To start, I just have to vent. I was starting to come around about tour guides. Really, I was. And then after today, I realized why I despised them so much – because they are suffocating, time-wasting, and money-hungry. Just about everything that irked me about them was on full display today – we started late, much later than we were supposed to, took an inordinate amount of time to get there, got rushed through every single place, and the tour guide was a headcase – she didn’t explain anything, all she did was tell us how many minutes until we had to get on the bus, and started arguing with other tourists at the end of the night. About halfway through the day, I exclaimed loudly that I would never go with a tour group again. I hope she heard me. Such a shame, because the place we went to today, Turpan, was one of the places I had been looking forward to going to for a long time.
Beautiful, beautiful Xinjiang.
We got off the train at 7:30am in Urumqi and went straight to the hotel. Urumqi was our first encounter into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (the name of the province), and immediately the differences were apparent. First, everything was bilingual – all the signs were in Chinese and also the Uyghur language, which is written in an Arabic text. Then, of course, the people were different, about one in every three people were Uyghur and looked very different from the ethnic Han Chinese – they had bigger eyes and darker skin. Now, the Uyghurs have been trying to get their independence from China for several decades, to a similar degree but much less publicized than the Tibetan push for independence, but the Chinese government responded by pushing more and more ethnically Han Chinese towards the area, essentially diluting their population and their culture, and offering little hope for independence. I’m not sure if there’s a racial divide between the two – I didn’t witness any – but you’d have to think there’d be a lot of tension given the vast cultural and physical differences between the two. The Uyghur must feel some sense of entitlement the way the Native Americans here probably do, but you wouldn’t know it by what we saw (which is not to say we saw enough, the tour guide made sure of that by wasting our time on the stupid bus).
Our bus didn’t leave Urumqi until 9:30am, despite us all being there at 9 or earlier. Turpan is a mere 183km away from Urumqi (about 110 miles) and theoretically, even if driving slow, should take less than 2 hours to get there. I don’t know what happened, if we took a massive detour or not to visit a historical old town on the way, but we didn’t get there until 2:15pm. Minus the 45 minutes they alloted for the historical town, that’s a total of 4 hours. Which is completely unacceptable. Then, they wouldn’t let us eat lunch, claiming the first three sights were really close together and if we just knocked them out quickly (yup, we were “knocking off” tourist sights on our “vacation”) lunch would be conveniently held afterwards in the main part of town. Because surely the “hassle” of eating lunch would force us off “schedule”. We ended up eating some pastries to let the hunger subside as we were hastily hurried along the first 3 places, being allotted 30 minutes at each place. Thirty minutes is enough to walk through once, maybe read a few sentences, glance at the exhibits and take a picture or two. Seriously? We’ve paid all this money and we’re allowed, like schoolchildren, to go inside for 30 minutes?
The places we went to were actually very interesting and explained a lot about the Uyghur culture. Turpan is a city where 70% of the residents are Uyghur, and is located in the Turpan basin which is the hottest area in China, so many of its attractions are describing elements of the Uyghur culture and their life in the extreme heat. Since it’s a very hot and dry climate, their irrigation system is handled by an extremely elaborate underground canal system called the Karez, which ingeniously brings water to all parts of the Turpan basin through wells that tap into the canals. There was a replica of a Uyghur village, which outlined Uyghur customs and traditions, which all seemed like it was stuck in the 19th century.
Underground Karez water irrigation system.
Grape vines, the specialty of Turpan.
A street in Turpan - dirty and devoid of people.
Like I said earlier, I very much equate the Uyghurs in China to the Native Americans in America. The culture is different, and they seem to enjoy their age-old customs, so much that despite the abundance of technology and modern-age tools, they are content to just live their lives like they’ve always been living. I’m sure nobody’s heard of the Uyghurs before this blog, and I don’t blame you – there’s not one Uyghur in the mainstream, even in China. Their houses are still made of mud. They’re primarily still farmers. Turpan’s not exactly a modernized city, and you get the feeling driving around the town that if there were no tourist attractions and if there was no history to this place, nobody would actually come here. They grow grapes and turn them into raisins. That’s the extent of Turpan and the Uyghur people living there. I suppose in a large city such as Urumqi they can immerse themselves in a more modern environment, but the people living in Turpan would probably never even leave and go to such a place.
Typical Turpan abode.
A sign in Turpan with Uyghur text above the Chinese text.
Houses in Turpan amidst the barren terrain.
After our 4:30pm lunch, which was at a ridiculously unsanitary restaurant where flies were everywhere and they cooked a piece of plastic into our dish (for our troubles we were awarded two(!) bottles of water), we headed to a traditional Uyghur home where the host entertained us with traditional songs and dances and we ate fresh watermelon and freshly baked naan bread (similar to the Indian kind but much thicker). We wore traditional Uyghur headdresses and learned a traditional Uyghur dance. This was actually very cool and a perk to the tour, because it wasn’t a tourist spot but rather an actual home where I’m sure the tour company had a deal with to let them take us in (although we did have to pay 20RMB each to participate). We toured their house, sampled their home grown raisins and listened to our host tell us stories. Probably the highlight of the day, but let’s not shed too much praise on the tour – as we left, we saw the tour guide sneak off with a bag of free raisins from the host, presumably a token of thanks for bringing so much business to their house tour. Grrr. So shady!
Our Uyghur host conversing with my dad.
Watermelon and naan, a Uyghur feast.
Yup, I joined in the cultural spirit.
Privately grown grapevines from on top of their roof.
By the time we were hurried through a few more meaningless tourist attractions, including a “fire mountain” and a grape vine, we were coerced into going to a wholesale tea store, one specifically built for tourists because they had an information session where they pitched all their products and we were given thirty minutes to walk around the store to see what we wanted to buy. Of course, the tour guide would get a commission for bringing you there. This was part of our tour! We could have spent thirty more minutes somewhere useful and educational but instead we get pitched for some herbal teas. As if we weren’t irritated enough already, this was pretty much the low point of the whole experience. By now it was around 8pm, and while the sun was still high in the sky we knew it would take over 3 hours to get back on the slow bus. We hadn’t eaten dinner and wouldn’t get a chance to until we returned. I mean, who came up with this schedule? At this point I wanted to strangle the tour guide. I was THAT angry.
The whole way back to Urumqi we were trying to figure out alternate plans to going to Tianshan (Heavenly Mountain) tomorrow without the tour group. We did it loudly and obnoxiously on the bus, but didn’t care. By the time we got back it was close to midnight. Thankfully, since the sun sets late in Urumqi, the restaurants are also open late, many until 1am or later. We had a small dinner and then went back to the hotel. Screw the tour, we’re on our own tomorrow. We have the whole day to go to Tianshan and then come back and explore the bazaar, before catching a 7:30pm flight back to Beijing. And glorious, glorious internet, and hopefully a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Mmmm, I can taste it already.
