喀拉库勒湖

We arrived safely back to Xian yesterday morning. I think I may have travelled enough on trains to last a few years...

Google Map of our journey. We more or less travelled back eastward during the trip

We started off with a long day of travel: we flew to Kashgar (喀什) via Urumqi (乌鲁木齐). We spent our first night at the Seman (色满) Hotel in Kashgar, but then woke-up early and headed southwest to Karakul Lake (喀拉库勒湖), located just off Highway 314, the "International Friendship Road" with Pakistan. Less than a half hour into the bus ride, our bus started emitting a lot of dark smoke; we lost about an hour waiting for a mechanic to come and fix the loose parts. (Our driver felt bad about the dealy and ended up buying us two large, sweet melons during lunch!) After passing through some villages, then Badlands-like landscape, then rocky desert, and finally through the mountains, we came upon some beautiful mountains on a bend in the river covered with sand. Because of the lack of vegetation and strong winds, all the sand in the area is blown up the mountain slopes.

View of the sand-covered mountains and some sand dunes in the valleys 

 Close-up of the sand-covered mountains

Karakul Lake, despite the harsh and rather capricious weather, was one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been to. There is not much special about the lake itself, though it was almost crystal clear; around the lake, however, are not only large mountains, but also some small grasslands where yak and horses are herded. There were also camels and horses for rent to ride around the lake for the adventurous. We spent the night in yurts and were woken up to the baaing of sheep wandering around rather soon after sunrise. They were pretty cold to sleep in; our heat came from a coal furnace we had to occassionally add coal to during the night to keep buring, two candles for light, and about five blankets-- two to serve as mattresses, and the rest to bundle up in. On the way back to Kashgar, a rockslide blocked the highway and delayed us about another hour as we waited for equipment to clear enough of the road to let traffic through. Delays became a rather frequent companion on our trip, but luckily most of us got along well and could occupy ourselves without getting into too much trouble.

Our yurts to the right, the restaurant to the left, and a snow-capped mountain to tie it together 

View of the lake from the restaurant 

View of the lake from the shore; one of the few camels for hire

View during our walk around the lake (some yaks grazing)

Close-up of some yaks; they were a bit smaller than I had imagined... 

Some mountains reflecting on the lake 

Some locals passing the time squatting while we wait for the road to be cleared

在丝绸之路去的计划

So tomorrow we embark on our (epic) journey to the western regions of China, vaguely following the Silk Road of old. We get to visit Uyghur and Tibetan towns and places of worship, and get to travel via multiple modes of transportation: plane, train, bus, bike, foot, raft, horse, and camel!

As much of a problem that its been finding consistent Internet (and get my VPN to work to post on the blog) in Xian, it obviously is going to be all the more difficult as we travel hundreds of miles through mountains and deserts. So, I'm going to be taking a little hiatus during our travels, but promise to promptly fill in all the details once we return to Xian in two weeks.

Here is a rough itinerary:
Saturday, 09.17
Fly from Xian to Kashgar with a layover in Urumqi

Sunday, 09.18
Bus to Lake Karakul; spend the day hiking around the lake and then spend the night lakeside

Monday, 09.19
Return to Kashgar, visit the Grand Bazaar

Tuesday, 09.20
Visit mosque, Old Kashgar, and have lunch at a Uyghur inn; fly to Urumqi

Wednesday, 09.21
Visit Urumqi Museum (they have mummies!) and the Institute of Ethnic Minorities; train ride to Liuyuan

Thursday, 09.22
Visit the Mogao Caves (etched and painted Buddhist caves) in Dunhuang

Friday, 09.23
Ride camels to see the sunrise, play in the desert, visit the Crescent Lake Oasis

Saturday, 09.24
Visit Baima Temple; train ride to Lanzhou

Sunday, 09.25
Bus to Xiahe and tour Labrang Monastery

Monday, 09.26
Visit Zuohai Bon Monastery, talk with Bon monks and tour a nearby village

Tuesday, 09.27
Visit Tibetan sites, spend the day with Tibetans and ride horses

Wednesday, 09.28
Bus to Linxia and visit holy sites; raft on the Yellow River in Lanzhou; board train for Xian

Thursday, 09.29
Arrive back "home" in Xian

参观回民街和秦始皇兵马俑博物馆

Sorry for the slightly belated update.
First off, Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 祝你中秋节快了！The Mid-Autumn Festival is a lunar harvest festival, so it's exact date rotates on our Gregorian calendar. It fell on Monday, September 12, this year. All of the Chinese students got the day off, but lucky us, we still had Chinese class (I felt kind of bad for our teachers, since they had to still work on the national holiday). During the Mid-Autumn Festival, it's customary to give mooncakes (月饼) to family members, good friends, or people who you look up to / want to especially thank. It's been explained as more or less equivalent to Thanksgiving, and families who live close enough will often get together for a meal to celebrate. However, this holiday only has a one-day break, so there isn't too much time to travel for college students or working children who are far away from home. A lot of firecrackers were exploded on the streets, though apparently that's not a normal custom...

Last Friday, we visited the Muslim District (回民街) within the city walls. 回民 literally means "Hui people" and refers to the Hui ethnic minority in China, and 街 just means "street"; the Hui people are both marked by their adherence to Islam and ethnic history from Central Asia. (However, the Hui people should not be confused with the Uighur people, another ethnic minority with ties to Islam and Central Asia. We'll meet a lot of Uighur people during our Silk Road trip to Xinjiang province.) We went to the Great Mosque and were lucky enough to have a Hui tour guide who had a good command of English (but also spoke Chinese slowly and articulately enough that I could follow along somewhat). He talked a bit about the history of Islam and the Hui people in China and then transitioned to current issues, such as 9/11 and feelings toward the Chinese state and the Middle East Spring.

Apparently one of the main differences between the Hui and Uighur people is sense of allegiance to China. The Hui people have strong loyalty to the Chinese state and sense of Chinese pride, whereas the Uighur people have a strong (or at least percieved to be strong) sense of separatism and desire to create their own state, or perhaps rejoin with Central Asian former-Soviet states. Also, during the Cultural Revolution, the Great Mosque was shut down but spared from destruction; a lot of people think it's because of the Hui people's support of Zhou Enlai during the fight between the PLA and the KMT. He talked about 9/11 a bit to explain how Islamists (and many other peaceful Muslims) see America's support of Israel as unfair, to try to put it concisely. About the Middle East Spring, he talked about how all people (Chinese, Muslim, whatever) support democratic initiatives and oppose authoritarian rule.

The grounds of the Great Mosque were beautiful, as they were a mix of traditional Chinese and Islamic architecture and style. It had been raining most of the day before we got to the Mosque, so there was a lot of mist still hanging in the air, so the pictures aren't as clear as they could be. The grounds have four main areas; additionally there is a large prayer hall (which we couldn't enter obviously) and school rooms to help teach children the Koran and, more recently, Arabic. Many Muslims in China don't know any Arabic, but, like many Muslims worldwide, still recite prayers in Arabic and may know how to "read" some verses from the Koran.

Entrance to the first courtyard

Characters read 析求和平，roughly "Analyze and Search for Peace" 

Archictecture within the third courtyard. There was an altar in the middle...

After walking around the mosque, we had free time to explore the street markets. A lot of people had fun bargaining with the street vendors and haggling for goods. Andras and I separated from the group and just walked around and bought some food eventually. We had some sort of quesadilla-like food. We also ordered some drinks, but Andras unfortunately got a warm corn drink; luckily my "strange fruit" drink was both chilled and good tasting.

A night shot of the street at night. It's a bit smoky from the cooking food and all the cigarettes...

........................................................................................

On Tuesday (09.13), we finally went to see the Terracotta Army outside of Xian. Yet again, it was a somewhat rainy day, so we all hoped most of the museum would be indoors. Luckily it was, and the rain stopped basically once we got there. The Terracotta Army was buried beside some mountains, which I didn't see until our walk back to the bus; the rainy mist obscured a lot of them unfortunately, so I couldn't get a good picture.  

So a brief background on the Terracotta Army. The first emperor of unified China, Qin Shihuang (秦始皇) set out to construct a large mausoleum; the design greatly resembled the pyramids of Egypt. The Terracotta Army (兵马俑) was constructed to guard Qin Shihuang in the afterlife; apparently Chinese customs beforehand were to actually kill people and bury them alongside the kings for the afterlife, so the Terracotta Army was a shift in funerary customs, though a few high ranking officials and workers were still killed and buried when Qin Shihuang died. Unfortunately, about three years after the tomb was sealed, it was raided, presumably to both reuse all the weapons buried and to send a political message. Because of this wanton invasion (and time) every warrior was somewhat destroyed when they were rediscovered in 1974. The warriors also were painted rather vibrantly when they were made over 2,000 years ago, but the paint has since either disappeared completely or rubbed off onto the earth packed around the warriors. Some areas have not been excavated in the hopes of gaining better technology and excavation methods to retain the paint on the warriors.

Rough panorama of the Terracotta Warriors

Close-up of warriors from Pit 1 (一号坑)

Close-up of warriors from Pit 2 (二号坑)
I imagine most of the warriors resembled this when first excavated

Close-up of warriors from Pit 3 (三号坑)

I think they look more intimidating without heads

去夜店，去教堂

Epitome of China: On Friday we travelled north of our campus to the old city wall (城墙), which you are not only able to climb atop and walk around but also able to rent bikes and ride around the wall; naturally we all rented bikes, which were a lot of fun to ride around the “cobblestone” bricks in various stages of disrepair (and especially fun to go up and down the slight ramps to the corner sentry towers). But just inside the main south gate was an annual reception for a luxury products company (the set up looked like it was for an upscale wedding, complete with a large tent, small cocktail tables and a live band).

Riding atop the city wall
(left to right) Andras, Cora, and Karen
[The four of us spend a lot of time together]

View atop the city wall, looking into the inner city from the main south gate

Unfortunately, this epitome of China, the juxtaposition of ancient and hyper-modern is quickly becoming pure modernization. Too many ancient cultural relics and time capsules of history are simply being replaced. Xian is one of the few cities (perhaps the only one of its size) that still has a completely intact city wall.  

A few of us from the program and a few other international students living in our dorm decided to go out Friday night as well. Xian looks completely different with the night life; there are neon lights and signs everywhere, and the trees planted in the median are all lit up with bright green lights! We ended up going to a dance club called Fantasy. There was a rather small dance floor, but it was able to hold a lot of us by the end of the night. They even had a stage where performers came out to sing (sometimes lip sync) and dance to songs. The single male performer really resembled the Korean pop star Taeyang.

It’s funny how dancing is almost a language of its own, as it was more or less the only way I could “converse” with people in the club. First of all, clubs are so noisy with the music blasting, it’s near impossible to actually hear anything people say, and secondly, very few people understand or spoke English (I think). The only non-English song that I recognized, “Gara Gara Go!!” by Big Bang, luckily played while I was dancing with a group of girls who were either Chinese or Korean (It was hard to tell with the flashing lights and I’m still not especially skilled at distinguishing). I also ended up in a circle of Chinese guys dancing, so it was a lot of fun playing off each other and imitating each other until we danced in sync.  

………………………….

On Sunday, I was faced with the potentially difficult task of finding a Catholic church to attend Mass at. We had been provided a list of places of worship in our orientation packet, for which two churches were listed under Roman Catholicism; however, we were only provided addresses. Without working internet in my room and about twenty minutes wasted trying to find a street on a map of Xian, I headed off to an internet café with some friends to do some homework and look up the location of the church. I figured I would have to take a taxi anyway, but I wanted to know roughly where I was going and how far away it was so I could gauge prices better. Well, Google maps apparently thinks there is only one Catholic church in Xian, and it just so happens to be inside the city walls. Mass in English started at 3:30pm, so I figured if I leave to catch a taxi at 3:00pm, I should be fine. 

Google Maps of route from our dorm to the Catholic Church

A few things I forget to consider: taxis are not nearly as plentiful on Sunday afternoons as they are on Friday nights; you don’t necessarily get a taxi as soon as you stand to wait for one; taxi etiquette (like many things in China) is more about who is most assertive than who got there first (myself being a tad timid does not help in these situations); and finally, hailing a taxi is no good if you can’t remember how to pronounce the destination you want correctly. Luckily, a “taxi moped” stopped as I was waiting for a cab and the man “asked” me where I was going. After some failed attempts at saying “Catholic church” (tiānzhǔ jiàotáng), we finally both understand the street I wanted (and to some degree a church, I think…) So I hopped on the back of the scooter and we were off.

Riding on one of these— no seat belt, no helmet (for me or the driver), no sides or doors, weaving through traffic, sometimes into bike and bus lanes or even crosswalks— was not nearly as scary as I thought. It was rather comfortable and I never felt like I was going to fall off, though I was scared we were going to be squished by a bus once. But we made it to the church in one piece, and just as Mass was starting.

[Random geeky side note: the priest’s voice reminded me a lot of Uncle Iroh from Avatar: the Last Airbender TV series]

After Mass, although it seemed like it would rain any second, I decided to start walking back home. I figured I needed to get closer to a main street before I could find a taxi anyway, and I was running fairly low on cash, so I wanted to stop at an ATM, too. Well, I found the bank but couldn’t find any outdoor ATMS (the inside was dark and no people inside, so I assumed it was locked; I probably should’ve tried the doors). I got it in my head that I should try walking all the way back to the dorm, partially to see more of Xian and partially to see just how long it would take. And once I decided to do it, I did it…. Unfortunately, it started raining about the time I made this decision, and I didn’t have an umbrella with me, so I get fairly wet. [Speaking of the rain, it’s been raining constantly since Sunday late afternoon— that’s nearly three days of straight rain!] The walk took me about 70 minutes, which isn’t too bad; I didn’t have much else to do anyway even if I had gotten back to the dorm earlier.

从北京坐火车去西安

This posting will cover a bit of time, since I haven’t posted in a while, partly because we’ve been rather busy traveling to, exploring, and getting settled in Xian and partly because my VPN hasn’t been working since I’ve arrived in Xian, so I’m having difficulty accessing my own blog. I had wondered if this would be a problem when I was still in the States, but wasn’t sure how I could check it then… 

Quick overview of the first week in China:

Beijing was a lot of fun, definitely a good place to start our exposure to China. Tiananmen Square （天安门广场）, the Forbidden City （故宫）and the (New) Summer Palace （颐和园）were all worth seeing. We unfortunately didn’t have enough time to visit any of the Great Wall while in Beijing, but the three aforementioned historical places were a good start. Even though these areas were filled with lots of tourists, it never seemed that crowded (except for in certain bottleneck areas) because they’re all so large and wide. Tiananmen Square seems almost like a mile long (I’m sure it’s not, but it seemed ridiculously long); the Forbidden City likewise was much grander and larger than I ever would’ve suspected. We only walked around a fraction of the Summer Palace, and even that seemed rather long. Beijing definitely has a lot left to be explored and enjoyed, so hopefully our counterparts studying there will take advantage of that.

Tiananmen Square (looking SW)

Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace)

Walking through the Forbidden City

Looking Southward at the Forbidden City

View in the Summer Palace

View in Summer Palace of a replica of Southern Chinese architecture 

We left Beijing by taking a thirteen hour train ride to Xian. (Side note: thirteen is popping up everywhere with travel. Thirteen hour plane ride, thirteen hour time-zone difference [I live in Central Standard Time], thirteen hour train ride, and there are thirteen of us students here in Xian…) Trains are a lot more squished in China. We did all get beds, which was nice, but because of that, it was rather difficult to just sit around and hang out. The train also left around 5:00 pm, so a lot of the train ride was in the dark, which was slightly disappointing because I wanted to see some more of countryside. We arrived in Xian around 7:00am and got a quick tour of the downtown area as we were taxied to our new home, Shaanxi Normal University.  

The city of Xian is a lot of fun even to just wander the streets. It’s a lot of fun people watching and seeing the large variety of people in this bustling city: from construction workers to Muslim restaurant owners to fashionable hair dressers to the high school students in matching uniforms to all of the little children who sometimes have a tendency to stare at us. Speaking of children, some observations: little children are allowed, and often do, to go to the bathroom right on the streets. To aid in this, they sell slit pants (开裆裤). Think of chaps, but then the child doesn’t wear any pants or diaper underneath. Also, a lot of children have extremely short hair, sometimes completely shaven, though I’ve seen a lot of interesting hair styles on children. For instance, one little boy I saw at the mall arcade had a shaven head except for a heart on the top (the point of the heart was on his forehead) and a star on the back, right above his neck. 

Our first “touristy” thing in Xian was to visit the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔). This pagoda was erected to house Buddhist scriptures brought over from India and aid in translating the scriptures into Chinese. The pagoda grounds still house various Buddhist statues and a few monks could be seen walking around. Despite really wanting to climb the pagoda, I someone missed the opening and instead spent the hour wandering the grounds. I was able to appreciate a lot of the gardens and architecture, not to mention the Buddhist statues, but almost everyone else made the climb. They said I didn’t miss much, so I’ll just have to take their word for it. We also had a mini scavenger hunt with some of the Chinese roommates in the square outside the pagoda. That was a lot of fun, even if our team barely came in second place.

View of the Pagoda from the northern garden temple area

The “dorm” we’re staying in is actually a hotel. They really seem to want to provide nice accommodations for their international students, because they don’t think we could adjust to normal dorm conditions or have had too many incidents and want to avoid them now, I don’t know. I’m figuring more of the first, but wouldn’t be surprised if the latter has happened. The nice thing about our “hotel dorm” is that we do have maids come in and empty our trash and replace towels and toiletries (including the ever elusive toilet paper!) every day. The downside is a communal kitchen and washing machines for the entire building, so making our own food and cleaning clothes might be a challenge. There also isn’t a ton of room in the room, especially once there are two of us living in it. Our Chinese roommates are living in their normal dorms for this first week to help us adjust more smoothly. (If what I’ve gathered is correct, in China, college students are assigned three roommates and a dorm room that they keep all four years.) 

Our "dorm" room. A bit of an upgrade...

We started Chinese language classes on Tuesday. They are intense, but that should only help us out in the long run (or even the “short term” of being in China). There are five of us in my Chinese class, which allows us to ask questions and practice speaking a lot more than the 15 – 20 student classes I was used to at U of I. We do, however, have way more homework here than at U of I, and have three hours of Chinese every day.

Today (Thursday) we had a “debate” in Chinese about whether or not women should have to stay home to look after the house and children or if they should be allowed to be career women. It was interesting and I don’t think 75% of what we were trying to say made any sense, but I suppose it’s a good testament to our improvement in Chinese, even if it was a rather rudimentary “debate”. I am becoming more comfortable using Chinese on a regular basis, though, and am not horribly stumbling when I’m in a restaurant any more, for the most part.

We still have to point a lot to the foods we want, as we have yet to order anything that we know all of the character for; unfortunately, we keep forgetting to write down what we ordered to look it up later or to remember it to order the same dish again. Luckily food is very cheap and we’ve yet to order anything we didn’t enjoy, though we might’ve been too hungry to have cared.

One of our first nights in Xian, we ended up going to a seafood restaurant. At this restaurant, you basically order a fish (which you then go pick out in the tank) and then select how you want it prepared and any additional sides to eat. However, since we all are extremely limited in our Chinese, we didn’t realize this and at first only ordered the sides, thinking they were normal plates of food. (They had pictures, so we had some semblance of what we were getting.) We wondered why the waitress looked at us strangely after we ordered, and eventually understood that we probably should’ve ordered some fish, since it was a seafood restaurant. So we said (or at least tried to say) that we wanted a fish, but then the waitress tried to explain to us (in very quick and complicated Chinese) that we needed to select a category of fish, a method of preparation and then follow her to pick one out. It was a good 5 or 10 minutes of frustration and laughter at our limited Chinese before we understood enough to finish the order. As one of the girls said, “If only she had said ‘看 and 鱼’(look and fish)” maybe we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of embarrassment. It all ended fine, and the fish was delicious. And it made for a good story.