc in Europe than Oriental with ugly big, meaningless gray concrete apartment blocks. No plant or tree in sight and everything is concrete and stone. On the platform we are put in the right place by a conductor for the train that should leave at 9:30 pm. Coming in the train it appears that we sleep in different compartments. I try to sleep which partly succeeds because of the loud talking conductors who apparently have not seen and/or spoken to each other for some time and some snoring fellow passengers. Suddenly I wake up and realise that we have been standing still for a while. First I assume that we are waiting for an oncoming train but if a number have already passed this option is gone. I ask around and learn that there is a tornado ahead and that we wait until it passes by. We are in the middle of the Gobi desert it seems. People in the train are doing their morning gymnastics by hitting the muscles ; others are talking but nobody whines or goes raging about this. The snorer has woken up when the train is running again. Two hours later we stand still again and the man already drank a liter of beer. He glassy looks at me and does not understand that in the early morning I will turn off his offer to drink together. I look outside where the wind blows and it is cloudy because of the sandstorm that rages - we see very little and I wonder how long it’s going to take before we continue our train journey.

While ordering a noodle soup with MSQ in it which is forbidden in Europe and we taste why, it is a day of stopping and driving in the train. Just before 4 pm the train-passes are picked up by everybody and you receive your original train ticket instead.  This is the signal that we are almost there and that is a good sign - we had a 10-hour delay. At the station of "Daheyan" we get out and it is very windy and cold. We are devoid of information since everything is closed at the station and the people around us are not going to Turpan, unfortunately. We ask a guide from a large group of Malaysian tourists where we can take a local bus and ask if they go maybe to Turpan. First he refuses but in the end we can join the group. In addition to the cold in the back of the bus, we hear the guide telling the time should be changed; for two hours, causing a tumult in the bus. There must be prayers and what we understand this is done by different people in the bus at different times? When peace has returned to the bus, he explains that a windstorm has slowed down the train and that all traffic has been flat. "Turpan" is the hottest spot in the country in terms of temperature and can rise to over 50C - 65C. The city was once again an important city on the Silk Road. Now apparently still because there are rows of trucks waiting to enter the city.

When we get off the bus in the city (Turpan) where it is now about 30C we thank everyone as we leave the expensive hotel of the people in the bus behind. We walk outside under a beautiful grape hedge to the road. Nearby we find another hostel and there too it succeeds to drop the price considerably. At the bazaar that is located opposite our hostel and is largely hidden under corrugated iron, we see a mix of people and clothing. The province of Xinjiang in the far west of China is in any case different - very different. People look different than in China, they talk differently, they eat differently, they have a different religion and the landscape looks very different! Xinjiang literally means "new border" and the mostly Muslims who live here prefer to belong to Turkey or Central Asia than to China. Autonomy has been their dream for centuries, but as long as the land retains about 30% of all oil in China, the government tries to attract as many "Han" Chinese to this region. On the market we see nuts, fruit, dates, sheep heads and paws on the market and mountains with Chinese junk that they happily sell here as well. In an almost empty restaurant that looks like an abandoned shack, there is a jumble of plastic tables and chairs. Behind the tables in the middle are two women standing with their grill and cooking pans and the children are allowed to help out as waiter and waitress. A shout because we did not sit on the good seats but a little later we enjoy a delicious dish of grilled chicken meat (hopefully) with Turkish bread. An hour later we go back to our hostel and go to bed.

In the bazaar we have breakfast and look with great interest at the heating-pipes that the bakers hang full of sandwiches. If they’re done they pick them out again with prakes and throw them as they were frisbees on the pile to offer for sale. We take the local bus until it stops for unclear reasons. It’s clear that the bus won’t continue and we have to negotiate a spot on a piece of wood which serves as a plateau behind a motorcycle to take us further. The local people find it wonderful to see these big white Western tourists together with them on such a means of transport. The driver takes us to the south gate of the "Jiaohe" ruins and we walk up the hill where the best preserved and largest desert city in the world is located. It looks like an island on a large plateau separated by a deep valley on all sides. We look down and see some grape plantations, a few houses and some grazing donkeys. 

The city is just like "Pompeii" well preserved with ancient watchtowers, gates, roads, corridors, monasteries and cellars are still clearly distinguishable. We are early and so it is still very quiet in this 6500-counting old city where we now only hear the wind crying along the brick houses made of clay. On a wooden deck that has the most beautiful view of the ruins, two ladies are dressed in traditional clothes and are waiting for tourist to lure them to wear the same clothes and take pictures together. We ourselves do not participate in this exaggerated tourist stuff but take a beautiful picture when a Chinese tourist is tempted. This Chinese garrison town was built before Islam was introduced here and for that reason everything is based on Buddhism. And even now that Islamism predominates, it is not as straightforward as elsewhere – for example in the Middle East. Women are proud and sometimes often the most important person in the family, they are veiled but large parts of their body is  visible and there is smoking, drinking and everything goes in harmony with the man.