Travel Journal: Urumqi (乌鲁木齐) to Hotan (和田)
In the bus station, there was little to indicate we were still in China. Some young men, wearing sideways-cocked wool caps, loitered around chatting while others helped their veiled female relatives stuff parcels into the buses. After finally getting used to Mandarin, I was now once again surrounded by an utterly foreign and incomprehensible language. An Arabic-looking script adorned everything (alongside the Chinese characters, obviously), and the Turkic language sounded like it belonged several thousand miles further West. Looking only very slightly less out-of-place than us were the two young Han women also waiting for our bus, dressed in their very best faux-Japanese attire.
The production involved in leaving the station was one of the most time-consuming I encountered in China. Random men kept getting on and off with different forms, sitting in the driver’s seat for a few minutes, then getting back up to go chat with more random men outside. A month’s worth of paperwork and heated discussion seemed involved in getting this bus to pull out of its gate.
We hadn’t even moved twenty feet before the bus stopped again. The drivers/attendants/random friends (there was a whole team responsible for chatting in the front) got off and seemed occupied with yet more forms. Family members of passengers would get on the bus to give their loved ones some last minute road snacks, mostly delicious looking bread. One grandfather figure seemed to get on and off about five times, his family discussing something apparently important with one of the drivers. Three minutes into a twenty-four hour journey, and people were already getting off the bus for cigarette breaks.
We moved closer to the exit, and more officials and forms appeared. The driver(s) got off to handle it, and the grandfather’s family managed to get on the bus to settle him in (his bunk was right under mine). Everything seemed to finally be settled, with passengers being scolded back onto the bus for departure. About forty-five minutes after pulling out of the gate, our bus finally made it out of the bus station.
Of course, we stopped one hundred metres down the road so the attendant could run into a shop and buy a supply of flat bread. This apparently came in handy as, ten minutes later, we pulled over in the outskirts of the city to meet some sketchy-looking men standing around unmarked sedans. The drivers did more chatting, giving one of the men the bread and, I think, some money. After this, our journey finally began.
Never in my life had I seen the sort of nothing that surrounded Urumqi. On both sides of the highway, flat rocky terrain spread to the horizon where it abruptly turned into rocky mountains. The only sign of human presence was the highway and the occasional blue truck rumbling along in the distance. In this vast emptiness we stopped at a gas station for a quick restroom break, and the wind was so strong I had trouble opening my eyes.
Next up were some spectacular red rock formations, towering over the highway as it snaked among them. Occasionally, a mountain-sized sand dune would appear, having cascaded over the top of the rock and into the canyon. I could only thing of Tatooine from the first Star Wars ( I usually hate saying a real place reminds of some fictional movie locale, but having never been to a desert before this is about the best I can do).
After this our bus sped through an endless variety of desert scenery: rocks, sand, big rocks and more sand. As it got dark, we stopped in some town for dinner. In truth, it was less of a town than it was one street built up around the highway. This was the first time I got the feeling that I was really in the middle of nowhere. As Justin ate his 羊肉串, I nursed a Sprite and watched veils fly by on the back of the occasional motorcycle. A Han man asked the restaurant owner if he had any rice. The owner laughed and responded in broken Mandarin: “no, we don’t have any rice” (said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world).
Just as I started to feel a new culture shock, two black Santanas pulled up and saved the day. About twelve people piled out of them: two army officials and their families. The noise level was upped considerably, the men were demanding beer and the kids were running around in their usual state of Chinese toddler hyperactivity. I guess political borders still count for something. Not soon after, another sedan pulled in and a young army officer emerged in his greens, looking for a meal.
As night took over and we got back on the road, my memories get a little hazy. Portions of Broken Arrow mixed with local Turkic-language music videos on the TV screen (conveniently right in front of my bunk) as I drifted in and out of sleep. I woke up at one point to find our bus stopped in a large courtyard completely surrounded by a brick wall. I got off to use the washroom, and was instructed that anywhere on the ground would do. I watched my step in the dark, trying to avoid spots where I had made out people squatting down for business. Meanwhile, I think our bus was filling up on illegal gas.
The Taklamakan desert was nothing but a blur, as I woke up occasionally during the night to look out the window. The highway was a two-lane road with sand rising sharply on both sides, the only visibility provided by the headlights. It was strange how a vast desert could feel so claustrophobic.
In the morning we awoke to a rather different world. Now completely on the other side of the desert, we passed through several small towns that are Chinese only according to their place on the geo-political map. Old bearded men guided donkey carts (often carrying several passengers) down the road as barefoot children walked to school, some of the girls in very colourful headscarves and dresses. The boys were already sporting the “wool cap and worn suit” look so favoured by Uygur men.
People just looked,dressed and acted completely different. The architectural style, apart from the odd white-tile import, was completely different. Actually, just about everything felt completely different. The Chinese characters on certain buildings, rather than reminding me of what country I was in, just looked foreign and out of place. It was culture shock all over again.
The surroundings would have been more at home by the Mediterranean; the colour scheme was light and bright, and the mudbrick courtyards homes were surrounded by poplar trees. Despite the dust, everything was much brighter, cleaner and better-kept than the rural squalor back in the East. One of the things I found the most striking about Xinjiang was how the bright colours contrasted with the earth tones of the stark surroundings. As our bus continued onto the Southern Silk Road, huge snow-capped mountains rose from the southern horizon, presumably marking the beginnings of Tibet. The sky was a majestic blue.
A few hours later, after passing through more striking oasis town scenery (and lots of desert), our bus stopped for lunch. This consisted of people smoking and chatting for an hour or so outside the bus, pulled over on the shoulder in the middle of nowhere. No food or restaurants in sight. Some of the Han passengers got a little antsy at their precious meal schedule being so casually disregarded.
It was here, as I stood looking out at the nothing before me, that one of the passengers finally approached me and asked the standard questions (nationality, job, purpose of visit,etc.) He knew Canada produced a lot of wheat, and seemed amused that anyone would bother visiting Xinjiang (”There’s nothing here, look! Ha ha”). We somehow moved onto religion, and this is where my shaky Mandarin started to fail me.
I managed to convey that there were people of all faiths in Canada, although they seemed to be more interested in whether I was a believing Christian. After many gestures and signs of the cross, I got the point. By then, a few of the other passengers and one of the drivers had joined in on the discussion and the subject of Islam came up. Uh oh.
They asked me if I knew about Islamic scriptures and religious issues, to which I replied no (even though I did study them a few years back, but no point in trying to explain that). This produce amazement, laughter and much animated discussion. Even though the conversation quickly shifted into Uygur, I distinctly heard the names “Saddam Hussein” and “Bin Laden” mentioned. Another man then asked me if I was American. I said no. They asked me if my friend still on the bus was American (he is), but I think I told them he was Mexican.
Back on the bus, I went back through the conversation in my head to try and figure out what had caused so much amusement on their part. If I wasn’t Muslim, how was I expected to know all about the religion? Then, I realized what had happened: he hadn’t asked me if I knew about Islamic issues, he had asked me if I had ever heard of Islam, period. To which I had replied no. Oops.
On the TV screen, a rather peculiar Uygur VCD was now playing. In the movie there was a Uygur political protest scene, and another where a visibly Uygur hero punched a visibly Han police officer in the face when he tried to break up a card game. I had several doubts about whether this film was, to say the least, legal. I looked around at the passengers on the bus to gauge their reaction, but no one flinched. The Han men were busy snoring away in the bright sunlight, their pant legs rolled up for maximum comfort. Welcome to Xinjiang.
