Shanghai'd

Sunday Market.


I can safely say there is no better place in the world than the Kashgar xingqi tian shi chang to:
- buy a new carpet
- replace your old donkey
- and get a clean shave, all in one stop.

Walmart has nothing on this place.

The "Sunday" market actually operates every day, but Sunday is by far the biggest day, and the only day for livestock sales. After a week in the mountains, I was particularly looking forward to cleaning up with a nice straight razor shave. It started out enjoyably enough with a brief face massage. Then the punishment began; 10 minutes of scraping, first with a razor blade, then straight razor ... no shaving cream. I quickly reached my pain threshold, hopped out of the chair half-shaven to lick my many wounds and threw 10 yuan at the barber to discourage him from trying to finish the job.


I now completely understand why the Uighurs cherish those gnarly beards of theirs.

It's hard to use Chinese for descriptions of a country where the writing is Arabic.

One of the most renowned and beautiful parts of Xinjiang is located in the southwest corner of the province, sharing borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and some other "Stans". The Karakoram Highway runs south from Kashgar into Pakistan. On the Pakistan side the KKH runs by the second highest mountain in the world, 28,251 ft K2 (Everest is the highest, but you already knew that).

Needless to say, this was the number one sight we had to see in Xinjiang. Our first morning in Kashgar was spent figuring out how to get there. We wound up talking to Abdul, the smooth-talking owner of a travel agency that talked a lot, but never QUITE answered any of our questions. But, he could set us up with transport and a local guide to show us into the mountains. Our destination was Karakul Lake, which is an aqua blue lake that reflects its neighboring mountains, Kongur Tagh and Muztag-ata. Muztag-ata is over 23,000 ft high, by far the highest mountain either of us had come close to. We scheduled the departure for the next morning.

The car was a VW taxi and the driver a stereotypically massive Uighur guy in cheap, full suit, who barely fit into the car seat. The drive started out flat enough, but soon entered a valley and started to climb. We stopped for photos of the 'famous' mountain with sand dunes pushed against it and finally made it to the lake.


We could definitely feel the altitude at 12,000 feet! We first sat down with our guide, Alim, to make a plan and drink some salty milk tea offered up by the yurt-dwelling local people. We set off and after a few hours reached Subax village and the primitive stone house that would be our home for the next few nights. This was a one-room dwelling with a little pot-belly stove near the entrance. The rest of the room was elevated about 2 feet and covered with numerous colorful carpets and blankets. This was the eating/sleeping/resting area. We sat down to more salty milk tea (an acquired taste to say the least) and hard bagel-like naan breads that would be our diet for the next 3 days. This house was very basic; no electricity during the day, sketchy at night. Heat and cooking came from the yak-chip fueled stove, no sink - water was pulled from the nearby well and poured onto the dirt floor for washing. No conveniences that we have in city life. No toilet, no shower, there was even no counter for chopping vegetables - that was done on a board on the floor.


As soon as the sun went down we ate then soon went to bed. Dinner that night was typical noodles - but they were hand made, which took about 2 hours. We all slept snugly side by side in the one room, 9 people total! The first wake up call came around 4am local time so the Muslim adults could get in their Ramadan meal before the sun came up. We took this opportunity to go out and see the stars. The altitude combined with the lack of light pollution made for the best star viewing I have ever seen (better even than Big Bend park in West Texas!). Then back to bed until sunrise.

The next day was spent hiking around eerily barren high-altitude desert scenery. After about 3 tough hours battling the altitude and sun exposure, we reached about 15,000 ft. Most amazing to us was how our guide walked the entire day with no food or even a sip of water (rules of Ramadan). Needless to say, as soon as the sun went down, everyone eagerly dug into a big fast-breaking dinner. That night it snowed (which I noticed when I went out again at 4am); Tim, the photographer's wish come true! I especially like Camels in the Snow.


In the morning, we walked back to the base of the lake to arrange transport to Khunjerab pass on the Pakistan border. We heard about 10 different conflicting stories about the checkpoint crossing at Tashkorgan - "it's too late, they don't let people cross after 10am", "you have to apply for a permit the night before", "the crossing guards will take lunch and you'll have to wait", and finally "they let anyone offering up 10 yuan cross with no problem". This final, first-hand account proved true, though we did have a few tense moments when the Chinese border patrol gave our Uighur guide a hard time about accompanying us. Finally, we were across, with nothing but 2 hours of beautiful, sheer mountainous highway between us and the Pakistan border. It was perfectly picturesque, ultimately reaching about 15,000 ft at the border, supposedly the highest pass road in the world. We took a few tentative steps into Pakistan (the Chinese border patrol officer who had accompanied us was keeping a stern, watchful eye), snapped a few photos, and headed back down to nurse the altitude-induced headaches and shortness of breath we were feeling.


That night was spent in a yurt, playing tri-lingual version of the card game euchre, which we taught Alim and the driver who took us to the border (who earned the name Shark after his card playing). We would explain the rules to Alim in English who would tell it to the Shark in the Uighur language and we would answer his questions in Chinese. Pretty Interesting. After 3 days of salty tea and hard naan, the same dirty clothes, no sinks, and going to Pakistan and back, we hitched a ride with a local guy back to Kashgar.

Our time on the Karakoram Highway was beautiful. This is definitely a recommended spot for any travelers who have a little extra time in China. Although the very touristed areas around the lake are far from untouched, a few hours hiking (or on horse or motorbike) can deliver you to a place that seems timeless.

Xinjiang Time.

Xinjiang feels thousands of miles from the rest of China in so many ways. Geographically at least, it literally is. After a 4 1/2 hr flight west from Shanghai, we touched down in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. One of the many "oddities" of China is that despite its size, the entire country is on the same time zone, officially Beijing shi jian. Unofficially, Xinjiang operates on its own local Xinjiang shi jian, 2 hrs later than Beijing, which somewhat, but not completely compensates for the huge span in longitude. This provided a nice change from Shanghai. Instead of the sun rising around 5am and setting around 5pm, in Xinjiang it was more like 8am/8pm (or 6am/6pm depending on which time you happened to be using). Can you prophesy any potential confusion caused by two different time systems? Any time communicated is immediately followed by the obvious inquiry Beijing shi jian haishi Xinjiang shi jian? I've found this type of clarification common place in a country where you often don't know:

1) what language you're fellow countryman is speaking (is that Mandarin / Cantonese / Shanghainese / etc)
2) what season it is (Fall officially begins on a different date each year determined by the first 5 consecutive days after summer where the high temperature is below 22C)
3) rice or noodles
3) and of course, what time it is!

In Xinjiang, all of these differences are amplified. The local Uighur dialect is phonetically written using the Arabic alphabet and has much more in common with Turkish and Uzbek than Mandarin. Why they chose Arabic as opposed to say ... the Latin/Roman alphabet to represent sounds is beyond me, as the Uighur and Arabic languages themselves have no similarities. One theory we read was that the Uighurs actually did use the Latin alphabet in the past, but the Chinese government forced the change because they feared the Uighurs were getting an advantage in learning English over the Chinese. Far fetched, but irrational enough to be possible.

There is no denying the tension between the local Uighur people and the majority Han Chinese. Sparing the long history lesson, the Uighurs basically want autonomy and the Chinese government basically wants Xinjiang for it's strategic geopolitical location and natural resources, particularly the vast oil and gas reserves under the Takalamakan desert. Beijing has employed the strategy of flooding the province with Han Chinese to breed out the Uighurs. They will even offer a 20,000 RMB bonus for any Chinese who marries a Uighurs. It's working too. Urumqi, by far the largest city with about 3 million people, is now majority Han and minority Uighur. About 70%/30% from what we could tell. Farther west, in places like Kashgar, the ratio was reversed. Overall, more than half of the 20 million total population in Xinjiang is now Han Chinese. This policy has obviously created some bad blood and prejudice. The common stereotype of Uighurs (even shared by many of my Chinese colleagues in Shanghai), is that they are "dangerous people". In return, one Uighur man we met in Urumqi said he didn't like working with the Chinese because "Chinese are dirty".

The province is essentially segregated along ethnic lines. Most towns have a Chinese and a Uighur area, the children attend different schools, and in almost 2 weeks of traveling, we never saw a Uighur adult or child hanging out with a Chinese.

For our part, both cultures were very interesting. One microcosm that reflected the differences for us was the experience of taking buses in Urumqi (Chinese) vs. Kashgar (Uighur). In Kashgar, the run-down, rotten-cabbage smelling, yet completely full bus leaves the station 30 minutes late then proceeds to pick up anyone along the side of the dusty road who sticks out there hand. There is no concept of a bus stop, and I think we were the only people who actually bought a ticket instead of just slipping the guy in the front seat 10 RMB. In Urumqi, the large, new tour buses were orderly lined up at the station. Everyone bought their ticket in advance and sat in their assigned seats. Passengers were counted and government chops assigned when the bus rolled out of the station, not to stop until the ultimate destination was reached. The one thing both buses had in common was the unfortunate choice of Bollywood song and dance VCDs that blared for the entire trip.

To be continued, with less heavy, more lighthearted travel stories now that the stage has been set ...

Xinjiang Photos.


We are back in Shanghai, safe and sound, after 2 amazing weeks in Xinjiang, the Autonomous Uighur province in western China. There are lots of stories to tell, and hopefully we'll get around to writing about them soon. In the mean time, here are some Xinjiang de zhao pian (pictures!) to whet your appetite.

Movie theatre and trip.

Last night, Laurel and I went to the dian ying yuan for the first time in China. Our Chinese tutor, Kitty invited us to see the new Zhang Ziyi movie, "Ye Yan" (or "The Banquet") with her. If you like Crouching Tiger, Hero, Flying Daggers, etc, etc ... basically every Chinese movie that has gone mainstream in the US, you'll probably like this one too. It followed the standard formula, but was still very entertaining, with good action scenes and beautiful scenery. Fortunately there was English subtitles (which I found a little odd for a Chinese movie showing in China), but still much appreciated.

Tomorrow we leave for 2 weeks lu xing to Kashgar (or Kashi) in Xinjiang Province, the western-most province in China, bordering Tibet, Mongolia, and the "Stans" (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan). Should be a great chance to get away from the Chinese National Holiday crowds in Shanghai and do some hiking and exploring.

Trip report with pictures to follow in a few weeks.

Formula One!

One of the perks of working for a sponsor of the Ferrari/AMD Team - Free Passes to F1 last Friday! We had seats right across from the pit. My only regret is that I didn't remember to bring earplugs. Cars travelling at 320 km/h are LOUD.



Sorry the picture is a little blurry - they were going too fast!