Travel Journal: Turpan (吐鲁番)
We arrived in Turpan after an overnight train journey from Kasghar. The trip was rather uneventful and reminiscent of any train ride in Central/Eastern China, differentiated only by the endless hours of rocky nothing passing by (and the occasional industrial complex/labour camp plunked in the middle of nowhere).
Turpan’s train station isn’t actually in the city- in fact, it’s about 50km outside of town. This seemed to be a rather unfortunate trend in that part of the country; trains stations weren’t located anywhere near the urban areas they were supposed to be serving (the experience was similar in Dunhuang).
After arriving in town courtesy of a beaten up old cab, I noticed two things about Turpan immediately: it was HOT and there was absolutely no one on the streets (my amazing intellect later concluded these two were somehow connected). Justin and I dropped off our bags at a hotel and set off in search of food, e-mail and onward train tickets to Gansu.
Turpan was just about the emptiest city I had seen in China. I felt like we had been dropped off in some far-flung outskirts, but our map clearly indicated we were in the centre of town. Given the Chinese propensity to monumental building projects and needlessly wide avenues, the effect was even more pronounced; here we were in a typically over-wide city, only there was no one in the streets. Had the apocalypse hit sometime during the night?
Where is everybody?
Our wandering soon brought us to Turpan’s most attractive draw: a pedestrian street beautifully shaded by overhanging grape trellises. This was lined with small restaurants, street eateries and the ever-present beer gardens. A few people meandered about while a great many more hid in the shade of their shops. I guess we got a little “homesick”, because at this point we decided nothing would be better than a heaping plate of steaming dumplings (sans the spices that had been ravaging my stomach throughout Xinjiang). We settled for a quiet place run by a cheery Han family, and proceeded to order our food and some cold, cold beer. As we sat outside under a parasol, the grandmother fawned over the Little Emperor of the clan, who was well-fed to say the least.
A happy family
It was here that we met two American guys from Colorado (by way of Harbin). They joined us for beers and entertained us thoroughly with tales of life in the Northeast (apparently full of noodle house brawls and sketchy Russians). At some point we were forced inside as a mini-sandstorm swept into town, so we soon relocated to another cafe to make arrangements with a driver for a tour the next day. One of the guys from Colorado (whose name I now forget) made a great show out of the bargaining process to the ire of another patron who jumped in and yelled “You Americans, you think you own the world!!!” Obviously, she was quite unaware of the normal bargaining process in China. Trying not to get ripped off does not equate cultural imperialism in my books.
The next morning I woke up to the realization that I had turned 24 in the searing heat of the Xinjiang desert. My birthday present was day-long tour of the attractions of Turpan in a Nissan Bluebird. But it wasn’t any Bluebird: this well-worn car somehow sported a DVD player, so we got treated to a deluge of Uygur music videos. China never ceases to amaze me.
Our first stop of the day was Ai Ding Hu, a salt lake plunked in the middle of a searing hot moonscape and apparently one of the lowest points on earth. As we drove in over the severely deteriorated access road, we passed the remains of what we were told was a “salt factory”. I read later that this was, in fact, a labour camp at one time, making our jokes about bodies disappearing in the lake a lot less amusing in retrospect. The crumbling buildings were suprisingly still inhabited; a dirty toddler stared silently as our car pulled in, and a shirtless man gave us a friendly wave. Heaps of salty mud dominated the horizon, occasionally topped off by ageing excavation machinery. The whole scene was, needless to say, otherworldly.
With the lake in sight, our driver stopped the car and we continued on foot. We had been told the night before that we could float around in salty delight a la Dead Sea, and so were quite eager to get out to the lake. But a few hundred metres later, our plan was abruptly thwarted.
As we walked across the salt-crusted earth, Justin suddenly sank knee-deep through the surface. One of the guys from Colorado and I were just behind him, and we started laughing as he swore profusely, more perplexed than angry. Of course, seconds later both I and “Colorado 1″ sank knee-deep in too. Colorado 2 somehow remained on the surface and found the whole thing rather hilarious.
What the??
Stuck in a mucky mixture of salt and hot mud, we realized we hadn’t exactly being walking towards the lake- we had been walking on the lake! Apparently the top layer had dried out and crusted to form an amazingly deceptive false surface. Good thing we fell in there and not further out.
Getting our legs out of the muck was somewhat difficult but manageable. However, we must have broken some kind of pressure seal: with almost every footstep back towards shore, my legs went crashing back through the surface. Although we were all laughing hysterically at our unexpected misfortune, the trek back started taking its toll. Each time a leg went through, it got cut and scratched by the sharp crust. Then it got to sit in a nice solution of hot mud and salt. Let’s just say it burned.
About halfway back my sandal got stuck below in the muck, and I had to fish around for it to the great amusement of the others (as a result, I alone also ended up with cuts and scratches on my arms as well). When we arrived back at the car, the driver looked thoroughly unsurprised (as if this happened all the time!). We wiped some of the salty mud off our limbs with tissues, but left the site with salt still drying on our legs. As our wounds burned and the temperature sat in the low 40s (Celcius), I couldn’t help but feel a little hot.
Nissan Bluebird, transportation extraordinaire (post salt lake, hence Justin’s muddy legs)
The driver told us about a mountain stream where we could stop to wash ourselves off. On our way, we stopped to see the Flaming Mountains, which were in fact neither flaming nor mountains. Anyways, we couldn’t see much through the heat haze besides a parched and cracked landscape.
I wonder if it ever rains here
The mountain stream turned out to be not much more than a drainage ditch, complete with floating garbage and people washing their laundry. As I weighed the discomfort of burning salt legs vs. the health hazards of infected wounds, my cell phone rang. It was my parents calling to wish me happy birthday! I told them about the salt lake craziness and chatted away on the phone will washing off my limbs. Oh well, at least the water looked clean. The one bad thing about getting all the mud off was seeing how scratched up my legs really were (I still have a small scar or two).
A pristine mountain stream (or so we were told)
The rest of the day consisted of a lazy 大盘鸡 (Da Pan Ji)lunch at a Uygur restaurant in a tourist trap, a visit to an Afghani-style mosque (very impressive structure surrounded by grapevines and Uygur villages) and an unsuccessful attempt to find the area’s famous underground irrigation system. A fun day, although almost every sight was completely oversold by the tout the previous night;as with anything involving the tourism industry in China, buyer beware.
After washing out my wounds as best as I could in the hotel shower, it was time for the birthday celebration. We returned to the pedestrian street and dug into mounds of 羊肉串, cold beers and good conversation. After a decent amount of drinking, Justin and I set off to find Turpan’s nightlife. A cabbie drove us around asking friends where the hot spots were, trying valiantly to help us out but eventually failing to deliver. After visiting a number of empty bars and staying away from a scary amount of dirty KTV palaces, we ended up in a closed disco drinking with the owner and the band. 4am in Turpan isn’t exactly jumping.
The next day, my mild hangover was greeted by Turpan’s unbelievable heat. This wasn’t just any heat: it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It felt like we were been cooked in an oven (the debate is on about whether this was preferable to Hangzhou’s disgusting humidity). The air was just HOT, around 45C or so. We did nothing but sit around and sweat, and any trip to the washroom caused heat exhaustion (note: it is not a good idea to build windowless bathrooms out of concrete in this kind of climate). We hid out in an internet bar with A/C for the afternoon, took a donkey cart ride back to our hotel and continued on to the train station by cab for our journey into Gansu.
Turpan as a city was pretty featureless; although it is technically in Xinjiang, after Hotan and Kashgar it felt like we were back in the familiar world of the Han Chinese. Apparently the population is half Uygur, but in appearance, layout and lifestyle the city is an overwhelmingly Han experience.
Despite the intense heat, it was good place to relax, catch a breath and look up at the deep blue sky. It had a quiet spaciousness to it that I really enjoyed. Turpan was another reminder of the sharp contrast between the human crush of Eastern China and the desolate expanse of the country’s vast Western regions.
Afghani-style mosque
And, obviously, the salt lake incident will always be a good story to tell.