Posts Tagged ‘Kashgar’

Kashgar and Karakul

Posted in 中国，Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
20 October 2007
0

Well, it’s been a long time, too long and I am going to once again backdate this post so it looks like I am not that lazy about my blogging.

So where to start. We hired the taxi driver that we met the night before and kidnapped him for the day. He drove us all the way out to Karakul Lake as requested and by god, it was worth it. He could speak Mandarin and Uighur, although being Han. Got up early in the morning and raced down to a military office to get permits to go where we wanted.. turns out it is a military-controlled area.

Long, long, long drive with stops along the way at worse and worse bathrooms and bagels, 馕, and 哈密瓜 for snacks. It got pretty remote, lots of nothing on a glacial plain covered with well-worn rocks left over from the last Ice Age and mountain streams running down the side. Salt Marshes, Glaciers, Sand Mountains, and finally the lake. We warmed up in a Yurt and our guide managed to get us in on a single ticket (saving us 50 kuai). We also got a “deal” for horses.

Ah yes, the horses, but I will tell that story in a bit. We rode around the lake until the cold and the wind forced us into a Yurt where we ate more 馕 and had Yak Milk Tea. We paid 20 kuai for it, which was overpriced, but we didn’t think anything too much of it. There is no wood out in these parts and it is too remote for coal or gas… so, we found that all the heating is done by… well… dried poop that I was hoping was from the yaks and goats. I also had the misfortune of having to “use the facilities”. I was polite, asked where the crapper was and they kept pointing towards a hill. I hunted quite a bit until I discovered “it”. Just a designated area out the in the open. There’s a pic somewhere which I might upload someday. Well, when in Rome…

We had had enough and headed back to the main yurts to ditch the horses. The deal was 50 kuai an hour for the both of us. We showed up and they said it was 2 hours of riding and 50 per hour each. Um… 200 kuai, we did not have on us. I had about 90 on me and Jude had 10 left. We decided to wait a bit for our guide to wake up and see what we could do, because he was the one who brokered the original deal. Well, he was furious about the fact that we were charged 20 kuai by people who considered him a “local” and demanded we be paid back. He also made note of the fact that even taking into account the time we spent in the yurt and the time he was resting, we were barely over 90 minutes. Lots of yelling, lots of accusations and finally he pulled a knife, one of those Uighur knives of lore. The yelling stopped and we agreed to 120 minus the 20 that we had be charged by mistake. I got all Chinese and passed out the smokes and melon and hey, we’re all friends again.

Amazing really, knife fight out in the middle of nowhere with mountains and glaciers surrounding us. Still shocked that we didn’t die.

We started the journey back, saw the same things we saw on the way down in addition to some Pakistani trucks, got through the military checkpoint and made our way back to Kashgar for dinner.

Seeing as we were broke, it was time to stop at an ATM so we could pay the guy, weirdest thing was that it only gave out 50s instead of 100s. His rate was 400 for the day, I gave him an extra 50 because he was awesome. We also treated him to dinner as we promised and it was all good. He said he would take us to the airport in the morning too, which he did :)

If you are ever in Kashgar, I can recommend the best guide there is :)

Next, off to Urumqi.

Adventuring in Xinjiang

Posted in 中国，Tags: , , , , , ,
19 October 2007
4

So, after going to the traffic administration, I was given sweet-talk about how I was right. Welp, 2 weeks later and still no fence. This is how things work here I guess. Been too busy to keep fighting for it.

So what I did on National Holiday….
Me and Jude ran off to Xinjiang because we wanted to and could. Urumqi and Kashgar. It was a fun ordeal actually. For those of you who are not aware of how holidays, specifically “Golden Weeks” work in China. It goes something like this:
Half of China wants to go see the other half of China and all types of transport turn to shit overnight. It’s like the Christmas rush in the States, but with no planning. Everyone is determined to go on the 29th, 30th and 1st. This results in tickets on the 2nd being dirt cheap. We went on the 2nd. The problem was getting the tickets. We ordered our set of tickets to get to Urumqi, but then decided we should order a set to get back to Beijing on the 8th. In the end, after many many mixups, we ended up with 2 sets of tickets to get there and one set to get back. Yay, we got to choose what we wanted!

Then we decided to go to Kashgar on a whim. Welp, need more tickets for this, as it’s about 1500km from Urumqi and I don’t feel like wasting an entire damned day on a train or crowded bus. Ctrip was of no help, but Elong came through. How to pay for it? Online etickets work, but I, not having a Chinese credit card yet (still working on this), couldn’t do it, and Jude’s had a limit. The masses had finally realized that tickets are dirt cheap after the 1st and they were going fast. Elong was already closed up for the night and I wouldn’t be in the office in the morning. So, I decided to just go down to their office and order. The maps on Baidu and Google are HORRIBLY wrong by the way. I arrive after they had closed and talk my way into their 4-story office building and into their telephone sales department. This was possibly the most fun I have ever had ordering tickets. Their ATM, which had been broken for months also magically worked for me. So, Beijing to Urumqi on the 2nd, then transfer to Kashgar. Go back to Urumqi on the 5th and then back to Beijing on the 8th. All for pretty cheap, hooray!

So, the trip.
Pictures speak better than words do for this.

It started out on a good note

Stopped for lunch in Urumqi. Naan rocks

Flight to Kashgar was over half white people. Yes, this was odd and cool at the same time

Mosque #1: Id Khar: 20kuai admission, well worth it

Xinjiang, being so far from Beijing uses it’s own “unofficial time” 2 hours behind Beijing Time. More or less all mosques go by it. Official places simply adjust their work day and stick with Beijing time. It’s kind of an act of defiance towards Beijing. If you know about what happened in this place in the not-to-recent past it would sicken you. During the war, Mao promised Xinjiang independence… well, Chinese lie a lot. During the Cultural Revolution millions of Han were sent to Xinjiang, destroying the 95% Uighur majority. Mosques were closed and used to raise pigs to break spirits. The “official” form of Uighur was changed over and over again to confuse native speakers. From Roman script to Cyrillic to Arabic. There was even a time when speaking Uighur was considered a crime. Hundreds of thousands of these people have been executed over the years. Going by Xinjiang time, for some, is a silent form of protest.

This is all over the place in Kashgar. Foreign money for sale on the streets. Horribly illegal in China, yet as commonplace as dentist stands in Kashgar.

We wandered from Id Khar, mainly because wandering is fun, and also because we were hunting for a China Mobile recharge card. Chinese is simply NOT used in Kashgar. It’s all Uighur. I demonstrated my expertise in navigating a foreign culture and getting what I need.

We wandered into this randomly. This, like the hutongs of Beijing is slowly being destroyed. It’s all Uighur, it’s very traditional, and it’s rather sad to see how it has been turned into a tourist attraction where locals in their poverty become something for tourists to point and stare at. However, it’s a really cool place. 30 kuai admission, again, well worth it and the people running it are not Han, so your money is going to the locals who need it.

Handwoven rug in the making

This place is like a maze inside and like a castle outside. High walls, limited access. Welcome to the middle ages

Handmade brasswork

This place is packed full of mosques. Residents mostly live a very traditional life here. Women stay home if they do not have a male escort and cover up.

More wandering and we got to People’s Square after going through the Bazaar. A fun reminder that China lays claim to this place with an iron fist. This is the largest Mao statue in all of China, and the entrance is surrounded by guards. No one allowed near it (because it would be defaced the second locals got the chance). Ran into Marco here for some reason, a German buddy who I randomly bumped into in Beijing when shopping a few months back. Small world.

And it’s time for another Mosque. This is the entrance to the Abakh Khoja complex. Admission is 50 kuai for a full set of tickets. You can skip the garden, but the museum is pretty interesting and worth the extra 10. No pictures allowed in the museum, so respect it please, unlike the Chinese tourists who were determined to grab candid shots of the Tarim Mummy laying inside. There are a lot of other standard museum pieces on display, which if you have ever been in a Chinese museum just go to demonstrate how different the culture really is here. See that sign to the right? These are everywhere and on everything here it seems. It’s your standard historical marker sign, but with a fun twist. The date it was built is shown, but the more prominent date is the date that China “recognized” it as a historical site. It’s pretty much just bullshit, Chinese government trying to lay some kind of claim to these ancient sites that they have no real right to do.

And the tomb itself. Again, no pictures inside, please respect it.

Old building for scripture readings, slowly falling apart (roof beam is cracked).

Sign says it all

Starting to wonder how we are going to get back to the city…

So what? There’s a million others selling the same stuff anyways. Just like the famous Hotan jade shops full of mostly fake jade for the tourists.

Hidden amongst all the PRC crap, a surprising amount of KMT stuff is in the markets here. It’s just another fun reminder that you aren’t in Kansas anymore, no matter how much Beijing wants you to think you are.

Way back: found. Yep, taking the bus.

Now for a brief interlude to explain what happened next. We made the mistake of trying to take a taxi and go somewhere. The hotel gave us a map, but it was all in Chinese and English for some reason. This may sound like a ideal situation for a tourist, however locals DO NOT speak or read English or Chinese at all for the most part. Someone *cough* decided to show a picture of the place we had just been to in the hopes of getting to the tomb of Yusup Khass Hajip, but this only served to confuse the driver and he took us back where we started… Yes back to Hoja. Imagine the shock and horror on our faces when we found that we could not even communicate that he was going to the wrong place. There was nothing we could do. FINALLY he took us to a Mosque, which, well, it was interesting, but it was on the other side of town. Adventure nonetheless, and therefor it was cool

Very off the beaten path, definitely not for tourists. No Chinese characters (or people for that matter) anywhere to be found. This is real Kashgar.

And here we are. So I don’t have to explain it all for ya, here’s what Yusup Has Hajip is all about

The guy who everyone’s crazy about:

And the tomb itself

I snapped up some pictures from the inside and surrounding area, but they are rather boring to look at so I am not going to post them here. I just wanted to capture the writings. Also, this entire place is a “no pictures allowed” place for the 30 kuai admission. To take pictures you have to pay 100 or so. Out of respect for the guy, I won’t post his final resting place, even if the site has turned into a postcardless money trap if you want pictures.

After the tomb we decided to call it a night and grab some dinner. We wandered a bit on my insistence and finally grabbed a taxi when we could wander no more. We somehow got a taxi driver who could speak Chinese. He was Han, but raised in the area. He taught us the fun trick that locals don’t go by half-kilos for buying stuff at the market. Nope, it’s a full kilo, that’s why the price seems high at first. This led us to Day #2 adventures.

Wow, that’s a long post and it was only the first day in Kashgar. I’ll post day #2 later.
It involves a trip to a military zone, a random friend, a fight over horses at Karakul Lake, flaming poo, and bathroom habits of the Kyrgyz. Stay tuned!