I didn’t have very high expectations about our last day in Dunhuang.\u00c2\u00a0 After we checked out of the hotel, we took a taxi to Yungguan, which like the Yumen Pass, is a ruin of a tower.\u00c2\u00a0 But when we got there, there was a four-year-old museum, with an English-speaking guide.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 After returning to the museum, we were of course taken to the rooms selling handicrafts.<\/p>\n
The Mogao Caves we’d visited a few days earlier had several hundred rooms which had been very well protected.\u00c2\u00a0 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:\u00c2\u00a0 they were next to a river, and the direct face of the caves had been weathered much worse than Mogao.\u00c2\u00a0 But seeing them was a fascinating experience anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 The guide spoke only Chinese, but there was a guy who was also visiting who was an amazing polyglot.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Any questions either of us asked were translated into the other two languages, as well as the answers.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 His friend was in China to see the eclipse, the first visitor we’d met intending to see the eclipse.<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 The station just opened in June, and is quite a large building with not much traffic.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the fact our destination was several hours to the west, the train went east for about two hours before joining the main line.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We arrived in Urumqi, and took a taxi to the Super 8 Hotel, which is quite nice.\u00c2\u00a0 Free internet that Just Works, breakfast included, less than $40 per night.\u00c2\u00a0 And Urumqi has quite a bit of coffee — I’ve had no problem feeding my addiction here.<\/p>\n
What it doesn’t have is much English — lots of Arabic, quite a bit of Cyrillic (we’re quite close to Russia and Kazakhstan).\u00c2\u00a0 We prowled around on the Internet to find especially good restaurants, and noticed one site called “fubar”.\u00c2\u00a0 Fu means “lucky” or “wise” in Chinese, so it’s the “Lucky Bar”.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 He sent us to a Uighur restaurant which was very authentic, very tasty, but which had someone who spoke pretty good English.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll see.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 This seems to me as if it decreases my personal security (what if they don’t have enough, etc.), but whatever.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, we’ll see how things proceed from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t have very high expectations about our last day in Dunhuang.\u00c2\u00a0 After we checked out of the hotel, we took a taxi to Yungguan, which like the Yumen Pass, is a ruin of a tower.\u00c2\u00a0 But when we got there, there was a four-year-old museum, with an English-speaking guide.\u00c2\u00a0 The museum had lots of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/china08\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}