Unexpected Attractions
I didn’t have very high expectations about our last day in Dunhuang. After we checked out of the hotel, we took a taxi to Yungguan, which like the Yumen Pass, is a ruin of a tower. But when we got there, there was a four-year-old museum, with an English-speaking guide. The museum had lots of interesting things, including little sticks which had been used as passports in the Han dynasty, a scale model showing all of the alternate routes the Silk Road took over the years, and many other artifacts. When we went up to see the actual ruin, there was a place to stand and see a stretch of the actual Silk Road — it’s a real road, not just a concept. After returning to the museum, we were of course taken to the rooms selling handicrafts.
The Mogao Caves we’d visited a few days earlier had several hundred rooms which had been very well protected. I’d heard the Western Thousand Buddha Caves were in much worse shape, and that there was much less to see, and this was in fact true: they were next to a river, and the direct face of the caves had been weathered much worse than Mogao. But seeing them was a fascinating experience anyway. The guide spoke only Chinese, but there was a guy who was also visiting who was an amazing polyglot. He’d talk to the guide in Chinese, and then tell us what the guide said in English, and then tell his friend what the guide had said in Japanese. Any questions either of us asked were translated into the other two languages, as well as the answers. There were some very different styles of paintings there, and some instances of incomplete sketches of figures which were only shown in their complete state in Mogao. The multilingual fellow was in China to be a field producer for the Olympics, the first visitor we’d met intending to see the Olympics. His friend was in China to see the eclipse, the first visitor we’d met intending to see the eclipse.
We returned to town, went to the Luminous Cup Factory Outlet Store, and bought some jade cups which were nicer and half the price than those offered at the museum, had some simple food, and went to the train station. The station just opened in June, and is quite a large building with not much traffic. Despite the fact our destination was several hours to the west, the train went east for about two hours before joining the main line.
We saw several interesting things from the train, including an oilfield which looked like West Texas, a windmill farm which looked like Tehachapi, only flat, and Ray noticed that the station signs were no longer in Chinese and English, they were now in Chinese and Arabic.
We arrived in Urumqi, and took a taxi to the Super 8 Hotel, which is quite nice. Free internet that Just Works, breakfast included, less than $40 per night. And Urumqi has quite a bit of coffee — I’ve had no problem feeding my addiction here.
What it doesn’t have is much English — lots of Arabic, quite a bit of Cyrillic (we’re quite close to Russia and Kazakhstan). We prowled around on the Internet to find especially good restaurants, and noticed one site called “fubar”. Fu means “lucky” or “wise” in Chinese, so it’s the “Lucky Bar”. Anyway, it’s run by a guy from New Zealand, and we passed it walking to our hotel, so we stopped in for a couple beers, and let the owner give us advice and tell us about his life. He sent us to a Uighur restaurant which was very authentic, very tasty, but which had someone who spoke pretty good English. The restaurant guy was so thrilled to meet Americans (the previous time was two years ago) that he took a couple hours off today and showed us around the market. Between the lunch we had before that, and the melon and ice cream and fresh baked roll we had at the market, we’re probably too full for dinner.
Tomorrow we join the eclipse tour, and move to the Xinjiang Grand Hotel, which was allegedly abandoned by Holiday Inn a few years ago because it was used as a bordello. We’ll see. The eclipse is being viewed as a serious income opportunity by the Xinjiang government — in the last few days they’ve issued a bunch of rules including requiring a $45 ticket per person to enter the eclipse zone, and in the interest of “security” (their financial security, of course) one is not allowed to bring water into the zone, you have to buy it from them. This seems to me as if it decreases my personal security (what if they don’t have enough, etc.), but whatever. Again, we’ll see how things proceed from here.