Dunhuang

I spent most of the day to day at the absolutely incredible MoGao Grottoes just outside of Dunhuang. Enumerating the countless Buddhas and bodhisattvas is beyond my powers and there are no cameras allowed, so you'll all just have to come here yourselves if you want to take a look at anything beyond the fragment above, or use your imaginations (and google).

The area is quite tightly regulated, which is fair enough considering the damage wrought to the murals and sculptures through the depredations of the Western "adventurers" who stole most of the ancient manuscripts in the early 20th century, and monotheists of various persuasions (Muslim, Maoist) who have defaced the 'idols' within. Strangely enough, however, our guide's first priority seemed to be having us all appreciate that the female apsaras (Buddhist flying angels) in the later murals could fly "much faster through the sky" than the male apsaras featured in caves from earler periods. Seriously, this was repeated in almost every cave...

Though what stuck with me most was perhaps the comment by my taxi driver on the way to the caves, that 35 years ago the locals were all eating bark from the trees to stave off their hunger, so scarce was food.

Tomorrow on to Lanzhou, the most polluted city in the world, will no doubt drop a line from there...

Happy Snaps

It's been a while between drinks, hasn't it. I'm in Turpan, about to head to Dunhuang on a sleeper bus - and let it be known that these two words strike a cold terror into me after the 26 hour one I took across the Taklmakan Desert from Hotan back to Urumqi a few days ago. Alas, it is tough being a heroic traveller these days. I'm sure it beats across the desert by camel and donkey though...

So on my last day in Xinjiang, a fairly random selection of images...

Kashgar Watermelon Man:


Emin Minaret, Turpan:


Jiaohe Ruins, Turpan:

No profound thoughts occur to me at the moment (nor do they most of the time)...maybe later. Right now I have to hit the CD shops to get some Uighur disco music before I leave.

Reflections of a post-tourist

"[T]he post-tourist knows that he is a tourist: not a time traveler when he goes somewhere historic; not an instant noble savage when he stays on a tropical beach; not an invisible observer when he visits a native compound. Resolutely 'realistic,' he cannot evade his condition of outsider."

Maxine Feifer, Going Places: Tourism in history. The quote can be found in this interesting (but fair warning: academic) article...


Indeed, that is I, the post-tourist. And a post-tourist stuck in the paranoid internet cafes of Southern Xinjiang, where just using a computer is enough of a hassle to disuade me from even attempting to post photos.

So in lieu of photos, these post-touristic vignettes:

1. Authenticity: In Kashgar the eruptions of hand drums and wailing so-na signals just that that latest tour group has arrived, the latest department store has opened. Instead, local Uighurs (in the small towns at least) crowd the doorways of VCD shops, dubbed Bollywood productions blaring.

2. The Global Bazaar: Beyond the hackneyed tropes of Kashgar as 'ancient crossroads' lies the (recently refurbished) bazaar. Within, the carpets bear stickers proclaiming "Silk Style - Made in Belgium" (the cheapest) or are made to order using local specifications by factories in Hangzhou. The 'silk road' stretched and rewoven as a silk web of global commerce. [I bought Pakistani carpets instead.]

3. The World Game: A three and a half hour busride across the desert to Yarkand, the bus stereo all the way blaring a "Uighured" version of 'The Cup of Life' by Ricky Martin, amongst other hits. An instrumental version fortunately; a real Uighur Ricky Martin may well have driven the surrealness well above my threshold. ['We just stopped for a bathroom break and he ran off into the desert screaming "Ole, Ole, Ole"...we never saw him again.']

4. The (other) locals: In Kharghilik yesterday eating lunch in a Sichuan restaurant. The Uighurs are fasting, which leaves Sichuanese - seemingly most of the Han immigrants are from there. In Chinese, I ask the boss the directions to the town's main mosque (qingzhensi). She looks at me, puzzled: Mosque? Is that some kind of restaurant? I don't know of any around here..." On the corner 25 metres away from her door is a small mosque.

(For a similar experience, see here. BTW. Does anyone actually follow these links I dig up?)

5. The Language Barrier: Buying bread here in Hotan this evening, I offer a winning 'Asalaam Aleikum' to the boss. She looks at me, puzzled (I have got a lot of this recently). "Well, are you going to answer him?", the woman next to me asks her (or so I assume, telepathically). "Oh...right. I thought he was speaking to me in English and my brain just kind of froze up," the store owner replies. So 'Asalaam Aleikum' doesn't work all the time... but having telepathic Uighur-language powers is always helpful.

6. Being There: Today, on the bus to Hotan, along the southern rim of the most landlocked desert on Earth, the Uighur soap opera DVD dragging into what must be its third hour at full volume, a thought comes to me: "It would be really great to be at the beach right now."

[I'm having gmail problems, courtesy, I can only assume, of the party people in Beijing. So apologies if i cannot reply to you at the moment. it works sometimes, not others.]

Certified

The plaque above reads:

CIVILISED HOUSEHOLD

WuQiKangBoYi Street Committee for the Establishment of Spiritual Civilisation

I don't know what you have to do to get one of these in Kashgar, but door plaques might be just the thing to get more people behind John Howard's proposed 'Australian-ness' test. Then again, the War on Terror refridgerator magnets did not really catch on...

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

Driving the modernisation of Xinjiang is the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which comes under direct political control from Beijing. Lacking Foreign Direct Investment, it is the XPCC (financed by the government) that fuels XUAR’s economy, which is dominated by heavy industry and oil extraction. The company also builds infrastructure such as roads and railways.

The organisation is truly monolithic. It employs 2.48 million people, 88% of them Han, which represents 12.9% of the entire population of Xinjiang. (At present, the Uyghurs have been concentrated in the south while Han migrants dominate the more developed north. ) It controls a third of the province’s arable land. More than just an industrial giant, the XPCC also manages the construction of cities to house its workers – the provincial capital, Urumqi is an example – often at the expense of traditional Uyghur dwellings. In many ways, it is thus a state instrument of territorial control, and is a key engine for bringing Han people into the region.

http://www.philip-sen.com/othermeans/2006/06/colonialism_in_the_21st_century.html

Reality Check

From a very good article on this area:

EVERY evening Mehmeti Mersum sits outside a restaurant near his home in Hotan, the ancient town on the southern Silk Road through China’s far western region of Xinjiang. Moslem women in headscarfs and bearded men in skullcaps win smiles or greetings as they pass Mehmeti and his Uyghur friends. Chinese women in skimpy dresses or miniskirts draw only glares of mixed hostility and lechery, while the approach of Chinese men often inspires the Uyghurs to inspect their teacups.

The Uyghurs occasionally glance across the road at the Han Chinese shopkeepers and their families. The Chinese also watch the nightly promenade, gazing back at Uyghur waiters, customers and merchants. And that is normally as near as Hotan’s two ethnically divided communities come to meaningful communication.

[...]

Eight million mainly Moslem Uyghurs form the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, which has some six million Han residents. Police regularly arrest Uyghurs who express public support for independence or criticise the government, Mehmeti said. The arrests have multiplied since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, with some 3,000 Uyghurs detained according to the Germany-based East Turkestan Infomation Centre.

[...]

“You can’t keep your traditions because you have to develop. Everything must change,” said Dilichati, a young Uyghur studying to become a tour guide. But when he discovered my companion was not Chinese, Dilichati changed his mind. “Just now what I said wasn’t the truth, but I’m afraid to say it,” he said. “Last year one of my friends was arrested after an American woman he spoke to published what he said. He’s still in jail.”

Kashgar guides must pass Chinese examinations, Dilichati said, as bilingual Uyghur and English speakers are not allowed. Men are discouraged from wearing beards or traditional hats. “If you wear traditional dress, the Chinese guides will accuse you of putting dirt in their pot,” he said.

[...]

Professor Dru Gladney of the University of Hawaii Centre for Chinese Studies argues that Xinjiang has all the features of a colony, with deep ethnic divisions and the Chinese enjoying the main benefits of the development of the region’s natural resources. “Uighurs, and other indigenous peoples such as Tibetans, now labelled as ‘minority nationalities’, have been turned into ‘internal colonial subjects’ despite being indigenous peoples in lands they once called their own,” he said. “The expropriation of Xinjiang’s vast mineral and petrochemical resources, with processing of petroleum products in the interior, primarily Lanzhou, and sold on the international market – with revenues to Xinjiang based on domestic prices – further fits the internal colonialism model.”

http://www.gbcc.org.uk/iss21_1.htm

The Karakorum Highwayman

Asalaam Aleikum! That has to be the most useful single phrase I've ever learnt, at least in this part of the world.

So, I'm back in wonderful, dust-choked Kashgar after a quick sojourn down the (Chinese part of the) Karakorum Highway, which links Kashgar with Pakistan and Tajikistan. My travel compnions Julia and Aaron (from Brooklyn and New Jersey respectively) and I went all the way to the China - Pakistan border at the Khunjerap Pass, which at 5100m was beautiful, serene, and icy cold, qualities which between them awed all present into a wheezing, breathless silence.

Well, except this guy:


Ladies, control yourselves.

On the way up there we passed through the small town of Tashkurgan, a name which means "valley of blood" in Tajik (or was it Uighur?) due to the frequency with which bandits attacked caravans in times passed. The local tourist bureau might want to consider changing it, but at least it sounds tough.

Tashkkurgan, as you would expect of the last town before the Pakistani border, was totally overrun by Hollywood types, there to shoot the film adaptation of the Afghani novel (memoir?) "The Kite Runner." Apparently the area looks just like Afghanistan, thankfully minus the landmines and roving Taliban.

Julia, Aaron and I walked reverently through a graveyard (well, we didn't kick over any headstones at least), on the way to see the ruins of the stone city pictured below, only to find out on our return that the graveyard was a fake, set up by set design wizards the afternoon before. I think the rest of the town was real though.



On our way back to our ratty hotel (damn Hollywooders booked out every other bed in town), we happened across two local Tajik girls who had come to watch the action (kite flying, to be exact). We gave the little one an apple: as you can see she's thrilled. Her sister was more excited when Julia gave here a chance to take photos with her SLR camera, having obviously outgrown the apple phase. The locals were very friendly, especially a family we visited at random the next day slightly out of town, who strangely enough looked absolutely Scottish - even down to the children's flame red hair. I didn't take any photos, so you'll just have to believe me.


Travelling back to Kashgar, we spent our second night at Karakul Lake, which looks what I imagine the moon would look like if it had water and Kyrghyz yurt-dwellers. Obligatory scenery snaps follow.


As great as these places were, it was nice to get back to Kashgar for some Pakistani food and a real bed, after boiled Yak accompanied by way too much Yak-milk tea and, shock horror, the dreaded "Kyrghyz nang" bread, a special punishment reserved primarily for unsuspecting tourists. I know this because our driver stopped to buy the good, Uighur nang on the way to deliver to our hosts - it seems they prefer the competition.

Kashgar is an interesting town, full of veiled women and men in all kinds of hats, skullcaps to fedoras, who, when they meet acquaintances in the street, grasp each by both hands and then, if the other has a child with him, lean across to kiss the baby on the cheek. Charming, except for the veil part.

I'll be here a couple more days, enjoying lamb kebabs, camomille tea, and clean underwear. Fairly pedestrian stuff, I guess. But just a few days ago, I was this cool:


It's all downhill from here, no doubt.

The Uighur Hendrix

I'm in Kashgar now, heartland of the Uighur people. Yesterday I was wandering through the old town, trying to shake off the 24 hour train ride from Urumqi, and trying not to think of lunch, which was nowhere to be had as it is Ramadan at the moment, when I came across a small musical instrument shop. Inside they had a whole bunch of traditional instruments, such as the Dotar, kind of like a two stringed lute, and the Tambur, a four string long-necked mandolin kind of thing. I'd been in there a short while when out of nowhere appeared Abdirihim Hiyit, "King of the Dotar" in Xinjiang (his CDs in every shop). He picked up a Dotar and proceeded to absolutely tear it apart - putting my feeble pluckings of only a few moments before to shame. I managed to record some of it (he was very friendly and easygoing, as indeed everyone here seems to be), you can see a short clip from a much longer session below. Enjoy!

Urumqi Street Scene

I took this movie a little down the street today in Urumqi, standing outside some music stores near the market. The music is coming from the stores, I didn't overdub it or anything.

Backstreet Urumqi in pictures

This is the street behind one of the bazaars:

This is the street on which I'm staying, in a quiet Kazakh community (not sure where all the Kazakhs disappeared to when I was taking the photo):

Backstreet Urumqi...

Strange to think that in the last two days I've had enough time to post three times... part of the reason is that right next to the couch I'm sleeping on there is a laptop computer. It is owned by Tifanny, who is my gracious host here (contacted through what I think might be the greatest website in the world: www.couchsurfing.com).

The apartment is in a predominantly Kazakh area, about a forty-five minute walk from the centre of town. The walk itself is very interesting, and took me past several bazaars packed with the local Uighur people selling carpets, coats (men wearing five heavy trenchcoats - you literally buy the shirt off their back), knives (with blacksmiths beating them out in the alley behind), fruit, raisins and nuts of every variety, and nang, the flat bread that is everywhere.

I strolled around some of these places on the way back to the apartment this afternoon. The first thing today was buying a train ticket to Kashgar, which being further south will hopefully be warmer than Urumqi, which has hovered around 8 degrees today. not the 24 or so that was forecast earlier this week! I'll be leaving for kashgar at noon on sunday, arriving about noon monday. until then I will continue to wander Urumqi, which, despite (or because) of a conspicuous lack of "sights" is quite a relaxing place to unwind, ahead of what will no doubt be a long journey.

after buying my ticket, Tiffany took me to a cafe, as, being so cold, a hot coffee and heated space was at the forefront of both our minds. I had time to go through some of my chinese study material, Han Shaogong's "A dictionary of Maqiao" - it is a novel, not a dictionary. Though to read it I need a dictionary by my side in any case. Well worth tracking down the English translation, which is quite good too.

After thawing out we hit the street again, this time to find lunch. we opted for Kazakh, as down south it will all be Uighur food and I am not game to go further north to the Kazakh heartlands due to the literally Siberian temperatures. We opted for horsemeat noodle soup and salty milk tea, an interesting combination to be sure.

After strolling around via some bazaars, I made my way home, making my second stop today to buy Uighur pastries. I ended up with some almond cakes and vanilla mousse-like stuff: delicious. I think a small bag of Uighur pastries may well become my constant companion travelling through Xinjiang.

Also, the music. After getting used to (though never enjoying) the warbling Mandopop of Taiwan and China I am suddenly in a place that understands rhythm! I've heard hand-drumming in the streets, and the pop music blasting out of CD shops actually has polyrhythms and syncopation: incredible. On the whole it is obviously more attuned to the sounds of arabic and possibly indian musics, not suprising I guess, but in any case much more listenable than I'm used to. And unlike in the tibetan busses I've travelled in, there seems to have been no craze to do techno remixes of folk tunes, may Allah have mercy on us all.

this post has ballooned out somewhat, I think I'll leave it there for now. Uighur pastries are calling!

(btw. I'm having trouble with this blogger site - it is really difficult to get it to let me post photos. I'll try to post some more after.)

and this...

Several thousand words worth of pictures

hi all. I've made it to Urumqi, after a couple of days of nonstop travel and bureacracy. No lifechanging experiences, so I'll just post some happy snaps for now. I've no huge agenda in Urumqi, so I think I will just spend a day or two adjusting to the accents, the temperature (7 degrees outside as I write, not what i'm used to), and to the idea i'm on holiday. in lieu of a soliloquy, some photos...

Waiting for the plane in Taipei:





















From the back of a tram, Hong Kong:

The Concept:

7 weeks.

From Here:



To Here:


Simple really.

I'll be trying to post to this page pretty regularly. If you are interested, feel free to comment.